Page 19 of Fragile Facade
It’s both a relief and a trigger. I close my eyes so I don’t have to look at him. Ninety seconds is our rule, but we barely use it. I like to tell Ghost he doesn’t know when to keep his mouth shut, but over the years, he actually has learned how to bite his tongue when it matters. The ninety-second rule became a grace period we started living by last year when we honest to god almost killed each other, but right now, I don’t want it. I don’t want the minute and a half to get my shit together. I don’t want to be careful around him. I don’t want him to see me as anything other than the raw, real, ravaged man I am. Because he’s the only person who looks back with the same level of hypocrisy.
Oh, we try, don’t we? We try to be the deities we think we are, but there are cracks in our foundations that’ll bring us down with the right pressure. I hide mine better than he does, but he always seems to show up right when I’m splitting in two. Maybe he causes it.
Vulnerabilities are a waste of time.
“Get out.” I open my eyes.
“No,” he says, stepping forward. Blond, brazen, bold. He’s silent when he walks, but the air around him ripples with his moods, even when he doesn’t want it to.
“Death wish?” I ask as a warning.
“You know it.” He grins. The bruises around his throat sate me, slowing my blood flow even more. When he’s right in front of me, his body heat radiating in my space, I subtly breathe in the smell of him. Cedar and spice. It’s a common body wash scent, comes in half the men’s choices at the shops uptown, so I don’t know why it smells different on him. “We’re not allowed to fight here. In this house.” He’s right in front of me now, a dangerous place to be while I’m so volatile. So vulnerable.
I look up, meeting his blue eyes, trying to peel them open to reveal what he’s actually thinking. What’s he doing here, so calm and calculated, when five minutes ago he was ready to kill me at dinner? Nothing about Ghost makes sense, and regrettably, that’s half the reason I like goading him.
“You follow rules now?”I ask.
He smirks at me, and everything else settles. Because being tumultuous around him is exactly my comfort level. He’s here, not to calm me down, but to rile me up so I don’t have to think about anything other than beating him. To challenge me. To be pissed off one second and deceptively settled the next. The ninety seconds are ticking down, and when they’re over, who knows what’s going to happen. Because pitting his narcissism against my sociopathic personality is a war no one can win, but fuck do we love trying.
“You follow me, don’t you?” he asks, voice lowering to a timbre that makes my bones rattle. “Following me straight to Hell.”
“Not following. Pushing.”
“Hmm,” he hums, looking down again. I have a lot of scars, but the ones on my inner biceps are the only self-inflicted ones. There are two fresh lines there from last night. He wasn’t around to take my troubles out on, so I bled them out instead. “Ninety seconds are up, Riot. Whose heart are we breaking? My brother’s or yours?”
“Neither,” Krypt says, standing in the doorway with Remi in front of him. I look, but Ghost doesn’t turn around. He keeps his eyes on me, leaning in to grab something off the dresser behind me. “You fuck up my bargain, I’ll fuck up your life. Brother or not.”
I grin at my brother. “He’s alive, isn’t he?”
Remi groans, but my attention dips down to my arm when Ghost trails the sharp edge of a razor blade over my inner bicep, adding another line. Bleeding me. Playing god when he has no right to the role. I don’t even tense or flinch because I’ve conditioned myself to associate the sting with pleasure and relief. The hardest part about Ghost cutting me is that he’s making me feel good in a way he shouldn’t be able to. I’m jarred by the audacity of the act, unsure why I’m not throwing him off, and mindfucked because he’s so casual about something so personal. Does he know why I cut? Does he understand what he’s bleeding me of? Is he doing it purposefully, or is he simply trying to get in my head?
Warm blood drips down my arm, and when the line is finished, he smears his thumb over it. Looking right at me, he wipes his thumb over his bottom lip, his tongue following in its wake to lick it up.
Fuck, it takes everything within me to withhold my anticipatory shudder.
He grins. I grin back. My cock gets hard, my thoughts turn dark, and the charm in my current smile isn’t meant for anyone but Ghost. Because he sees through the top layer to the diabolical need it masks. There’s a reason Ghost and I became competitors, and it has nothing to do with being in Vile House together.
It’s because he knows exactly how to speak to the part of me I keep hidden.
* * *
Monster hasn’t saida word since we left to follow Lock. Honestly, it makes him good company tonight. Because I’m stuck in my head about the new slice on my inner bicep. Nobody marks that area of my body but me, and I don’t know why I let Ghost do it.
“You ever cut?” I ask him as we sit on the rooftop of someone’s house, watching Lock get laid through the window of the next house over. No idea who the person is, someone who came to visit a friend, but Lock picked her up at Neon Demon and brought her back here to Glitch’s parents’ place. His former childhood home, too.
Monster shoves up his sleeves and shows me the scars inside his wrists. They look old, like he used to cut but doesn’t anymore. He usually wears cuffs, but tonight, his arms are bare.They aren’t obvious, but he has dot scars around his mouth, too. Like it’s been sewn shut, and selfishly, I’m glad for his mask so I don’t have to see them right now.
I nod at his wrists, shifting my eyes back to the sex show through the window. “I cut. Makes me feel less crazy. Less… pressured. Someone else cut me there today, though, and I’m all fucked up about it.”
Monster’s black and yellow mask turns in my direction, up-nodding to get me to show him. I take off my jacket, lift the sleeve of my t-shirt, and show him all my scars. The fresh ones from last night stand out, but not as brightly as the one Ghost gave me today. He reaches out to touch it, and I go stark still. He’s never touched me before, and I sure as shit haven’t touched him. Monster doesn’t like touch, just like Krypt, but Monster’s aversion to it is so much more lethal. A nurse once tried to turn his arm over so she could take his blood, and he hadn’t been expecting it. He bashed her face in with a clipboard, and Ransom had to finish her off before Director burned the body. Then we all got reamed out because we’re apparently not supposed to kill without reason. Monster claimed he had a reason, but Director didn’t feel it passed the test.That was years ago, and he’s learned a little restraint since then. And he knows how to feel guilt, so that dead nurse haunts him because he’s remorseful about it.
When his fingers fall away, I pull my jacket back on. “Why do you cut? To relieve anger?” I ask because he’s a pretty angry guy. When he shakes his head, I guess again, “Pain?”
He nods. A lot. So much pain.
“Why aren’t you talking?”
He shrugs.
