Risk: A Military Stepbrother Bad Boy Romance

by Lucas, Helen

  Small things would happen if Richards, or by extension, dad, didn’t like what you were up to: cops might show up, telling you that you needn’t a permit for your café, for your parking lot, or maybe that your car’s license plate was out of date. And then, low and behold, a different license plate would turn up affixed to the back of your car and you’d be fined, not to mention condemned to an afternoon at the DMV… I couldn’t say which fate was worse.

  “I guess I’ll just…” Mitch continued, trailing off.

  “Just what?”

  He blushed and smiled.

  “Oh, I don’t know. Wait till college to be happy, I guess.”

  “God, that’s such a depressing thought!” I exclaimed.

  “What? You mean you’re not doing the same? You’re miserable here too!”

  I hesitated. If you had asked me that a few weeks ago, I would have answered, yes, enthusiastically, yes—I couldn’t wait for my life to really start once I got out of this town.

  But now… With Damien… I didn’t know anymore.

  “I don’t know…” I started, trailing off. Mitch could tell what I was thinking from the look in my eye. He always could.

  “You’re thinking about Damien!” he declared. “You’re thinking about your step-brother, you hussy!”

  We both giggled at the word “hussy.” Again, the family in the shop shot us a deadly look. Finally, they drifted out the door, not having bought a single thing. We both burst out laughing.

  “Did you see…” Mitch started.

  “…the way they looked at you when you said hussy?” I finished his sentence for him, giggling still, uncontrollably. I lived for these moments, hanging out with Mitch, laughing at stupid things. The silly things that were an indispensable, ubiquitous part of small town life.

  I watched him leave and then, to my surprise, watched him meet someone on the other side of the street. A tall figure, wearing a hoodie—a hoodie from our high school.

  “Who the hell is…”

  I couldn’t see the face, but I could see Mitch standing on his tip toes to kiss the stranger. The stranger pushed him away and they set off together, down the street.

  The stranger turned to look back over his shoulder and my eyes widened when I recognized his face.

  Teddy Richards. Mitch’s bully. The police chief’s son. What the hell was going on? Oh, man, Mitch was going to have a great story for me tomorrow.

  That was the last time I ever saw Mitch alive.

  DAMIEN

  One of the first things I did when I arrived in Laramie, this hell-hole of a town—the second time, I mean, not the first, since I didn’t know any better then and since I didn’t have any money of my own—was the swing by a music store and buy a guitar.

  Something I learned while overseas is that music makes life easier. It makes the shitty parts of life easier to swallow. It makes the better parts better. You need music, even if you don’t think you do. And you’d better get some in your life as soon as you could.

  My guitar was cheap and used, but it was a work horse. I had begun to stay up late, practicing, strumming—nothing in particular: chords and progressions at first to warm up my fingers, and then a few familiar songs. Some folks songs—simple ones at first—“If I had a Hammer,” and then later, “The Sound of Silence,” and other stuff from the sixties.

  But I was beginning to write my own stuff, too. I was playing in a park after class one afternoon—I don’t remember where Sarah was—probably doing homework like a good girl—after all, this was in the week before we had slept together and before I had corrupted her—when a guy in ripped jeans with a beard that made him look like some absurd cartoon character approached me.

  “Hey, man,” he said, lifting his hand in greeting. “You’re pretty solid. How long have you been playing?”

  I had just shrugged. “On and off, two years? I started when I was deployed.”

  He shot me a grin. “Oo-ra. I did embassy duty in Tanzania. What about you?”

  A fellow Marine. Even though he didn’t look it, with the beard and sloppy clothes, not to mention the few extra pounds he had put on, primarily in the belly area—but he was at least ten years older than me, so it had to be forgiven.

  “Iraq. Three years.”

  “Right in the shit,” my new friend murmured. He offered me his hand.

  “I’m Lance Powell. Listen, I’ve got a small band—we’ve been looking for a new guitarist, since our guy just moved out of town.”

  I raised an eyebrow.

  “We play folk, indie shit, stuff like that—mostly acoustic but if you wanna’ get wild, we’re down for that too. We’ve been playing colleges and universities and shit like that…”

  “What, you mean you’re not signed?” I asked sarcastically, putting my guitar aside. I plucked a pack of cigarettes out of my pocket, lit one, and offered Lance another. He accepted it, and took a seat next to me on the park bench.

  “Yeah, man, we’re a signed band and everything and I’m scouting a new guitarist in a fucking park,” he laughed.

  “I’d check it out,” I said finally. “No promises—I can’t say how long I’m going to be in town. I’m just finishing up my GED and then I’m out of here.”

  “Sure, man, no pressure. Ain’t no one want to spend too much time in Laramie—hell, I’d get out of here too if I didn’t have two kids and a woman who says they’re mine.”

  I laughed wryly as I took a drag on my cigarette.

  Sarah found me then—again, I don’t remember where she was—with Mitch in tow.

  “Come on, Damien!” she called, gesturing towards me. “Let’s go home.”

  “Your girlfriend?” Lance had asked.

  “No. My sister.”

  “Well, either way, I won’t compliment her ass.”

  “Much obliged, Marine.”

  We exchanged numbers and Lance told me where they practiced—in his basement, in a run down townhouse about a mile from the Logan estate. I had been going there after school for several days, playing for a few hours with the band until my fingers were sore, practically bleeding even. Then, I’d drift home to dinner with my “family”…

  And by family, of course, I meant Sarah, Dakota when she was there, my mom, and Harry—who was often late, and always drunk.

  The Monday after the dance, after Sarah and I had first gotten together, I found myself in my room, propped up against the wall, strumming slowly on the guitar. It was getting near evening. I had avoided Sarah at school, which wasn’t hard—she had a test right after lunch, and so she had spent all of it in the library, studying. I guess she hadn’t gotten much studying done over the weekend.

  And I guessed I knew whose fault that was.

  As my fingers danced over the strings, I let my mind wander. What the hell was I really trying to do here in this goddamned town? I wasn’t working, wasn’t getting ahead besides getting my GED. I had Sarah, but who knew how long that would last…

  Sarah. The smell of her skin, of her hair, the touch of her finger tips: awkward teenaged hands, trying to make me feel good, trying to do what she must have seen in the movies or in porn. Did she even watch porn? I wanted to watch porn with her. I wanted to corrupt her. I felt like a bad man, an evil man, but I wanted to corrupt her purity, to make her wild, and then to feed on that sweet, sweet wildness…

  That’s what Jenna had done to me, after all. That’s what we had: she found me when I was just a kid, and she was determined to make me wild, as wild as she was. I’m glad she didn’t succeed, of course, because then I might be dead now.

  But I could make Sarah wild without hurting her. It would do her good to get wild. She was already on her way, I supposed—having sex with her step-brother was a pretty damned good first step.

  But what was the next step? Maybe we’d go get tattoos together. Maybe we’d… I don’t know. There weren’t too many opportunities to get crazy in Laramie. It was the type of town you could get into trouble in, but not the type of t
own where that trouble would be fun. If your idea of trouble is robbing a liquor store, then sure. But if you want to stay out all night, howl at the moon like a wild animal, and wake up in a public park the next morning—Laramie had sadly few options for such indulgences.

  I heard Sarah’s tell-tale steps coming up the stairs. I learned to recognize her steps immediately: they were much lighter than my mother’s or Harry’s, heavier than Dakota’s, and always quicker than everyone’s: Sarah had places to go. Things to do. She was on the mood, like a girl with a mission.

  That was something I admired about her.

  Something I loved about her.

  Wait. Where did that thought come from? Love?

  I needed to lock that down. That was what we had talked about. That was something that… No good was going to come from that. No, no, no, no.

  She burst into my room. Tears were streaming down her face. I saw that she had tried to put some make-up on this morning (I knew she often didn’t wear make up; practically never, she had told me, because she felt like no one had ever taught her to put it on, and besides, she felt she had no one to impress) but now, it was smeared all over her face, deformed by her tears.

  “Damien,” she wailed, collapsing onto my bed.

  “What the hell is it?” I cried, tossing my guitar to the side with a loud twang. I mentally prayed that it would be fine, that I hadn’t cracked anything, as I wrapped Sarah’s body up in my arms, feeling her sobs wrack her bones, letting my own body move with hers as she whimpered, as she gasped for hair and shook.

  “Damien,” she wailed again, this time quieter, her voice growing hoarse. “It’s Mitch. He killed himself, Damien. Mitch is dead.”

  SARAH

  Mitch wasn’t in school Monday. He had texted me the evening before, saying he wasn’t feeling well, that he might stay home, and so I didn’t think a thing about it. It all seemed totally normal. He was a bit of a hypochondriac, after all. He could find illness in a plate of spaghetti or some soggy fish sticks in the cafeteria, or even in a strange smell on the high school quad, one that he said was irritating his allergies.

  Sure, Mitch, I had always laughed.

  It was during lunch when I had holed myself up in the library, pouring over my AP Chemistry textbook, trying to make sense of all the things that seemed to have evacuated my mind ever since Damien arrived in my life: covalent bonds, the enormous variety of things that apparently contained sodium, and how the hell do we know that neutrons actually exist?

  It was during this miasma of chemistry and semi-panic—after all, I had a midterm on it during the next period—that I decided to take a break and check my email. Mostly, the emails I get are composed solely of offers and ads—stuff from ModCloth, Urban Outfitters, Banana Republic, and other stores I like but that I never have money for.

  But then, I saw one from Mitch. The subject line was a single word: “Sorry.”

  I had a powerful and horrific sense of foreboding welling up in my stomach as I clicked on it. The message was laid out for me to see. He had BCC’d me on it, so I couldn’t tell who all he had sent it to.

  “Dear family, friends, and lovers,” it began.

  “This is the hardest thing I’ll ever write and the last. I’m crying as I type this but I can’t do this anymore. I hate this town, I hate my life here, and most of all, I hate the lies I have to live. I hate pretending like the person I love hates me, and I hate that the person I love has to pretend to hate me, has to beat me up so that everyone thinks he’s cool and straight. I hate coming home with bruises on my face and having him kiss those bruises and tell me he’s sorry. I hate it all so much.

  “Mom and dad, I’m so so so sorry that I couldn’t have been better. I wish I were normal. I wish I were the good straight kid you had always wanted. Wouldn’t it be nice if I just played football and or basketball? Would it have been nice if I had just stayed in the closet till I got to college and out of this fucked up town? I’m so sorry but it’s not your fault so please don’t think that it is. It’s my fault for not being better. For not being a different person.

  “Sarah. Your friendship is the most precious thing in the world to me. If there’s someone who’s going to beat the world, it’s you, girl. Don’t let this stop you. I’m sorry because I know this is going to make you cry but I also know you’re stronger than this. You’re stronger than me. You take punches and beatings better than I do. You’re a monster and I love you for it. Make them all scream in college, sweetie. Love you.

  “You know who. I’m sorry I couldn’t keep up the charade. I’m sorry I couldn’t take your punches and mocking during the day and that I couldn’t keep it together when you sneak into my room at night (sorry mom and dad, TMI I guess) and that I wanted more of you than you were willing to give. Mostly I just feel bad for you. I’m free now but I know you’ll never be free. I know you’re going to keep living with your fake self, being the golden boy, chasing after girls and making fun of fags. Maybe you’ll change your inner self but I doubt it. I don’t think that part of us changes. I think we have to change the world around us or die. I hope, for your sake, the world around you changes. But if not, I’ll be waiting for you on the other side. XOXOXO

  “I love you all and again I’m so so so sorry.”

  That was it. I read it in silent shock, my heart pounding, my guts wanting to rebel, but unable to look away. I was in the library but I didn’t care. I called Mitch right away. It went to voice mail.

  “Mitch, goddammit, call me back and tell me you’re okay!” I practically screamed into the phone, getting ugly looks from everyone around me. I didn’t care if I was drawing shade from everyone else doing last minute studying or, more accurately, trying to catch glimpses of girls and boys behind their study carrels.

  A librarian was starting over towards me, a sour expression on her face. She could go to hell, for all I cared

  I dashed out of the library, leaving my back pack, leaving my chemistry textbook and my precious notes. I charged down the stairs and through the hall ways. At one point, I felt so nauseous that I had to duck into the girl’s bathroom and found myself doubled over a toilet, dry-heaving and sobbing.

  It couldn’t be true. There was no way it could be true. It just couldn’t be.

  I arrived in the principal’s office, and found it full of grim-faced adults—the principal and vice-principal, the school nurse, a few guidance counselors, and Mr. Simmons, who was Mitch’s and my homeroom teacher. Or, I guess, had been Mitch’s teacher…

  No. I didn’t want to believe it.

  “I just got an email from Mitch Saint-Claire,” I gasped, tears slathered over my face, my mouth blubbering uncontrollably. I was inconsolable when I saw the faces of the grown-ups darken.

  “We need to help him. He’s going to kill himself. We need to send cops or something to his house. Please. Where is he?”

  Mr. Simmons took me by the shoulders. His kind face broke with mine.

  “Sarah, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

  He hugged me tight. No one had to tell me that Mitch was dead. I already knew. I already felt it. I could see it in their eyes, hear it in their voices as they turned to me, starting to heap their apologies on me.

  I didn’t care for their kind words, though. I didn’t give a damn. What I wanted instead was for Mitch to be alive, to be well, to be whole—not for him to be dead. Goddamn it…

  Why hadn’t anyone stopped the bullying? I felt anger rising in my belly and I turned it on the adults all around me.

  “He was being bullied, damn it,” I cried out, my voice hoarse from sobbing already. “You didn’t care. No one cared. No one tried to stop him. No one tried to stop it. You all don’t really care.”

  Maybe that was mean, maybe it was uncharitable… But I didn’t give a damn at that moment. I was angry, I was sad, and I wanted my friend back.

  I was allowed to skip my chemistry test, thankfully, since there was no way I’d be able to go to class without breaking down. I was k
ept in the principal’s office, like a naughty child, waiting for my daddy to come pick me up. Of course, he never did. He had better things to do. He was at work. He wasn’t about to drop everything he was doing to come and collect his embittered daughter.

  Finally, they let me go home by myself shortly after the school day ended. I dashed home, still half hysterical, and I found Damien in his room, strumming his guitar.

  God, if only it hadn’t been such a painful moment, he would have been so hot. He was propped up on a pillow, his fingers lazily dancing over his guitar, a look of longing and boredom on his angelically diabolic face.

  If only it had been a different time, I might have leapt on him, tried to tear his clothes off, try to do all sorts of nasty things to him. If only… But no. Now was not the time for that.