Page 59 of Boy of Ruin
Pale wooden floors. A small dresser against the wall opposite me.
White sheets.
Sid and I hate white sheets. Blood stains too easily.
I dart my eyes to the closed white door, hear something from beyond it. People talking. Frying bacon.
It takes me a second, then my pulse picks up speed as I see my black backpack by the door, skeleton bandana laid over it.
Fuck.
Julie. Finn. Ophelia.
They’re all in this goddamn house.
I remember the drive from Alexandria, North Carolina to Acid City, Virginia. Ophelia leaned across the console of the M5 and…
Fuckkkk.
I bury my head in my hands, elbows on my knees as I realize I’m in boxer briefs, no shirt on.
I let Ophelia suck my dick.
I let her suck my fucking dick.
I think about last night. Julie greeted me warmly. O, not so much. Finn was sleeping. Ophelia brushed her teeth, probably getting the taste of my cum out of her mouth. Sid loved that shit. She wouldn’t have brushed her goddamn teeth.
I asked Julie about the kitten’s head.
She’d thrown it in the garbage out back.
Said the alarm from one window had gone off the other night. She seemed spooked, but also pissed O was in her house. Gave me no other good information. Isn’t Finley, because he’s stayed far the fuck away, in another state, wanting nothing to do with his fucking son.
Julie had offered me a drink.
The three of us had too much.
Ophelia wanted to sleep in this room, but there’re four bedrooms in this airy house, and I stumbled up to bed by myself, letting the girls deal with their shit.
I pick my head up, glance at the nightstand.
There’s a line there, a snipped off straw, what I prepared in the night.
My phone is face down beside it, and I take a breath, run my hand over my nose again, taste blood in the back of my throat. Blood and whiskey and the bitter taste of coke, like crushed up aspirin.
I swing my legs, see my boxers riding up and giving me a view of the Unsaint’s tattoo on my thigh, taking up nearly the entire fucking thing.
So many scars.
But I know Sid’s.
I run my finger over it, deeper than the rest. Longer, too.
My chest clenches, my throat tightening.
She won’t forgive me for that. Ophelia. She won’t fucking forgive me, even though I’m here because of her.
I need to know if I can find anything here. Someone is after us. Her.
