Take My Body (Curse Bound 2)

“Since when do I have to explain myself to you?”

Ralph shook his head and stood by his brother, opening his mouth for once. He sounded as if his throat were covered with rust. “I’m gonna let this slide, ‘cause I heard you broke up with Sandy. Get a grip, man. I just hope you’re less unhinged on the job tomorrow.”

The job.

The thing.

The fucking drug-muling.

What the fuck had he gotten himself into?

“You bet I did. Gonna find myself a real woman this time,” Caspian said.

Bud laughed like a cartoon villain. “So you broke up for real this time?”

So Gunner couldn’t even get himself a girlfriend who’d win the approval of his deadbeat friends? How pathetic. “This whole thing’s really making me rethink my priorities. You guys do the job tomorrow without me. I’m done. Satis est satis!”

It was as if even the birds had stilled at those words.

Bud cocked his head with his lips parted. “What?”

Caspian spread his arms in frustration. “Enough is enough!”

Todd stared at him without a hint of a smile. “The fuck are you talking about?”

“Oh, so I’ve punched you deaf?”

Todd straightened up, and while Caspian remembered him as a tall guy, he was of an average size when seen from Gunner’s perspective. “No, I’m just worried, you know? We’d be one man short, but I guess we can take your brother instead. He doesn’t have your muscle, but I’m sure he can be persuaded.”

Caspian wanted to say that he didn’t have a brother so the joke was on them. But then he remembered the kid with a brown mop of curls, dark eyes and freckles, who’d left the gym with Gunner, and his lips clamped shut.

He shouldn’t have cared, because Noah wasn’t really his brother. But he seemed like a good kid and wasn’t even eighteen yet. Things like that mattered. “Leave him out of it,” he said, and the way Todd’s face relaxed told him it had been blackmail all along.

Caspian itched to break the fucker’s nose to make him look more distinctive from the twin brother, but there would be a better time for such pleasures. Right now, he and Gunner bore one another’s responsibilities, and that meant no matter how much he disagreed with drug use on principle, or how much everything in him balked at the idea of committing a crime, he’d need to go through with the job this once, because there wasn’t enough time to get himself out of it.

“Fine. I’ll go.”

Bud was already walking off, but Ralph shot Caspian another grim look before turning away. “See you tomorrow,” he said in a tone that sounded like a warning.

Fuckers.

Caspian didn’t yet know how, but he would make sure those three bastards paid for all the things they’d done. To him. To Gunner. And everyone else.

“Show’s over,” he shouted to all the not-so-discreet spectators and picked up Fluffer, who stared up at him, confused like a person who’d just been woken from the REM phase of sleep. “And you’re under house arrest until your master’s back,” he whispered and put the cat inside before locking the door, the cat flap, and heading toward the gates of the trailer park, where he expected to find Gunner.

He didn’t pin the big, burly guy as someone who’d own cats, especially fluffballs who spent their days grooming, but what did he know? Maybe it used to belong to an ex of Gunner’s, and he’d gotten attached to the thing?

Even though midnight was approaching, in his new form, he wasn’t afraid to walk up to a stranger smoking a joint in front of his home. The guy had a ZZ Top beard and wore sunglasses despite it being so dark.

“Hey, have you seen a guy in a vintage car? It’s dark red.”

The man took a long drag of smoke with a thoughtful expression. “Oh, yeah… Little guy, big car. He drove away.”

Caspian’s arms dropped in helpless anger, but he bit into his lip to stifle the roar pushing at his mouth and faced the open gate.

Gunner was going against him again. But this time, Caspian wouldn’t let him get away with it.

Chapter 15 - Gunner

The bastard had watched it happen. Just hidden away behind the curtain and let those fuckers kick Gunner about, as if none of what had happened between them earlier mattered. Maybe it didn’t, and Gunner had gotten ahead of himself thinking that he and Caspian were on the same team. Caspian had seen glimpses of it when he took charge in sex, stripping Gunner of his armor, but he didn’t seem to understand what those moments meant to Gunner and had only seen being in charge as a power trip. Was this all there had been to their frantic, lusty encounters?

So maybe Gunner had been a bit of a shit to Caspian in front of Noah, but he’d panicked. Wasn’t he allowed some slack?