Page 22 of The Boy I Loved
“You get them off?” Nicholas asked. “On purpose?”
“Yep. It fucks with their head. It’s great.” He shot me a grin, like we were sharing some kind of inside joke, and not talking about raping a bunch of women.
Vince smirked, bringing his hand to his lips to take another pull. The smoke billowed out around him, getting lost in the night sky. “Mason does that, too.”
The conversation stretched on, the guys each talking about the women and about virgins. Every now and then, me or Nicholas would chime in. After we finished smoking, we made our way to the SUV and clambered inside. Tristan was a few years older than us, but not by much. His father had been grooming him for this moment since he was twelve, and he was one of our best men. He also happened to be one of Clay’s favorites. Tristan was on guard duty, something he took very seriously. I huffed a small laugh. None of those girls would be getting any sleep tonight. Not if he had anything to say about it.
Mom was standingover the sink, the water running as she worked to wipe down the multitude of dishes she hadn’t gotten around to yet. Her dark hair was tugged into a messy knot on the top of her head, a few strands slipping out of the tie that was meant to bind them together. She was humming something softly beneath her breath—a tune I was all too familiar with.
Hey, Diddle Diddle.
It was a song she used to sing for me and Alice when we were younger. Alice would be perched on Dad’s leg with me on the other side of Mom while she sang to us. That felt like a lifetime ago.
“Morning,” I greeted, coming up behind my mother. She was wearing a light blue sweater with a pair of matching pajama pants.
Mom glanced at me over her shoulder. “Morning.” She smiled softly. “Are you excited for your first day of school tomorrow?”
During the two and a half years I’d been gone, I took online classes in order to keep up my grades and credits. Clay wasn’t overly ecstatic about it, but he didn’t fight me on it much. He wouldn’t as long as I was doing everything he wanted.
“Not really,” I admitted. School seemed so…pointless now. But it was only one more year, so I couldn’t complain too much, and it gave me a small break from the horrors that had taken over my life.
I’d always been a ‘live in the moment’ kind of person and had never considered much of a future for myself. Now I was glad I never dwelled on it, seeing as how pointless and devastating it would have been otherwise. I guess I always thought I’d just follow in my father’s footsteps, but then he died. Everything went downhill after that. A darkness seeped into my bones, and I started drinking. Then I began working at the mechanic shop which sparked a friendship with Vince. Drugs followed shortly after, nothing heavy, just pot and some pills here and there. It helped ease the pain, and when it didn’t, I started shoplifting.
I was a young kid who had lost his father and had begun acting out as a form of coping. From my understanding, that wasn’tunheard of and was normal in a lot of similar cases. I just never expected that my little bad-boy phase would come with such drastic repercussions.
My mother turned off the water before swiveling around to face me, her lower back resting against the counter. “No?” she asked, raising an eyebrow.
“It’s school, Mom. Of course I’m not excited to go back.”
She lifted a shoulder in a shrug. “I’m sure Hazel will be happy to see you there.” The question was innocent enough, but I didn’t miss the small tilt to her tone.
“We’ve been through this. Hazel is better off without me.” Nausea churned within my stomach as soon as the words left me, but they were true. There was absolutely no way in hell that I could remain in her life and keep her safe from my world at the same time. Whatever hope she was still clinging to when it came to us … she needed to let that shit go. I wasn’t that little boy anymore.
Mom blew out an exasperated breath, her shoulders dropping a fraction, but to my relief, she didn’t press the topic anymore. “Fine,” she relented. “I’ll stay out of it. I just wanted to help.”
Before I had the chance to say anything else, the stairs creaked, capturing my attention. My gaze jerked towards the direction of the staircase right as Alice rounded the corner. Her dark hair was tugged into a messy fishtail braid that barely brushed against her shoulder. Dark circles rimmed her eyes, indicating that she’d stayed up late last night.
“Are you two hungry?” Mom pressed, not bothering to comment on the fact that it was nearly two in the afternoon and our sleep schedules were all blown to hell.
“Coffee,” Alice grumbled, rubbing her palms over her eyes as she maneuvered her way through the kitchen and toward the Keurig.
“I’m heading out with the guys. I’ll grab something then,” I added.
Mom’s lips thinned, a tick feathering along the edge of her jaw. “Is it such a good idea to be hanging out with them again?’ she hedged. “I mean …theywere the ones who got you into this mess in the first place.”
Irritation sparked through my veins, filling every crevice of my body until my skin had warmed. “Igot me into this mess,” I corrected. It was true. They didn’t force me into doing these things; I was a willing participant. It probably would have happened with or without them.
“Dominic—”
I leveled her with a hard glare. “If you’re worried about me shoplifting again, don’t.”
The sound of the Keurig running echoed throughout the house, distracting me again. Maybe that was a good thing. I was sick of how my mom kept looking at me—like I was something broken. Something that needed fixed. The sad reality of the matter was that there was no fixing this, no fixingme.
My head was beyond fucked. I was constantly haunted by the things I’d done, forced to relive each nightmare every single night until they consumed me entirely. The screams of every girl we encountered, every girl we forced to their knees before us, every girl we had to hit as a means of controlling them. It was sick, twisted, wrong. But with each day that passed, it became easier and easier—more normalized.
My ringtone drifted through the kitchen a moment later and I reached into my pocket and retrieved the device, glancing down at the caller ID.
“I’ve gotta take this,” I told my mom. “I’ll see you later.”
