by Callie Hart
“Of course I do.”
“Well?”
“Okay. If you think it's possible to accomplish that within those parameters, then you have my blessing. Do whatever you want. I'll give you a blow by blow account of what went down that night. But I'm not as brave as you, Alex. I don't think I can get through it if I have to say it out loud. I'll write it down, but you have to swear you'll burn it once you've read it. You have to fucking promise me, Alex. And you can't treat me any differently afterward.”
Mr. Elliot, my old therapist, would have balked at this deal. He would have said it would be better for her to say it out loud, that there would be some sort of catharsis to be had that way, but shit. Who am I to argue with her? If this is the way it's gotta be, then this is the way it's gotta be. I give her a three-fingered salute. “Scout's honor. I love a good fire. You have my word.”
21
SILVER
We spend the rest of the day watching movies and talking. We pretend like Alex didn’t tell me the story of his mother’s botched suicide, and I haven’t agreed to write a fucked up essay on that one time when I got sexually assaulted. He tells me more about his brother, about how he and Ben were placed in a couple of homes together in the beginning, but that they kept getting separated over and over again when Alex began to act out and made life difficult for their foster parents. He’s angry when he tells me about the woman who’s looking after Ben now—a legal secretary over in Bellingham called Jackie. She makes it hard for him to see his brother, switching up his visitation days, snooping into his business, reporting him to C.P.S. whenever he puts a foot wrong.
“That woman’s tried to have me incarcerated more times than I can count,” he says. We’re sitting on the couch. My legs are over his, covered by a blanket, and he’s running his fingers up and down the soles of my bare feet, smirking every time he hits a ticklish spot and I twitch. “I deserved it back in the beginning. I was an asshole. I did plenty of shit to warrant the ten million phone calls she put in with the cops.” He lets his head fall back against the sofa cushions. “I set her trash cans on fire once. I also stole her cat.”
“You stole her cat?”
“Ben’s allergic. His eyes were all itchy and red every time I saw him. He’d be covered in hives, and Jackie didn’t seem to give a shit. For years, she and I were locked in this shitty war of attrition, neither of us backing down, neither of us giving any ground, and then I realized…I was the problem. I had to make some changes. Since then, Mother Theresa wouldn’t have had shit on me, but Jackie’s still trying to shut me out. It’s been two years since I started playing nice, and Jackie’d still have me banished to fucking Alaska if she could.”
I want to touch him. It's becoming more and more normal to reach out for him. We've spent the day trading casual, fleeting moments of physical contact, but I'm still nervous as hell when I slide my hand under the blanket and find his arm. His skin is smooth and hot to the touch. My fingertips buzz as I trail them up, over his bicep, slipping beneath the sleeve of his t-shirt until I hit the top of his shoulder. We're both vibrating with this frenetic kind of electricity. Alex looks like he's forgotten all about Jackie; he's staring down at his shoulder, at the point where my fingers are drawing small circles into his skin, and he's as tense as can be. Slowly, with heavy, hazy eyes, he looks up at me, and suddenly all I want to do is slide over, straddle him and rip off the shirt I'm wearing.
He has a hungry predator’s eyes. Dark eyes that make promises and cut down to the quick. He’s unflinching. When Alex Moretti looks at you, you feel your soul laid bare, and it’s the most disturbing, thrilling thing I’ve ever experienced. Right now, he’s looking at me like he wants to eat me.
I draw my hand out from underneath the blankets, face heated, fire singing in my veins. It’s unspoken between us: after everything that happened, I can’t be rushed into anything. I’m shocked by how easy this is with him, though. How much I want it. Want him.
“You say you’ve been on best behavior, but that isn’t true, is it?” I whisper.
His gaze is still so unfocused. I've become so used to Deadpan Alex at school that I've learned the language of him now. I can recognize and decode even the smallest facial movement, the tiniest, little twitch. But here, alone with him, Alex isn't the guarded, hyper careful version of himself that I'm so used to. He's let down a considerable number of his walls and seeing so much of what he's thinking and feeling on his face is making me a little dizzy. He picks up my hand and lifts it to his mouth, softly placing a kiss against the inside of my wrist. “And why would you say that?” he asks.
Hard to think with his lips brushing over such sensitive skin. “You did something before you came to Raleigh. Must have been pretty bad to get you kicked out of Bellingham and nearly carted off to prison.”
He smiles against my wrist. “Just ask, Argento. I thought we were done with the pussyfooting around.”
“Okay then. What was it? What did you do that got you into so much trouble?”
He groans, smiling awkwardly, slumping back into the couch. He’s suddenly very interested in the fringe trim on the ancient cushion beside him; he tugs at it, clearing his throat. “Well. The last time I got separated from Ben, I was sent to live with this guy, Gary. He was a parole officer, and he fucking haaaaated me. Told me he only took me in because he was sick of watching little punks like me get away with blue murder, and I was going to have some sense knocked into me if it was the last thing he did. And boy, did he like knocking sense into me.”
It’s far too late for the dread that writhes in my gut, urging me to do something, to help him—this has all taken place already—but I feel it just the same. “He hurt you?”
Alex grunts, eyes blank, fixed on the fire that’s burning in the grate on the other side of the room. “I left a dish in the sink, I earned myself a swift right hook. I came back too late, I got a steel toe cap to the ribs. I played guitar too loud, I got three of my fingers broken.”
“He broke your fingers?” Of all the terrible things that happened to him, this, to me, is the worst. Stealing a musician’s ability to play is tantamount to stealing away their soul. Alex holds up his hand—the one with the rose inked into the back of it—and wiggles his fingers.
“Middle, ring and pinkie,” he informs me. “Bastard held me down and pinned me to the side of his truck, then slammed the door on them repeatedly until I started fucking screaming. I was twelve.”
“God, Alex…”
“I was lucky really.” He closes his hand into a tight fist, shoving it back underneath the blanket. “They healed up straight. No real, long term damage done. They ache when it’s cold and I’m on the bike sometimes, but…” He shrugs. “Gary was trying to crush my hand. If he’d fucked up the bones and the tendons there, I never would have played again.”
“What happened then? How did you end up getting away from him?”
Alex smirks. “Puberty. I got big, and I got big quick. Fucker was content wailing on me when I was a scrawny little shit with Popeye muscles, but I started bulking out when I was fourteen, way quicker than any of the other kids in my year. I was fifteen when I started hitting back, and Gary…boy, Gary did not like that. Took him a while to give in, mind you. He spent a year trying to get the upper hand on me. He'd wait until I was asleep in the basement, and then he'd creep down there and start laying into me while I was unconscious. Fractured my jaw once. Eventually, that was the only way he could best me, so I just stopped sleeping. I used to lie there on the mattress, faking it, willing him to come sneaking down those fucking stairs so I could surprise the motherfucker and knock a couple of his teeth out.
“One night, he started whaling on me with this crowbar, and I fucking lost it. I took it from him and started in on him with it. Next thing I know, the cops are dragging me off, and Gary's being fawned over in the hospital, poor, saintly, selfless member of the community that he was. I was put before a judge. Told me I had to spend the summer break in juvie and do
six months' community service after that. Once I got out of juvie, I was expecting to be sent to another shitty foster home, but that's when Monty showed up.”
“Monty?” I haven’t heard him mention the name before.
Alex nods. “Montgomery Richard Cohen the Third. He owns The Rock. He was friends with my dad back in the day. He read about me beating the shit out of Gary in the Hoquiam Gazette and petitioned the county clerk’s office to take me once I was released.”
“Wow.”
“Yeah. Said he owed my father a debt, and he supposed it’d been paid now.”
“So you went to live with him?”
“Only for a few months. The county did a couple of random drive-bys to make sure I was behaving myself and sleeping where I was supposed to be sleeping. Once they signed off on all my paperwork, Monty gave me the keys to my place now, and I've been living there ever since.”
“At the Salton Ash Park?”
“You missed a word out of the title, Silver,” he says ruefully. “The Salton Ash Trailer Park. I’m not ashamed. No need to skirt around it.”
A prickle of shame bites at me, making my cheeks burn, because that's precisely what I did do. “Sorry. I don’t even know why I did that.”
He gives me a slow, almost sad smile. “Sure you do. You live in a big house with a wraparound porch and a manicured lawn out front. You have both your parents. You get to scream at your brother every morning because his bedroom is the room next to yours and he's annoying the shit out of you. Whereas I live alone in a doublewide on a gravel plot, and I have to fight for the chance to spend enough time with my brother that he might get the chance to annoy me.”
I slump against the cushion, feeling like a grade-A asshole. “You’re right,” I murmur. “I’m s—”
“Don't apologize. I'm not sorry. I have freedom now. I can go where I want. Do what I want. Be who I want. And believe me, my place right now is a dramatic step up from Gary's basement. Which brings me back to my morose story. I always planned to pay Gary a visit, to let him know how much I appreciated his care and attention one last time, but I got caught up working for Monty and trying to settle back in at Bellingham, and time kinda got away from me. And then, one morning, Monty chucks the newspaper at me, and there it is on the front page.” He holds up his hands, framing the imaginary headline. “'Officer Feldman, dedicated civil servant of Grays Harbor County, killed following denied parole appeal hearing.' He'd been escorting someone from the courthouse when a group of guys in ski masks jumped out of a van and shot him in the chest. Killed instantly. They were rescuing their buddy. As far as I know, they got away with it, too. Ironically, Gary was buried in the cemetery on the far side of this lake. When he got out of hospital after the beating I gave him, the fucker went to the detention center where I was being held and told them I'd stolen a piece of his jewelry. They let him rifle through my shit, and he took the only thing he knew mattered to me.”
“Which was?”
He tugs down the neck of his t-shirt, closing his hand around the small golden medallion hanging around his throat. “My mom’s St. Christopher. Gary knew I never took it off, but that I would have had to surrender it at the center, so he took it to hurt me. Then he died, and I was determined to get it back. I went to his place and tossed it, but it wasn’t there. I knew the asshole wouldn’t have sold it or given it away. It was the one thing he had over me, and I knew for a fact the sick fuck would have coveted it because of what it meant to me. So I went and dug him up. And low and behold, there it was, clasped tight in his greedy, dead little hand. A cop found me pissing on him and Tazed me. And that is how I ended up at Raleigh, hanging onto my freedom by the skin of my teeth.”
“Jesus, Alex.” Hesitantly, I touch my fingers to the fine chain where it falls across the back of his neck. I’ve noticed him toying with it many times since he started at Raleigh, but I haven’t realized how significant it is until now. How important. “I don’t blame you for doing any of that,” I tell him. “I would have done the same thing.”
He doesn’t say anything to that. The light from the fire dances across his face, and I can’t help myself: I release the chain, my hand rising up the back of his neck, a wild shiver of nerves and anticipation flying up and down my back as I brush my fingers over the closely cropped hair at the base of his skull. High, and a little higher still, and then my hand is buried in longer, wavy hair. I wind my fingers through it, curling the length of it around them, almost massaging his head, and slowly Alex closes his eyes.
“Dolcezza,” he whispers “Non fermarti.”
My heart trips over itself, stuttering frantically to find its lost rhythm. “You called me that earlier. What does it mean, Dolcezza?”
Alex’s voice is rough-edged and low. “Sweetness,” he murmurs.
A rush of adrenalin slams into me, pooling in the pit of my stomach. Sweetness. I am his sweetness. Fuck. “And…the other part?” I ask.
His eyes still closed, his face in profile, his features cast in gold by the fire, Alex looks like some of kind of mythical god. His chest rises abruptly, and he lets out a pained groan. “It means don’t stop.”
He moves so quickly, I barely have time to yelp as his eyes fly open and he twists, grabbing me by the waist, lifting me from the sofa in a swift, effortless maneuver that makes me feel as though I weigh nothing at all. His hands are firm, guiding me, and all of a sudden I’m exactly where I wanted to be five minutes ago, legs either side of him, straddling him, my chest crushed up against him as his hands press urgently against my back. He shifts down a little, sliding down the sofa, and I feel him between my legs—his dick, rock solid and hard enough to dig into the underside of my thigh. For one long, paralyzing moment, I think I’m going to punch him in the throat in an attempt to flee the situation. My head… fuck, my mind is roaring. I can’t…I can’t fucking…
Alex takes my hands and places them on either side of his throat, holding his own hands over mine, drawing me down closer to him. I can feel his pulse hammering frantically beneath my palms. “Ssshhhh. It’s fine. It’s okay, Silver. I’m not going to hurt you. I’m not even gonna touch you. Relax.”
“Okay. Okay.” I nod up and down, breathing in through my nose. “Okay.” By the third okay, the surge of panic that rose up and closed around my throat is dissipating.
“I’m never going to do anything without your permission,” he says, in that low, ragged voice. “I just wanted you here, against me, your body against mine. I wanted you fucking closer, Silver. Your hands in my hair like that…” He doesn’t finish. I don’t think he can.
Taking my time, along with a second to catch my breath, I slide my hands out from under his and gingerly brush the tips of my fingers down the side of his face. “It felt good?” I whisper.
His eyes are bottomless and fierce in the almost dark room. “Beyond good,” he grinds out. “Your hands anywhere on me feel good. But that…” He shakes his head, like he’s trying to clear his addled mind. “No one’s touched me like that before.”
I see the truth in his eyes. I’m no fucking fool. Alex doesn’t carry himself like a guy who’s inexperienced with women. I’ve heard of The Rockwell, and I know of its unsavory reputation. There’s no doubt in my mind that Alex hasn’t been a virgin for a very, very long time, but to have him tell me that I’m the first person to touch him in such a simple, intimate way like that, rubbing his head? I had no idea I could be any sort of first for him, and that feels fucking incredible.
With one hand, I tentatively begin to repeat the motion, weaving my fingers into the thickness of his hair, pressing the tips of my fingers into his scalp, biting my bottom lip between my teeth when he shudders beneath me. He rests his hands at my hips, but I’m unafraid of the contact. I’m fascinated by the way he’s looking up at me, eyes burning, jaw set, head angled back a little, exposing the column of his throat as he leans into my touch.
“Stop biting your lip,” he grinds out roughly.
“Why?” God,
my own voice has its own uneven step to it, too.
“Because it’s driving me fucking crazy,” he says.
“Now, now, Mr. Moretti. Patience is king.”
“I’m patient. For you, I’ll be eternally patient. Doesn’t mean watching you bite that lip isn’t the most torturous thing I’ve ever fucking seen.”
I’m pleased, though I try not to be. Being pleased means I’m enjoying the fact that I can turn him on so easily. And that? That’s dangerous.
When Alex shifts underneath me again, my reaction is immediate and unintentional, though. I press my hips down, rolling them once against him, and Alex goes absolutely, utterly, terrifyingly still. No sound comes out of his mouth, but I can read the word he mouths perfectly well on his lips. “Fuck.” A tendon strains in his neck, the muscles in his chest tensed beneath his t-shirt as he tightens beneath me.
I’m burning up. My face must be bright red from my jawline to my hairline. I feel…I feel alive, in a dangerous, reckless, insane kind of way, and for the first time since Leon Wickman’s Spring Fling party, I also feel a little powerful. Like in that slight, barely-there movement just now, I regained a scrap of the power that was stolen from me. The first time I rocked myself against him might have been an accident, but the second time I do it…shit, I don’t know what possesses me, but the second time I do it, I do it on purpose.
A flare of pleasure, intense and a little bewildering, sparks between my legs as I roll my hips again, and Alex’s fingers dig into my sides, gouging into my hips, through my jeans.
“Jesus fucking Christ, Silver,” he pants. In two seconds flat, I’m off his lap, on my back, the sofa underneath me, and Alex is hovering over me, holding his weight off me, his mouth less than an inch from mine. “If I kiss you now, I’m going to try and fucking consume you,” he rasps. “It won’t be a little sip. It won’t be fucking controlled.”