by L. A. Fiore
“I have a few friends I know would love to join us. I want to watch you fuck them, want to see all that power unleashed.”
Without the haze of pent-up lust tainting my vision, she looked to be exactly what she was, a woman who fucked men for a living. What was worse, she hadn’t even done the picking; Donny had her on a leash, using sex as a means to control his people. Wasn’t sure who was the bigger dirt bag, Donny for peddling in flesh, or Ellie for allowing herself to be peddled. Too bad for Donny I wasn’t really thrilled with the idea of making a steady diet of putting my dick where countless others had been.
Pulling out, I rolled off the condom, tied it up and tossed in the can that had several others already in it.
Zipping up, I met her bewildered gaze with a grin. “Where are you going?”
“To get a shower. Thanks Ellie.” The door shut on the curse she hurled at me so I didn’t hear that, but I did hear the loud crash of whatever it was she threw after.
His name was Ronnie Simmons and he was three weeks late on paying back the money he had borrowed to play the horses, money he had lost. Donny wanted to take point, give me a little demonstration on how he liked to have his borrowers encouraged to pay up. Ronnie had been a good looking guy, wasn’t sure he’d ever be good looking again. Watching as Donny expressed his displeasure turned my stomach. The man got off on it; he enjoyed inflicting pain. It was a mistake, getting involved with this guy, but I needed money and the only other option available to me was turning into an Ellie. Mace’s offer floated around in my head and as appealing as that sounded when watching the alternative, they deserved better than me.
Donny beat Ronnie to an inch of his life, removed his pinky too as a forever reminder that if you borrowed, you damn well better pay back and on time. Wiping his hands on the towel his one goon brought, a part of his 'persuasion kit', he actually adjusted himself because the sick fuck was hard.
He turned to me and flashed a smile that sent a chill right down my spine. “Welcome to the team.”
I had embraced the monster and now I had just gotten into bed with the fucking devil.
I had convinced myself it was the constant darkness that shadowed me, which had me seeking out the light. Standing in the park, resting up against a distant tree, I watched as Mace coached softball for a bunch of 13 year olds and Mia was one of them. Older now, but in that awkward stage of not a kid and not a woman and still she had that innocence that drew me in when we were younger. Running the bases was not something she did well, but almost every time she took the plate, her bat made contact with the ball. Even when she made an error, she could laugh at herself and honestly when her face turned in my direction and she smiled, I felt it right in the center of my chest.
Had I any doubt that they were better off without me, I knew better now. Never would I taint the beauty of the sight before me with the ugliness that had become my world. As much as I wanted to go home, I couldn’t do that to them. They both deserved better than that, especially from me. And when you had nothing left to live for, it was amazing how far you could fall.
My fist connected with his jaw and I heard the snap, knew the fucker would be eating from a straw for a while. The sickly scream that came from him had me giving him what he’d beg for if he could, unconsciousness…a welcome relief from the pain.
Wiping my hands on his shirt, I dropped the envelope of money he had thought to use to buy himself time on his chest. You borrowed, you paid in full and now he was in no doubt of that. Next time, he’d have the money, they always did.
In the year that I’d been working for Donny, I’d seen a lot and done a lot. Felt very little about any of it, developed a callousness that would have even impressed my old man. Unlike him, I didn’t hit out of anger; it was a job. In the beginning I had remorse for what I was doing, now I just didn’t care. A visit from me only happened if the person backed out on the deal they’d made. Choices had consequences.
Even though it was late, sleep wouldn’t come, it rarely did. Walking kept me from doing something else like drinking and as tempting as the idea was at times, to bury myself in a bottle, I’d never sink that low. Often my walks took me past my old house; it had sold and a family lived there now. Flower pots sat on the stoop, a flag hung over the door. It wasn’t my house though, that drew me here. I usually didn’t see them, but every once and a while Mia would be outside. She never saw me, I had learned how to stay in the shadows, but I’d see her. Resentment often was the emotion stirred by the sight of her, a reminder of what I’d never have. Mace had saved me, but in a lot of ways his intervention only hurt me more because I had been given a glimpse of something most people would sell their souls for and then it had been snatched away. For just a little while, I had known what it felt like to not just be happy, but to belong. I hated them a bit for that and even while that ugly emotion moved through me, deep down I wanted it back, wanted to walk up those steps and into their house, knowing they were on the other side waiting to welcome me home.
Dad would kill me if he knew where I was because even though I was fourteen, he still saw me as a little kid, but curiosity and the cat, that about summed me up. I had heard through the grapevine that Cole was home, back from juvie. He didn’t come around, and that had been really hard. I missed him so much, had wanted to visit him in juvie with Dad, but Cole had been adamant that I not come. And as Dad had put it, for those three years control was not something Cole would have much of, so honoring his request had been the least we could do. As the years went on, I saw the worry in Dad over Cole’s shift in attitude. And I had felt it too, but I’d still held on to the hope that once he came home, he’d be Cole again. He’d been out of juvie now for over a year and he never once reached out to Dad or me. I cried, big, stupid, fat tears; foolishly missing him like I’d miss a limb and he had made the choice to stay away.
Bad news traveled fast in our neighborhood, which was how I learned that Cole was working for a really bad guy. They called them collectors, but really he was just a brute who beat people up who didn’t pay back the money they borrowed. I didn’t believe the rumors, refused to believe that Cole would hurt people, not like how he had been hurt. I had learned from eavesdropping on Dad and Aunt Dee where Cole lived now—knowledge that proved Dad knew more about Cole than he’d shared—and I had to see him, needed to know if what everyone said about him was true.
After staking out his apartment, hoping for a glimpse of him, one day that wish came true and what I saw had me wishing I had left him well enough alone. His rundown building did a fair job of resembling a crack house and the idea that Cole lived there upset me because though his home before hadn’t been much of one, for almost three years he had lived with Dad and me and had experienced what a real home could be like. How had he ended up here? It didn’t seem right or fair.
When I saw the lone figure walking down the street, hands in his pockets, his head down, I knew it was Cole. Joy burned through me seeing him, hungry to just look my fill, I did. Standing across the street, I just soaked up the sight of him. It was while I did so, that I noticed the difference in him and in response my heart hurt because he gave off the vibe, the one you instinctively feel for someone you knew was bad news; the person where if you’re walking on the same side of the street, you cross it to avoid them. This was the kid who had watched countless princess movies with me, killed my Ken doll with the elevator from my Barbie dream house, was my knight riding to the rescue when I had been being bullied at school by Lucy. But even I felt it, the darkness, the rage, and I was across the street from him.
He had just reached his apartment when he slowed, his head lifted and his eyes shifted to me. His stare felt like that of a stranger. And more upsetting, not only wasn’t there affection, there was no light in his eyes. Emptiness stared back. Turning from me, he disappeared into his apartment.
Standing by the counter at the local sandwich shop, I waited for our sandwiches but my thoughts were on Cole. I didn’t want to believe the rumors abou
t him, but after seeing him a few days ago I feared maybe there was some truth to the claims. He was no longer the Cole I remembered; the boy whose eyes had widened to the size of saucers seeing the amount of Italian meats this place shoved into one of their heroes and how he had always challenged me saying I couldn’t eat as much as he could. And it was while I thought of him that the bell over the door jingled and in he walked. Seeing him up close, the marked change in him was undeniable. The boy I knew was now a man. Taller, bigger in the shoulders, his hair shaved, but it was his blue eyes and the coldness in them that made my one time friend a stranger.
He wasn’t alone; a scantily clad girl was draped over him, his hand resting on her ass as they walked toward me. I knew the exact moment when Cole noticed me. His body tensed for just a second before a grin lifted his lips on the one side. I felt no joy at seeing that grin because there was nothing behind it, no warmth, no familiarity; it was as cold as his eyes.
Surprise and apprehension unfurled in my gut when he addressed me, “Mia.”
Even his voice had changed, deeper with a rasp with absolutely no emotion inflected in his tone. It hurt seeing him, even knowing he had been lost to me for years, looking into familiar eyes and seeing nothing familiar.
“Cole.”
“Who’s this?” the girl, who had been attempting to shove her entire tongue into Cole’s ear, stopped her efforts to glare at me.
“No one.”
If he had taken the tongs for the pickles and plunged that into my heart, it would have hurt less. No one. There was a time when he was as close to a best friend that I had ever had and now I was no one. My sandwiches were done and I wanted nothing more than to get away from him and his stupid girlfriend. And though it was childish, I wanted to hurt him like he had me. Reaching for my sandwiches, my gaze locked on Cole’s. “It’s amazing how much like your father you are now. He’d be so proud.”
I turned for the door, but not before I saw my aim was true. I didn’t feel better, in fact I felt worse. Luckily he couldn’t see my face, so he didn’t see the tears that filled my eyes and rolled down my cheeks.
The day I learned the rumors were true about Cole was the saddest and most terrifying of my life. I was on my way to get lunch for Dad and Dylan when I heard odd noises coming from an alley not far from the deli. I didn’t know what made me look; it was an alley, strange noises from an alley could never be good. Fear moved through me first, followed by horror because Cole was there, right out in the open, and he was pounding on some guy. My feet rooted to the sidewalk as I watched him hit the man, repeatedly. His face set in stern lines, his eyes cold and so focused and his fist unrelenting as he smashed it into the man’s face. The beating so severe, the man was on his knees and still Cole kept hitting him, over and over again. I had never seen his father hit him, but I knew that it would have looked just like what I watched. Cole, who had been beaten so savagely, was now the one doing the beating. Tears burned my eyes and rolled down my cheeks because how could someone who had lived through the pain that he had be the one to inflict that pain? I must have made a sound because he stopped, his head jerking up, and the look in his eyes had my feet moving because he looked crazy. Turning from him, I ran all the way back to the garage. I didn’t go right inside, sat at the picnic table out back and tried to pull myself together but the sight of him in the alley was burned onto my brain. That kid in the alley wasn’t Cole. Not anymore.
Fear, it wasn’t an emotion I was accustomed to feeling, but I felt it now. For it to be Cole whom I feared was incomprehensible, especially knowing he had spent much of his childhood in a perpetual state of it and now he was the source of mine.
“What’s going on with you, Mia?”
Pulling my gaze from the spaghetti I moved around my plate, I looked up at Dad. “What?”
“You’ve been in a fog for the past few days. What’s up?”
“What do you know about Cole? I know you’ve been keeping tabs on him, what have you learned?”
He didn’t answer immediately and when he did, I didn’t get the sense it was a complete answer. “He’s not the Cole you remember.”
“I know. On the way for lunch the other day, I saw him beating on someone.” Tears stung my eyes thinking of Cole in that alley. “It was brutal, Dad. He looked possessed, crazed. He looked like his dad.”
“Son of a ...”
“We aren’t getting him back, are we?”
“I honestly don’t know, Mia. The reality is there may be nothing left of the Cole we knew.”
“I miss him, like deep down to my soul. His dad hadn’t broken him and to think the Band-Aid offered for the problem did what his father couldn’t, makes me really mad.”
“My thoughts exactly.”
“So what do we do?”
“I’ve been reaching out to him, I never stopped, and maybe one day he’ll accept what I’m offering. Until then, there really isn’t anything we can do. Cole’s nineteen, an adult responsible for himself. I don’t agree with what he’s doing with his life, think he’s selling out, but it’s his life to screw up.”
“What really happened the night his dad died?”
“I don’t know. Cole had been beaten severely, his dad worse, but I do know his intentions were to protect us.”
“Protect us?”
“I don’t want you to think about this. You’re fourteen, your biggest worries should be getting your hair right in the morning.”
Even with all the emotions thinking about Cole stirred, I couldn’t help looking at Dad like he had sprouted wings. “Really? My hair?”
“What do I know? The mind of a fourteen year old girl is a mystery.”
“You really are a dork.”
“A dork that can still tickle you to tears.”
“Don’t.” But he did and it felt so good to laugh so hard I cried.
I couldn’t get the look on Mia’s face out of my head, even knowing I had let go of that part of my life. The idea that she saw me as a monster, saw me as my dad, cut through my indifference and stabbed me right in the heart. I wanted distance, wanted her as far from me as possible, but I also couldn’t abide the thought of her thinking of me in an unkind light. And it was stupid because I couldn’t have it both ways, act a step above an animal and expect Mia to see me as anything but.
She watched me; I knew this because I watched her too. It could probably be argued that I was stalking her, but the truth of it was I couldn’t stay completely away. I was drawn to her carefree innocence. She didn’t live in a fairy tale world. Her mom had left when she was a baby, I had left, and yet she still found the will to not just move on but to find the good. I envied her that, how she could still see the silver lining. Yeah, I watched her; in part my actions were selfish because I enjoyed seeing the world through her eyes. Her version of it was a far nicer place than mine.
And it was because I watched her that I knew her routine. She walked to the park, not far from Mace’s garage, and it was there that I waited for her. She didn’t see me immediately, her head was turned slightly to the right, watching the kids on the playground. A slight smile touched her lips, but there was a sadness in her—hanging so heavily over her that I felt the weight of it from where I stood. The minute she spotted me her feet stopped, but it was the expression on her face that sliced through me: fear.
“Mia.”
“Cole.” Her voice trembled; the idea that she feared me did not settle well and then she gutted me with her next words. “I won’t tell anyone. I really didn’t see anything, but I promise I won’t say anything.”
Her body shook, and remembering a time when I had known fear so profoundly it physically affected me, the idea that she felt that kind of fear because of me was staggering. Guilt turned my voice harsh. “Do you think I’d hurt you, that I’m here to intimidate you?”
She struggled with keeping eye contact, her lower lip quivered. “The Cole I knew would never hurt me, but the Cole in that alley, I don’t know.”
And the hits just kept coming.
“I’ve got to go.” She turned from me and instead of feeling the warmth of her light that always saturated me when she was near, I felt really fucking cold. I should have let her walk away, should have left her believing her impression of me, but damn it I’d been in the cold and dark for so goddamn long. And truthfully, the longer I worked with Donny the more I realized there were different kinds of monsters in the world and I wasn’t so far gone that I wanted to become him. Fear that I was on that path was another reason I had sought Mia out. “I’d never hurt you.”
She stopped. “Why were you hitting that man?”
“It’s what I do.”
Turning to me, genuine confusion replaced fear. “What?”
“My life took a detour, I’m not the man I thought I’d be when we were younger.”
“Well then get back on the path.”
“I wish it were that easy.”
“It is.” She raised her hand before I could object and some of her spunk showed, bringing that warmth back. “Look before you start on the I don’t understand because I’m only fourteen not nineteen, life threw you a curveball. So what. You want to change, then change. Make the choices now that put you back on the path you want to be on. Accepting that your life is set, that you’ll never get off the path you’re on now is crap.”
“You sound like your dad.”
“He’s a very smart man.”
“Your dad offered me a job.” Why the hell did I say that? Because you want her to tell you to take it, to admit, even offhandedly, that she wants you around, asshole.
“Are you going to take it?”
“Maybe.” Maybe. What the fuck.
“When you were sent away, I missed you terribly. Wanted so badly to visit, but Dad said I had to respect your wishes. When you came home, I waited every day for you to walk through the front door. And every day that passed, the more my heart broke. And I don’t pretend to understand what you’ve been through, but I do know that man in the alley is not you. You’re lost, Cole, but you can find your way home; the candle has been in the window since you left and we’ve been waiting.”