by Esme Devlin
I want to give him one that’ll shut him up for good.
He’s only acting like this because he thinks I can’t really touch him. He doesn’t know that the game has changed, and that all previous agreements are off. He doesn’t know he’s digging a hole for himself, and that unlike the previous holes he’s been in, I won’t let him crawl out of this one. I don’t have to, this time.
I glance over at Lacey but she’s frozen to her seat, mouth open in a little ‘O’ and her eyes wide. I nod at Calvin and Doeboy. “Take him over to that dartboard.”
Liam’s eyes widen in shock as the boys approach him.
What does he think I’m going to do, throw darts at his pretty little face? I’d call that too good for him. I’d call that mercy.
Calvin and Doeboy must think that’s the plan too, because they drag him over and hold him up against the wall.
I shake my head at them. “On the floor.”
They push him forwards and Calvin swings his leg under Liam, making him crumble instantly.
“Heather, here,” I shout on her and she comes over.
The two of them are holding him down on his back. He’s got his eyes shut, struggling against them but he knows it’s fucking pointless. I take his leg and I stick it up on the oche, so his ankle rests on it. It’s not a high one, but if she jumps hard enough at the right position, it should be enough to break his leg, anyway.
I look up at my sister but she only has eyes for Liam.
“Tell her what you said to me that day outside the school,” I tell Liam. “Tell her what you said about her.”
He shakes his head. He knows what’s coming now. “Please, Shaun. I’m sorry. I’m fucking sorry alright?”
I laugh at him. I laugh and then I look at Heather. “Do you accept his apology?”
She just stands there, staring at him with these crazy as fuck eyes that would give me shivers if she wasn’t my own sister.
Then, finally, she shakes her head.
“Scoot get that fucking music on full blast,” I tell him. “Sorry Liam, the lassie has spoken.”
Liam starts shaking and trying to kick his leg free but the boys have an arm each and I have his leg.
“Hurry the fuck up with that music, will you?” I shout to Scoot, who’s fannying about at the jukebox.
“Hold your horses, man, it’ll be worth it,” he shouts back, laughing.
The next thing I know, I’m Shipping Up To Boston by Dropkick Murphys starts thumping through the speakers, and I can’t help laughing at his warped sense of humour.
Fucking legend.
It’s now loud enough to wake the dead and muffle a scream, and I nod at Heather. “Jump.”
She looks at me, hesitating, and for a second I think she’s going to back down.
She turns and walks away, and I think she’s going to bottle it.
But she doesn’t.
She goes to the wall behind us and she rips the fire extinguisher off it, and when she comes back, I think she’s lost the plot a wee bit. I think she’s genuinely lost her fucking marbles, but I let her anyway.
She needs this. She deserves it.
He deserves it.
She crashes that fire extinguisher down on his leg like a demon has possessed her.
And I laugh.
Chapter 9
LACEY
I scream.
I scream while Heather drops the fire extinguisher, and Liam moans and writhes in agony, and Shaun laughs in his face.
I think I’m still screaming when Scoot runs over and wraps his arms around me, trying to turn my face away from the horror show in front of us.
I think I’m still screaming, but the music is too loud and I can’t be sure.
I look at Stevie. Why isn’t she screaming? Did she not just witness what I just witnessed? But she’s just staring, her mouth open and her eyes fixed on the spot below the dartboard.
I don’t understand what the fuck just happened.
The next thing I know Shaun is prying me out of Scoot’s arms. He takes my cheeks in his hands and all I know is that I’m not really seeing him.
It’s surreal. Like being in a dream where things are happening and you have no control over it.
He taps me on the side of my face a couple of times.
Why? Why is he doing that?
I don’t understand.
God, I’m so stupid.
He told me who he was the first night I met him, and I refused to believe him. He’s been telling me that every day since then, and still, I refused to believe him.
I could break every bone in your body.
Now I believe him. Now I’ve seen it with my own two fucking eyes.
“Come on, come with me,” he says, taking my hand and pulling me to follow him.
I do follow him. I follow him because honestly, where else am I supposed to go? I can’t go home. I have no one else now. How did that happen? I’m used to not having anyone but now I feel more alone than ever before.
We get to his car and I’m not really sure how I got there. I feel numb. Why would he do that? Why would Heather do that?
He’s buckling my seatbelt for me and I just stare out the window. He gets in the car beside me, but he doesn’t start up the engine.
I turn around and look at his face. He’s changed again. He’s calm now, his face is straight, his breathing controlled.
Five minutes ago, he was the fucking devil. There was a fury in his eyes and he was reveling in it. The way he looked at his sister when she forced that fire extinguisher down on Liam, the way his face turned into a smile, and he threw his head back in a laugh as Liam erupted in pain.
Pain that I can only imagine was excruciating.
“He deserved it,” he tells me.
I swallow hard and look away. No one deserves that. I feel my heart rate finally begin to slow down. I can think a little straighter without that music blaring in my ears.
“Where’s my phone?” I don’t look at him when I ask him. His straight face after everything that’s just happened is too chilling.
He rummages around down the side of the door and hands the phone over to me.
“What are you doing?”
“Calling an ambulance,” I tell him, unlocking the phone and dialing 999.
It doesn’t even ring once before he’s grabbing the phone out of my hand.
“Don’t be stupid, Lacey.” He puts the phone in the pocket of his jeans and switches the engine on. “He’s not dying for fucks sake.”
“You’re going to leave him there? You’re sick in the head. You need help.”
He just laughs, but the sound of it is drowned out by the tyres screeching as he reverses the car all the way out of the car park and onto the main road.
“And now you want kill us too? What the fuck is wrong with you?” I scream at him.
He shakes his head. “What’s wrong with me? It would be me, wouldn’t it? I told you he deserved exactly what he got and your first thought is to question what’s wrong with me? How about what’s wrong with Liam?”
“I’m not in Liam’s car right now!!”
“No, you’re not. And remind me again who we have to thank for that? You’d still be with that raping little cunt right now if it wasn’t for me. He’d be walking you down the fucking aisle on Saturday if it wasn’t for me. You’re the one who needs help, darlin, not me.”
“Raping? What are you talking about?” I look at him now.
“I’m talking about your fiancé, and how he drugged my little sister and fucked her limp body,” he spits the words at me like a weapon, and they serve their purpose.
I’m stunned. Lost for words.
How can I even begin to process that?
The look on Heather’s face when she did what she did… there’s not a single part of me that can deny the truth in what he’s saying.
I saw it written clear as day across her face.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” I eventually ask him.
> “It was Heather’s secret to tell,” he says with a shrug. “I’m only telling you now because she got what she needed. He got what he deserved. I let you see it because you need to understand who I am, and what I do to people who cross me.”
My whole body stiffens at his words. “You’d do that to me if I crossed you?”
“You’ve crossed me before and I asked you to fucking marry me,” he says, shaking his head.
“Answer the question.” I watch him carefully and he glances down to the side, pretending he’s checking his wing mirror. “Answer the fucking question, Shaun.”
He sighs and slams his foot on the brakes, hard, before pulling up at the side of the road. The streetlights reflect off his face, and it’s emotionless. When the car comes to a complete stop, he turns around to face me and his eyes soften a little.
“I wouldn’t hurt a single hair on your head,” he says, pulling the handbrake up.
“Why? Why not?”
“Cause we’re a team. I’ll fight your corner and I expect you to do the same. You won’t cross me, and if you ever did cross me, then I’ll have deserved it, and I won’t ever do anything to deserve it.”
Why is he so fucking confusing?
I look at him and I see what’s right in front of me. I see what the rest of the world sees — the power, the looks, the fearlessness, the arrogance.
And yet, there is so much more to him sitting under the surface. He’s complicated, but at the same time he’s black and white. He’s a contradiction. You think because he knows how to use his fists that he doesn’t know how to use his brain, but that would be the biggest mistake you could make with Shaun.
He never gives you the answer you want to hear, instead he gives you something different and you don’t know if it’s better or worse than the answer you wanted.
He makes you forget the fucking question.
Right now though, I want answers. Real ones.
“If we’re a team, then you better start talking,” I tell him. “And none of your half-truths.”
He smiles at me, like he knows I’m right and he’s been found out but he doesn’t care. “What do you want to know?”
There’s too much I want to know, but I start with what’s freshest in my mind.
“What was Liam talking about? The unfortunate incident that Lacey doesn’t know about?”
I think I already know about this one; I read the article. He assaulted someone and got his boxing license revoked. But Shaun doesn’t know that I know about this. I didn’t tell him because I didn’t want him to know that I’d… researched him.
I won’t call it snooping. It was research. So this is the perfect opportunity for me to see if he’s lying.
“You really want to open this door, Lace?” he asks me.
“Fucking right I do,” I deadpan. “We’re a team, remember?”
“I was drunk, I’d been snorting lines and swallowing pills like they were sweeties. Someone looked at me the wrong way and I hit them. Just the once. I didn’t think it was hard, but either way, he ended up in hospital in a medically induced coma. I got charged with attempted murder, but that got wiped. I’ve never thrown a hard punch or snorted a line or taken a pill since. And I’ve never been back in that boxing ring, either.”
I don’t know what to say to that, so I nod and look away.
“Are we still a team now?”
I ignore the question because he doesn’t have any right to ask me that. “Why did Liam say you couldn’t touch him? Was that ever true? He said there was an agreement, but it didn’t look that way to me tonight.”
“The agreement was over when my dad found out what he did to Heather,” he tells me.
Half-truth. He avoided the first question.
“Why was there an agreement in the first place?”
He stares at me for a minute, like he’s weighing up how much of the truth he wants to tell me this time. “My sister doesn’t know, and she can’t ever find out. It would break her again and she doesn’t deserve that.”
I nod at him. “I won’t tell her.”
“My dad has this thing. Like a club. Anyone who is anyone in this place is in on it. You’re either born into it or you join through marriage, initiation, invitation, whatever. Anyway, Liam’s family have never been a part of it — even though they’ve been here as long as we have.”
“He said it was a cult,” I tell him, my tone accusatory.
“You’ve seen my soul, princess, does it look religious to you?”
“Is Satanism a religion?” I bite back.
He chuckles like I’m complimenting him.
I’m not.
“Dunno but maybe it’s worth investigating? We already have a pastor but perhaps I’ll find my calling?”
I shake my head at him, rolling my eyes.
“As I was saying, you’re born into it and it’s not something that’s easy to walk away from.”
“So what does that have to do with Liam?”
“Did you see Liam’s mum at your little engagement shin-dig?” he asks me.
“No.”
I wish he would just spit it out.
“Liam’s mum is my dad’s sister. Was my dad’s sister. She committed suicide when he was a baby. My dad blames Liam’s dad — they weren’t together. She didn’t… she didn’t want it. Any of it. But by birth, that made Liam one of us. We can’t touch someone who is one of us, unless they harm us first.”
“Wait… Liam’s your cousin? Liam raped his own cousin?”
“Aye… although he doesn’t know it. I’m the only one who knows. I had to know because we’ve hated each other since fucking nursery and it was the only thing stopping us from killing each other. Liam just thinks it’s… I don’t know. A permanent ceasefire, or something.”
Well. I’m glad he told me. I’m glad he’s finally giving me some actual answers and I don’t feel like I’m stumbling around in the dark anymore.
“Are you on my team now?” he asks.
“Answer me this and answer me truthfully. Is that what this is about? Am I just another way of breaking Liam’s legs to you? Do you only want me because you want to win?”
He pauses while he looks at me. I believed he was genuine when he was telling me about his past, and about his families secrets. His face looks the same way now as it did then.
“At first I was doing it because it’s what my dad told me to do. And I won’t lie to you and say I hated it, because I didn’t. I slept soundly, believe me. You were so fucking strong and I was… in awe of you, I suppose. And then it was about Liam. It was about him thinking you were a trophy and me wanting to steal it away from him. But it was about you, too. For the first time in my life I felt like I’d met someone who might be worth joining my team.” He does this coy smile like he knows it’s cheesy but he doesn’t give a fuck. “You’re not perfect, you piss me off and you do stupid shit. You don’t listen. But I’m not perfect and I’m not one for listening, either. But the thing that makes me want you most is that you’re so fucking convinced you don’t deserve to be wanted. And I want to fix that. You’re broken, and maybe I broke you even more with the shit I did, but you weren’t even whole to start with.”
He’s asking me to join his team but what he’s really asking is for me to trust him.
He’s asking me to do something I don’t know how to do.
“If I’m broken, then you’re broken too,” I tell him, tearing my eyes away from his and looking straight ahead.
He puts the car into gear and pulls out onto the road. “Exactly.”
We get home and it’s late. I’m exhausted.
If this had been my own home, then I’d probably curl up in bed alone and cry myself to sleep.
My life feels fucked.
I didn’t have much of a dad when I came here, but at least I thought I did. I was blissfully unaware. I was naïve and I couldn’t wait to escape, but I was okay. Shaun says I wasn’t whole then, and maybe in hindsight I wasn’t — but at
least I thought I was.
Now I know I’m alone, now I know I’m broken, and it hurts like hell.
Three men in my life who claim to care about me… the rapist, the one who sold me to him, and the one who broke his legs.
Seriously fucked.
And seriously alone.
Except I’m not alone. One of them is in bed with me and he holds me so tight it almost takes the breath from my lungs. He thinks he’s helping, but it hurts. Not physically, he’s not physically hurting me. It hurts because I’m the lowest I’ve ever been and he’s the only one here. A boy I barely know. A boy I barely trust. A boy who caused me utter misery. Stroking my hair and holding me when I didn’t even know I needed to be held.
And saving me when I didn’t even know I needed to be saved.
I feel like he’s been honest with me tonight. I want to believe him, I want to believe that there are reasons behind all the bad shit he does.
Does that mean I’m starting to trust him? I don’t know if I’m just blinded by him so much that I can’t see what’s right in front of me, or if he actually means what he says.
They say the devil never comes with a red tail and horns, he comes in the form of everything you ever wished for. I never wished for Shaun, but what he said tonight resonated. I wasn’t cared for and I wasn’t wanted, and surely everyone deserves that?
Shaun is offering me that.
At least, I think he is.
I turn over in bed, trying to find that perfect comfortable position, and he pulls me in close to him. It’s impossible to miss the erection pressed against my back. One arm circles my stomach and I rest my head on the other one, letting it come around my neck and rub my shoulder.
He lifts his head slightly, running his lips down the back of my neck and I shiver against him.
“I know what you said earlier,” I begin to tell him, but I pause trying to think of the best way to say it.
“I said a lot of things earlier,” he mutters, his lips turning into kisses.
“You said I’d be screaming no later. I don’t know if you were joking, to be honest I don’t think I want to know. But I’m telling you now, I mean no.”