by Hart, Callie
Paulie cuts me loose at twelve thirty. I head out front, the same way I came in, bracing against the cold, pocketing my wages for the night, and I’m about to climb into the Camaro when a hand lands on my shoulder, roughly spinning me around.
When you grow up in foster care, or at least in the kind of foster homes I grew up in, you develop some pretty sharp reflexes; my fist is swinging even before I register who’s trying to manhandle me. In my world, hesitation will only get you killed.
The fucker behind me is nothing more than a black streak as they duck, darting back, beyond my reach.
“Tut tut, Moretti. Holy shit. Getting a little slow in your old age?” a voice says teasingly. I take a step forward, homing in on the piece of shit who’s trying to jump me, but then my ears catch up with my brain and I realize that I know the voice. I know it really well.
The secondary uppercut I was about to send flying halts in midair. There, in front of me, wearing a leather jacket that looks a little too new and a pair of ridiculously tight stonewashed jeans, stands a guy I never thought I’d see again.
Well, fuck me sideways.
“Zander Hawkins. As I live and breathe.” I don’t sound all that happy to see him. Understandable since the last time I laid eyes on the fucker, he was paying a fucking tank of a kid named Jorge fifty bucks to start a fight with me in the cafeteria of a shitty juvenile detention center. I was pretty sure Zander was going to wind up killing someone before he was released from juvie and wind up having his ass transferred to a legit prison, and yet here he fucking stands. And it’s the here of it that’s bothering me. “What the fuck are you doing in Raleigh?”
Zander shrugs one shoulder. “Had some business with your man in there. Got called down from Bellingham. I heard you were working here, so I stuck around. Thought a catch-up was in order. Old time’s sake, y’know?”
Zander’s almost as tall as me, with the same angry spark in his eyes. In juvie, he spent most of his time with a pair of weights in his hands or at the squat rack, working out like a fiend. I chose to pass my time getting ripped, too…which is how we became friends.
“Old time’s sake?” I have no fingernails to speak of, what with playing the guitar religiously every day; if I did, I’d be digging them into my palms, trying to distract myself with the pain while I decide what the hell I should do here. For eleven months, Zander was at my side, looking out for me, ready to brutalize anyone who looked fucking sideways at me. I made a couple of other friends during my incarceration, but Zander was more than that. He was like a brother. And to then have a brother betray me the way he did, so grievously, the day before I was released? Yeah, that fucking sucked.
Javier grins at me in that devil may care but I sure don’t way of his. He hasn’t worried for one second about how he’ll be received. He’s just shown up, shoulders thrown back, middle finger held up at the rest of the world and expected me to be pleased to see him. Well, the fucker’s got another thing coming. He was ready for the first fist I sent his way. I stopped the second. The third comes out of nowhere and takes us both by surprise. My fist connects with his jaw, landing heavy and hard, right where he showed me to hit, once upon a time.
Pain roars up my arm like a column of fire, settling into my shoulder joint and spearing up the nerve endings in my neck. Hurting someone else always ends up hurting us, too, one way or another. It’s the natural order of things. Action and consequence. I relish the throbbing pulse of pain in my hand, welcoming it gladly, happy to accept the trade off as Zander Hawkin’s eyes roll back into his head and he hits the fucking deck.
* * *
I rarely smoke. Every once in a while, when I’m particularly vexed, I’ll light up and savor a single cigarette while I contemplate dark thoughts, allowing myself the length of said cigarette to rage and fume. To break bones in my head and set the world to rights. When I hit the filter and stub it out, though, that’s it. I shrug my way out of the darkness, putting away the anger, and I wash my hands of whatever violence I allowed to steep in my veins. I’m usually a lot calmer by the time I’ve completed the ritual, but tonight that calm is nowhere to be fucking seen.
I’m on cigarette number five and I still can’t seem to stop my knee from bouncing like a jackhammer. What the fuck is he doing here? What the fuck does he want? And why the hell did he hang around to see me? The Rock’s parking lot is nearly empty by the time Zander stirs. He groans on the back seat, swatting at his face with the back of his hand like he’s trying to shoo away a swarm of flies.
“Nuuugghhhh. What the fuck, Moretti?”
I exhale a lungful of smoke and flick the butt of the cigarette out of the window. It sizzles out when it hits the snow. “Quit the shit. It’s late, and I’m tired. You know exactly why I popped you.”
He grabs hold of the chair’s headrest in front of him, using it as leverage to pull himself upright. I’m pretty fucking pleased with myself when I note the dark shadow of a bruise that’s already forming along his jaw. “If you’re still mad about Jorge, then you’re being a dumbass,” he complains, rubbing the back of his head. “It was an Irish goodbye.”
I glare at him in the rearview. “I don’t think that means what you think it means.”
“Ehh, whatever.” He waves me off with one hand. “It was like an Irish goodbye. It was juvie. I couldn’t leave before you to avoid a miserable goodbye, so…y’know.”
“So you paid someone to try and stab me. You’re a fucking psychopath.”
Zander grins like a madman. A madman with a very sore head. “You didn’t miss me, though, didn’t you? I was doing you a favor. Can I get one of those smokes?”
“How about you go fuck yourself.”
“Awww, I never had you pegged as the kind of guy to get all butthurt over a little shanking between friends. C’mon. Give.” He holds out a hand, gesturing for the pack. Reluctantly, I slap it into his hand. He chuckles darkly under his breath as he takes a cigarette out and lights it. “Be real, Moretti. If you’d walked out of Denney as my best freakin’ pal, what would you have done next?”
“I’d have visited—”
“Exactly. And pardon me for saying so, but fuck that very much. Last thing anyone wants to do after they get out of a place like that is go back to fucking visit. And if I’d had to watch you stroll in and out of that place, footloose and fancy free, it would have made my last few months feel ten fucking times longer.”
“You do realize you could have just told me not to come back.”
Zander picks a flake of tobacco from the end of his tongue, frowning at it before he flicks it away. “We all have our own way of doing shit, don’t we? I don’t know why you’re getting so bent out of shape, anyway. Jorge didn’t even get close. You put that sack of shit in the infirmary for three weeks.”
“And if someone had ratted me out? Said it was me who broke his damn ribs? I’d still be fucking stuck there!”
“All right, all right. In hindsight, it was probably a stupid idea. But my intentions were good.” He clutches at his chest with one hand, dramatically fisting his leather jacket. “I just couldn’t bear to part as friends.”
For fuck’s sake. “Just get out of the car, Hawk.”
“Don’t you want to ask me what business I had with Montgomery?”
“No.”
“Well, you should. You should really want to know.”
“I’ve been running my ass for the past six hours and I’m too beat to be playing stupid cat and mouse games with you, okay? I only threw your ass back there so you wouldn’t catch hypothermia. You’re awake now, though. Isn’t it time you were dragging your ass back to Bellingham?”
Hawk’s laughter is too loud for someone who just had a few of their front teeth loosened. “I’m not going back to Bellingham. I’m gonna be sticking around for a while. I’ve heard the school system here in Raleigh is pretty fucking impressive.”
Oh no. Oh hell fucking no. I cut a murderous look at him over my shoulder, the muscles in my shoulde
rs tightening to the point of discomfort. “Not fucking happening, Hawk. Raleigh’s nothing like Bellingham. This is a nice town. You can’t just stir up shit here and expect there to be no consequences.”
The guy who watched my back for me at Denney slumps back into his seat, wearing an affronted expression. “Me? Stir up shit? Dude. I’ve had enough of the Washington State judicial system to last a lifetime. I’m on the straight and narrow. I plan on graduating with flying colors and making something of myself. You’ll get no trouble from me, Scout’s honor. Now…you feel like giving me a ride? I’ve managed to score myself a pretty fucking sweet crash pad.”
My blood feels like it’s about ready to boil over. “Get out of this fucking car right now, Zander Hawkins, or I swear I’ll put you in the fucking ground.”
His cocky, shit-eating grin doesn’t falter as he clambers out of the car. I can still see it plastered across his face in the rearview as I burn off into the night, leaving him standing alone in the dark.
15
SILVER
“Hey! You said Halliday was working at the Rock. You didn’t say she was stripping!” Tuesday morning rolls around and I’ve had all night to stew on what I saw at the Richmond’s place. Before, when I was still a Siren and still friends with the girls, we wore some pretty questionable outfits when we hit up a party. I’ve been wracking my brain, trying to come up with some sort of alternative explanation for Halliday’s attire last night.
Maybe she was going to hang out at her ex’s place or something. Guy and Halliday aren’t together anymore, haven’t been for a long time from what I gather, but they still seem to be close. Guy’s on the swim team, and unlike Leon, who took his spot very seriously, refusing alcohol like it was literal poison that would claim his life with one small sip, Guy and his twin brother Davis throw more ragers than any other teenager in the history of Raleigh High. I checked Instagram, though, and there were no parties last night. People would have been posting about it if there was, and there was nothing. Tumbleweed. Which leaves me with only one logical response, being that Halliday is wrapping herself around a pole.
Alex looks tired behind the wheel of the Camaro. There are shadows under his eyes the color of the angry winter morning. He sighs heavily under his breath. “She made me promise,” he says stiffly.
“I’m your girlfriend. You’re supposed to tell me everything,” I counter.
He does look a little remorseful. He still stands by his silence, though. “My promises are watertight. Not just sometimes, for some people. Always. The only reason I’d ever break confidence with someone else is if it might hurt you in some way. Otherwise, I don’t get to pick and choose. That’s not the kind of man I want to be. Sorry, Dolcezza.”
God, I hate that he’s right. I hate that I can’t be mad at him for not telling me this. Halliday and I aren’t friends anymore, and it’s really none of my business what she does with her free time anymore. Still, this feels big. Important. It feels like something I should have known, because Halliday should have told me.
And then I realize that I’m an extra shitty person because I’m keeping secrets from him, too. My own secrets, for fuck’s sake. I haven’t told him about any of the text message I’ve been receiving, I’ve been deleting them just as quickly as they’ve been coming in, and it feels as though the weight of that single undisclosed piece of information is choking me to death. Even thinking about the texts makes me feel uncomfortable in my own body, like my skin’s crawling with fire ants. I quickly put all thought of them away, tossing the knowledge into a deep, dark, bottomless box in my mind, where hopefully it won’t be able to bother me again for some time. My ugly thoughts and memories have a way of crawling their way back out of my mental prisons, though.
I feel the heat of Alex’s gaze on the side of my face, and I glance at him out of the corner of my eye. God, I’ve been so distracted with the Halliday thing that I’ve barely said hello to him. He’s dressed in a rare white t-shirt with a Dead Kennedy’s logo on the chest. His familiar leather jacket is nowhere to be seen, replaced with a red and black flannel, the sleeves shoved up to his elbows. It’s below freezing outside this morning, but Alex obviously cranked the heat in the Camaro up to eleven before coming to meet me; he doesn’t seem at all bothered or prepared for the fact that he’s probably going to freeze once we reach school. Not as bad as Cillian Dupris must have frozen down by the dell, but still.
I still haven’t even unpacked how I feel about the knowledge that Cillian’s in the hospital right now, courtesy of Alex. I can’t decide if he broke my rules, but it’s obvious that he doesn’t believe he has. He didn’t beat Cillian with a tire iron. He didn’t raise his fists to him. But he did put him in a situation that could have cost him his life, but…I find I’m not angry at him. I feel relieved, in a way.
I can’t stop staring at the tattoos on the backs of Alex’s hands—the fearsome wolf and the beautiful rose. The rose represents Alex’s mother, but I’ve come to realize that it also represents his kindness, his loyalty, and his integrity. The wolf’s meaning is obvious; it's never hidden what it was from me. It’s a bannerman for Alex’ strength, his courage, his determination and ability to overcome. Now, it’s also a fierce sigil that represents his unfaltering ruthlessness.
The tendons in Alex’s forearm pull taut, the roses and vines that creep on up his arm shifting as he flexes out his hand. “See anything new?” he asks, his voice low and amused. Oh shit. I’ve been staring, and none-too-subtly.
“Sorry. I just…got lost in my own head for a second there.” It’s a piss-poor excuse, but it is the truth. “My dad…he told me to tell you this morning that you’re expected for Thanksgiving. No excuses.”
Swift topic change there, Silver. Smooth. Well done.
God, inner monologue me can be such a sarcastic little bitch sometimes.
Alex sucks his bottom lip into his mouth, frowning as he stares ahead out of the windshield. I do love being wrapped around him on the back of the bike. I love how free and wild it feels. I even love the cold knifing through my clothes and the wind threatening to pluck me off the back and send me flying, but this morning I’m not sad that Alex has had to put his motorcycle away until the snow and ice calms down. This morning, I’m quietly, unreasonably giddy that I get to stare at him while he drives and think about sucking that bottom lip of his into my mouth.
He's more than just a seventeen-year-old high school student with a penchant for trouble. He’s the fucking devil incarnate, come to tempt in the most distracting ways possible, and I’m not complaining about it one little bit.
The bridge of his nose wrinkles in a surprisingly endearing way that doesn’t really look right on his usually extra-serious face. I’m fascinated by the sight of it. I’d pull out my phone and take a picture of it, but I’m not quick enough. As soon as it’s formed, then it disappears again. “I’m not really a Thanksgiving kind of person,” Alex says under his breath. “I usually try and avoid the holiday at all costs.”
I swivel in my seat, arching an eyebrow at him. “You have something against turkey, Alessandro Moretti?”
“Just pumpkins, actually. So orange. And…bumpy.”
“Bumpy?”
He nods.
“All right, well, I’ll make Dad promise to ease back this year. He usually decorates every room in the house with them, but for you…”
“For me, he’ll hang them from the rafters and fill the living room with them from floor to ceiling,” he jokes.
“Maybe. But only because he likes you.”
Alex’s mouth twists a little. “He likes me.” He seems entertained by the concept.
“Yes. And you’re the only person the dog likes, so you basically have to come. Mom’s taking Max to see my aunt in Toronto, so the house will be too empty otherwise.”
“What about you, Argento?”
“Hmm?”
“Do you like me?” I can tell a wicked smirk is itching at the corners of his mouth. He’s trying hi
s best to suppress it. If I didn’t know him so well now, I wouldn’t even be able to tell he was trying so hard to hold it back—his features look like they’re carved out of stone—but I can see it in his eyes.
I lean back in my seat, studying my nails, affecting boredom. “Oh, I don’t know. I guess you’re tolerable.”
Unexpectedly, the car swings to the left and the engine cuts off. Out of the fogged-up wind shield, I notice the looming, grey shape of Raleigh High School and a number of blurry smears of color hurrying toward the main entrance, trying to get out of the cold. Alex unclips his seatbelt and quickly leans over, planting a hand against the window next to me to brace himself. He’s so fucking close. The smell of him floods my head. He’s the only person in the whole world who can make me feel dizzy and drugged with just the slightest trace of their pheromones. Case in point: I can’t form a single coherent thought right now, as I stare up into his dark eyes and slowly, slowly, drown in him…
I can’t fucking breathe.
He lowers himself an inch, his mouth over mine. He’s so close to kissing me. His lips are two tiny millimeters away from touching mine…
My heart’s wedged itself in the bottom of my throat.
I feel like I’m slipping, falling, disintegrating….
“We arrived in the nick of time,” Alex whispers. “I was going to pull over and find out just how much of me you could tolerate. But…” He pulls away, sinking back into his seat while he twists, reaching onto the back seat for his bag. I’m reeling, still waiting for the pressure of his mouth on mine, drunk on the smell of him. “Looks like we’re going to be late. We’ll have to find out some other time.” The smirk he was reining in before has been unleashed in full force now. The crooked quirk of his mouth is far more potent that an all-out grin. Alex Moretti’s little smirks are like gift wrapped secrets, hinting at what they might hide but giving nothing away. He says plenty when he puts them into effect, and right now he’s saying, ‘I know you fucking want me, Argento. You’re mine to play with. Mine to tease. Mine to drive crazy with the simplest suggestion of a kiss.”