He flips me back onto my back by a fist of my hair and the loose gravel bites into the flesh of my spine as I’m dragged across the road. The stars in the sky blink down at me, a haze of regret finally rocking through my body when I realize just what I’ve done all these years.
I haven’t been pacifying the hunger of this monster, I’ve been delaying his feeding time.
“Huh, well, isn’t this a series of events that I did not expect to walk in on…” The dragging stops, but the wounds from the grazes only explode over my skin like hot fire.
I can’t stop the coughing fit as I turn to the side and spit out the metallic liquid that spills into my mouth every two damn seconds.
“What the fuck are you doing here?” Luca spits, and I didn’t have to hear Niko’s voice to know that he was talking to him, just by his response alone.
I ignore their talk since both of them want nothing but chaos in my life, and roll onto my back, gazing up at those same stars I watched as I was being rag-dolled out of my car by Luca. There’s a sadness that weeps in my chest, one I can’t even give enough of a fuck to unleash. Because this is just who I am.
I have no family who loves me, except for Ma.
I have friends who think they do, but really, they don’t know me at all. Would they still feel the same way about me once they find out everything I’ve kept from them all of my life? And furthermore, will I even care if I did lose them? I know they’d be better off without me.
My students. I have them.
“Hey!” Fingers snap in front of my face and Niko comes into view, blocking my distraction of the stars. “Fucking piece of shit,” he mumbles under his breath, I think.
My eyes are closing. So heavy, weak, take me under because I don’t want to wake up.
Two things I do great in my life. There could be others, maybe more, but two things are absolute.
One, I kill people. Nothing fancy, no weird shit either—I just do it. I have no problem doing it, and I don’t know if that’s from missing screws upstairs or from anger, but I’m good at it.
Two, reading Meraki. Even at our younger age, I felt as though I knew her longer. Like there was no possible way that I had only just met this chick and felt like I had woken up beside her every day of my life. Don’t confuse that for adoration, though, because I should also mention that I really despise her. Every single fucking thing about her. And the current predicament we have now both landed in.
I squeeze a bottle of water until it squirts her in the face.
She hits it away, her eyes peeling open slowly. “Ah,” she groans, attempting to push herself up from the leather chair. “I feel like fucking shit.”
“Good.” I can’t stop glaring at her from my chair, even though she’s directly beside me, hunched over the center console in the back of my Mercedes G-Class.
Her eyes widen when they fall on me as she moves all the way to the other side of the car. “Niko, what the fuck are you doing?”
I clear my throat, tapping my thumb against my thigh and thinking of all the ways I could talk my way around her questions. Every single one sounds too exhausting, so I hit her with the truth.
“I’m taking you back to my house.”
She blinks at me. “In Halsin? Ma can’t see me like this. She will actually kill Luca this time. It will send her over the edge. She’s been wanting an official”—she waves her hands around the place but then winces as if it physically pained her to do it, resting her forehead in her palm—“reason to eighty-six him.”
“No, Meraki. I’m not taking you back to that house.”
“Well, I don’t think Lydia is going to really want me around your other house, and I’m not—”
My teeth clench when I have to force myself to shut the fuck up and let the bitch complain.
“—what? You take me without asking, and then expect me to ride without questions?” She realizes the mistake in her statement instantly, but that doesn’t stop me from being a smug fucking bastard about it and smirking right at her.
“Never stopped you before.”
She starts shaking her head. “Let me out.”
The banging on the window only adds to the humor of our situation.
I point to the window with the same finger I was running across my upper lip. “They’re bulletproof.”
“Fuck you!” Her long hair whips across her face when she turns her anger back to me. “He’s”—her cheeks pale and her eyes dilate. No fucking shit, they turn black. It almost has me lowering the separator glass between the driver and me, but more so, it rears to the surface an emotion I squashed a long time ago—“he’s going to be worse when I get back.”