Black Sheep

by Tabatha Vargo

  “Everyone’s out,” he muttered before tossing the towel onto the counter.

  I’d never felt unwelcomed in my home, but the way he spoke to me made me feel that way. It almost made me regret our last meeting … almost. But as hard as I tried, regret wouldn’t move through me. I’d stated what I felt and what I wanted, and while I was embarrassed by the outcome, I wouldn’t take it back because my words and feelings meant too much to me.

  He moved toward the door that went out to the garage and snatched his T-shirt from the doorknob. My eyes followed his movements as he covered his beautiful body. I mourned the view.

  Tyson had always been beautiful, but he’d grown even more gorgeous over the last three months. Not to mention, I rarely saw him without his shirt on, which made the moment even sweeter.

  Over the years, he’d always made sure to stay covered, which made no sense to me since he obviously put in a ton of work to be so toned and tattooed. Sure, he had scars. I’d seen them here and there over the years. But everyone had scars. I guess Tyson’s just ran a little deeper than most.

  “You’re here,” I stated the obvious.

  Again, his eyes flickered to mine before he looked away. He busied himself, pulling open the closest cabinet and grabbing a glass to fill with water.

  “Your dad’s car needed an oil change. So I thought I’d come over and do it real quick.”

  He was always doing things like that for my parents. Fixing things they didn’t even realize needed fixing. Oil changes. Tire rotations. Yard work. It was as if he felt like he owed them.

  My parents didn’t see it that way, but every time they offered to pay him, he’d shrug it off and leave the money on the kitchen counter. Brian would always scoop it up for more video games.

  “That was nice of you.”

  The conversation was stale, but even though I was still embarrassed by our last moments together, I still longed to be near him. I wasn’t ready to let him go. We were alone, which rarely happened.

  “They’ve done a lot for me. It’s the least I could do.” He shrugged his large shoulders before sucking down the entire glass of water and setting it on the counter with a clink.

  He started toward the garage door, and something told me he was going to keep his distance for the entire Thanksgiving holiday.

  “Tyson.” His name bounced from my lips before I could even think of a reason to stop him.

  He turned, his eyes settling on my forehead and avoiding contact with mine completely.

  “Are you coming over for Thanksgiving dinner?” I asked.

  It was a lame question, but I wasn’t ready to let him go.

  Not yet.

  He nodded. “Your mom would kick my ass if I didn’t.”

  And then the side of his mouth lifted in a grin, drawing my attention to his luscious lips and making me swallow hard.

  “Yeah,” I said around the ball in my throat. “She would.”

  Again, he moved toward the door in an attempt to escape me. “I’ll see you then,” he muttered as he pulled the garage door open, letting in the scent of motor oil and burnt rubber.

  I panicked.

  I didn’t want him to leave yet.

  “Tyson,” I blurted once more.

  His shoulders stiffened before he slowly turned my way once more. Still, he avoided eye contact, making me feel crazy for him to look me in the eye.

  And then words I hadn’t expected leaped from my tongue, making the room feel even tenser.

  “I’ve missed you.”

  My words were whispered, but I was sure he’d heard them since his entire body went stiff and his eyes shot to mine. Just as quickly as he looked me in the eye, he turned away.

  He shook his head, his long fingers going to his wild strands of hair. He ran his fingers through the locks and sighed before he turned away completely.

  “Your parents will be glad you’re here. I know they’ve missed you.”

  And then he disappeared into the garage, taking the shards of my heart with him as he shut the door with a click.

  “OH MY GOD, Mom, this is decadent,” I said around a mouthful of baked spaghetti.

  I missed my mom’s cooking almost as much as I missed her. I hadn’t stepped on a scale in months, but I was sure I was losing weight at school. Between the intense dance classes and the healthy foods the school provided, I wouldn’t doubt it.

  My head was in the game when it came to keeping the correct body structure for dance, but I couldn’t lie. I missed carbohydrates and chocolate more than I cared to admit.

  “Are they not feeding you at your big fancy school?” Dad asked with a smirk.

  Rolling my eyes, I shoved another forkful of saucy goodness into my mouth.

  “Yes, but nothing as good as this.”

  My mom beamed. She loved to cook. Actually, she loved taking care of us. My mom had never worked … at least not that I could remember. Growing up, I was aware of how hard she worked at being a mother and wife. She woke with the sun and made sure everything was taken care of for her family. Only after everything was cleaned and ready for the next day did she go to her room and sleep.

  She was amazing, and we, as a family, always made sure she knew how much we appreciated her and everything she did for us.

  “You haven’t said much about school. How are you doing? Everything working out?” Mom asked.

  I spent the next twenty minutes going over my schedule and telling them about the upcoming winter production. Brian was too busy checking his phone to join the conversation. At fourteen, his life revolved around video games and his friends.

  When we were growing up, we were close. He’d always looked like a mini version of me running around with shorter hair. He followed me around with stars in his eyes, but once he got to his teenage years, I was just his annoying older sister.

  He and Tyson remained close, though, which only irritated me a little. I think they remained close mostly because Tyson was always buying him video games and crap he didn’t need.

  There were times before I left for school when I’d enter a room and find them laughing together. Jealousy wasn’t something I felt often, but it upset me that I didn’t have an easy relationship with Brian anymore and that Tyson never laughed with me the way he did with Brian. If anything, once we were older, Tyson barely spoke to me, much less laughed and played.

  The rest of the night was spent helping Mom prepare for Thanksgiving dinner. She cooked a lot of food for our small family, but I think she always cooked too much because she loved donating the rest to the homeless shelter in the city. It was something we did every year. Again, my mother was an amazing woman.

  “Have you seen Tyson since you’ve been home?” she asked with a grin.

  I nodded. “Yeah, I saw him.”

  My mom wasn’t clueless. She’d never come right out and asked, but I think she knew about my feelings for Tyson.

  How could she not?

  We’d lived in the same house with her, and once or twice, I’d caught her watching me while I watched him.

  It was embarrassing, but as long as she didn’t mention it, I never would.

  “He works so hard. If he’s not at the garage, he’s at the tattoo shop.” She chopped at an onion and used the back of her hand to wipe at her eye. “He showed me a picture of a tattoo he did the other day, and it was amazing. Such talent.” She beamed.

  She was just as proud of Tyson as she was of Brian and me.

  “He’s definitely talented,” I agreed.

  It was one of the most awkward conversations I’d ever had with my mom, which meant once I finished prepping the potatoes for her, I practically ran from the kitchen to get away.

  I fell asleep that night thinking about Tyson. I felt like I was in high school again, dwelling over our last meeting and thinking of what dinner would be like with him sitting across from me.

  I could hardly wait to see him again, but more than anything, I was hoping to get him alone and maybe talk. The last th
ing I wanted was for things to be weird between us, and with the way he acted in the kitchen earlier, I knew throwing myself at him and having him walk away had done just that.

  FOUR

  Tyson

  NICOLE DEVASTATED ME. There I was, minding my business and getting ready to leave her parents’ house, when she appeared from out of nowhere, rocking me so hard I couldn’t think straight. I’d spent every night since she left thinking about our last moment together—thinking about that fucking kiss and how it had transformed me somehow.

  I’d let her touch me. And while her touch had felt like tiny knives to my conscience, they’d also felt like the best cure for my insanity. It was all I could think about. She was all I could think about.

  For three months, I’d been so fucking lost. When I was seventeen, I moved out from her parents’ house as soon as I could because being near her was killing me. The move had been before I’d even graduated high school and only after weeks of talking the Palmers into it. They’d only agreed because the apartment I’d found was still close to home.

  But moving a few miles away from her was one thing. When she moved hundreds of miles away for school, I felt like I couldn’t breathe. She was no longer right down the road in the safety of her home. She was far away in a place where I couldn’t reach her.

  I didn’t like it.

  I became burly and angry, and even the guys at the shop started commenting on my new attitude.

  “Bro, you’re so uptight lately. You need to climb into a hot pussy and get some relief before you end up killing someone,” Gibbs, one of the tattoo artists at the shop, joked.

  The guys laughed, and I flipped him off from across the room.

  Maybe he was right, but the problem was no woman could satisfy me anymore.

  I tried.

  Fuck, I tried so hard, but I was left feeling dirty and even more broken every time I came with one of them.

  I couldn’t shake it. I missed her. I was sexually and mentally frustrated, and nothing I did made it better. So I did something I swore I’d never do—something that made me feel even less worthy of the girl I longed for.

  I drank.

  You’d think I’d know better. Watching my father lose himself to heroin had a major effect on me, and I never wanted to become dependent on anything, but a few beers seemed to work. So not unlike my father, I lost myself in alcohol—drinking beers until I could no longer think past the fog that filled my brain.

  Most nights after work, I’d go home and drink until I passed out. Alcohol even managed to keep the nightmares away, which was a big deal.

  I’d suffered from nightmares even before I killed my father. The things I experienced left my mind reeling, and it seemed the more I blocked those things out, the more they attacked me in my sleep.

  The one thing I couldn’t seem to forget was the needles. I couldn’t remember who he was to my father, but his fingers were long and skinny. He had a needle tattooed on each digit in green ink. I called him Needles because of it, and he was the worst. His hands—the things he did to me with his body—were something I couldn’t forget. No matter how hard I tried, his touch and those needles were lodged in my memories for good.

  My nightmares had gotten considerably worse since Nicole left. They went from feeling their grimy hands all over my young body—their fingernails piercing my skin and their cigarettes burning my flesh—to hearing her screams and not being able to get to her. Her cries for help would pierce my soul, and I’d wake still feeling like I was running to her with my adrenaline on full blast and my heart pumping so hard it hurt.

  It was slowly driving me mad.

  So when I turned around after washing my hands and saw her standing there, I almost dropped to my knees. It had taken all that I was not to go to her and pull her into my arms. I wanted to feel her against me—breathe her in—know she was there and safe, but I didn’t. Instead, I blocked it out and fled from the kitchen to the safety of the garage.

  The ride back to my apartment was a blur. All I could think about was turning around and losing myself in her, but I’d grown even blacker since she left. My soul was darker and more sinister. If I wasn’t good enough before, I definitely wasn’t good enough now.

  It seemed that every day, a blocked memory from my past would unlock, and I’d feel as though I was suffocating for an hour or two. The thought of even letting her touch my body—a body that had been used and abused so much—sickened me. And knowing that I’d touched her with my hands—the hands of a killer—made me angry and irrational.

  What was worse was thinking of all the men who were indulging in the parts of Nicole I’d denied myself. I didn’t need to see it to know it was happening, and it pushed my insanity to the brink knowing I wasn’t there to prevent them from contaminating her with their sick lust.

  I wasn’t a fool. Nicole was the most beautiful girl I’d ever known—inside and out. Her purity and innocence were like catnip to men like me. I refused to believe she wasn’t dating someone in New York by now. The men up north weren’t blind. They had to see her beauty—her light—her everything. And unlike me, I was sure they were taking advantage.

  Those thoughts turned me inside out. I hated to think about another man’s hands anywhere near her, but when I did, I found myself popping open another bottle and downing it … which was exactly what I did the second I stepped through the door of my apartment.

  The cold acrid liquid rolled over my tongue, and I swallowed, praying the alcohol would numb me—hoping it would take her out of my thoughts. My body shook with insanity—my mind reeled with thoughts that only enhanced my crazy. I was on the brink of losing my mind. I could feel it coming.

  WHILE NICOLE WAS in town, I stayed away from the Palmer household. Being near her was too much. We weren’t two kids innocently flirting anymore. Nicole had started something before she left for New York—something that had laid quietly between us for years—and I knew it was up to me to squash it. It was up to me to make sure nothing came from the love in her eyes and the promises in her touch.

  As I promised, I showed up for Thanksgiving dinner and sat with my adopted family. The dinner Mrs. Palmer cooked was delicious, but I spent most of the time at the table keeping my eyes pinned on my food. If I looked anywhere else, my eyes would wander over to Nicole, and I couldn’t have that.

  She looked different, even if it had only been a few months. She looked older—wiser—and her body had grown as well. Nicole had always had an amazing body; her dancing gave her a beautiful shape. But her shape was changing. Her core was stronger, and her legs seemed even longer. New, harder curves had cut into her thighs and the tops of her arms. They were working her hard at Juilliard, and the benefits of that work were beyond sexy.

  “How are things at the garage?” Mr. Palmer asked as he grabbed another roll from the platter.

  I sipped my sweet tea to push the food down my throat before I spoke. “Good. They’re keeping me busy.”

  “Yeah, but you’re a hard worker so that works. Keep up the good work, son. It’ll pay off.”

  Biting into my turkey, I nodded in agreement. It was the most uncomfortable conversation I’d had in a while, since Nicole’s eyes were searing my flesh the entire time.

  I tried to control my thoughts as I sat with her family at the dinner table, grabbing tiny peeks of her perfect form whenever I knew she wasn’t looking. But no matter how hard I tried, I felt myself stiffen behind the zipper of my jeans every time she looked up at me through her mascaraed lashes.

  She was flawless—everything I’d ever wanted—and I often wondered if she knew how amazing she was. It bothered me that I couldn’t open my mouth and let her know my thoughts, but I knew it was for the best. I wasn’t for Nicole, even if everything inside me screamed that she was it for me.

  The family talked around me. Nicole’s voice broke through my thoughts on occasion, and I’d listen as she talked about New York and how she hadn’t seen much of it. I was relieved to know she was sta
ying at the school and not out parading the mean streets of the city.

  “You’re quiet tonight, Tyson,” Mr. Palmer said. “Everything okay?”

  My eyes connected with Nicole’s when I looked up from my plate of food, and a tiny smile tugged at the side of her mouth. I wanted to kiss her lips—taste her—and wipe that taunting grin from her sweet mouth.

  “Yeah, I’m just tired. Like I said, they’re working us hard over at the garage, and I now have a ton of regulars at the tattoo shop.”

  Mr. Palmer nodded. “They see how talented you are. You’re an amazing artist. If they’re going to mark their skin for the rest of their lives, they might as well have it marked by the best.”

  He leaned over and gripped my shoulder, giving it a shake as he smiled proudly at me. It was nice not to flinch at his touch. Over the years, Mr. and Mrs. Palmer had grown accustomed to my irrational fear of touch, but they took their time, showing me comfort and making me relax enough to be able to handle a hug from Mrs. Palmer and an occasional handshake or shoulder squeeze from Mr. Palmer.

  I wasn’t sure how much they knew about my past. I hated to think they knew the details of the gruesome things I’d endured, but if they did, they never mentioned it. They just stood there proud of me, when I hadn’t really done much to make them proud, and they understood. Their understanding ways were amazing.

  I hadn’t gone off to some fancy school like Nicole—even though they’d offered to pay for one of the best art schools in America. Hell, I wasn’t really doing anything massive with my life, but everything I did was wonderful as far as they were concerned. They were the most supportive people I’d ever met in my life.

  “I think Tyson should tattoo the Xbox logo on my arm,” Brian said with a chuckle. “Right here.” He grabbed at his small bicep and laughed.

  Mrs. Palmer’s eyes went wide, and Mr. Palmer laughed.

  “I don’t think so.” Mrs. Palmer chuckled around her glass.