Page 39 of Fragile Facade
“I love it when you try to hide your insecurities from me. Don’t bother. I see them all and then some.” He laughs some more. I’m not laughing this time. He struck a chord, and now I’m the instrument shrieking through Remi’s shop.
“When’re you going to stop using this bargain as an excuse to stalk me?” I rasp, digging my fingers in and trying to buck him off my legs. All it accomplishes is a moment of panic.
Because when I try to swing him off, he loses balance, almost falling off the counter, and if he falls, he’ll drag me down with him. My neck will snap. I wrap my legs around him tighter to hold him up, my eyes wide—his smile wider.
“Ah, fuck you,” I gasp. Looking up, I see the rope looped over the high beam, wondering how the fuck he got it up there. Was I so lost in listening to my family play music that I tuned everything else out, or was he already here, lurking in the dark, knowing I’d show up at the shop? I better not be that predictable.
“Not until you beg, remember?” His smile morphs into a terrible grin that, resentfully, looks good on him.
The moment pauses, the only sounds coming from me. The beat of my erratic heart, the raspiness of my breaths, and the blood rushing through my ears. The soft music comes through the waterfall a moment later, and when I hear it, I hurt all over again. Because now I’m thinking about my brother, the one who died this way. Hung in our house. A noose around his neck, his body grey but his face still reddish purple, like all the blood got trapped there and congealed after he died. My eyes meet Riot’s, and his grin morphs yet again, this time into something akin to understanding. Not sympathetic or kind, but a thing that represents kinship in horror. Like he knows how to hurt but doesn’t know how to express it, just like me.
I don’t like that it makes us similar.
How’d he get this power over me? For as long as I’ve been a thrill-seeking junkie, I’ve held my own power. I’ve never been submissive, given in to anyone’s dominance unless it’s Director, or fallen short compared to someone else’s power. But Riot keeps winning, and I don’t know what it means. Maybe he’s not winning when I’m the one getting what I want: a brush with death.
I look into his eyes, trying to decipher what he gets out of all this. Why’s he chasing me? What’s in it for him other than bragging rights and the continuation of a rivalry that started years ago? The fuck does he want? His eyes tell me nothing, guarded and masked just like he is. They don’t house monsters like Krypt’s do, nothing roiling or surging from the depths of their confines. Riot’s eyes are deceptively calm and calculating, like he sees everything even if it’s not obvious. But when they storm…
In a weak moment, I ask, “What do you want out of this?”
“Who says I want anything? Maybe I just like reminding you how fucking pathetic you are.”
“Pathetic?”
“For lying to yourself.”
“About what?” I struggle, trying to lower my feet. He grabs my thighs tighter, pulling our bodies close enough that I can feel the heat of his. The hardness of it. I flush with something new, something that took over my mind the night I kissed him in Misfit Hall. I swallow against the rope and keep my eyes on his. “Lying to myself about what?”
“You’re scared of the curse.”
I shake my head, tugging the rope away from my neck as far as it will go.
“You’re scared of succumbing to it before you’re anything noteworthy, which is why you’re taunting it. Because, at least then, you’ll be remembered as the madman who danced with Death.”
My jaw clenches and my fingers go numb.
“Do you want to die, Soren?”
Soren.“No.”
“Then why are you tempting a curse?”
“You know why.” That one or two second precipice. To prove that I’m superior.
“Yeah, I do. But it’s not the same reason you tell yourself.”
What the hell does he think he knows?
Riot leans back, arms spread wide, acting as a weight to hang me. I grip my legs around him as the rope cuts into my neck, cutting off oxygen. I try to heave him back up, but my legs are shaking, my mind is slowing down, and my fingers are being pinched between my skin and the noose, choking me as much as the rope is now.
Riot keeps leaning back, held up only by my legs around his waist. If I release my hold on him, my feet will touch the counter and I’ll be able to breathe, but Riot is proving a point: that he’s in control, so I don’t even bother, wanting to prove I can take whatever he dishes out.
“Here’s a new game. For every lie you tell, I’ll force your body to admit a truth.” His smirk is small but packs a punch.
My stomach sinks.
15
TRUTH OR HANG
