Never Kiss a Bad Boy (45 page)

He showed me the place where we would do it. He thought, if we surprised my uncle, we could overwhelm him together. It had to be fast, he explained. We couldn't be seen.

We sat and read as many crime novels as we could, all of them dusty and yellowed from his Gram's basement. We thought we were ready for what we were going to do.

There is nothing more exhilarating than ignorant pride.

Summer was fading. Soon, I'd be preparing for school, repeating the motions I had for years. Adults would notice I was quiet or uneasy, but never step in to help.

It didn't matter. I'd stopped worrying about my future in this cruddy town.

Like a slow storm, the day I'd been waiting for arrived.

It rolled in, a heavy air and tension pressing on my body. Jacob didn't look like he felt it, he was always so relaxed.

The construction on the new bridge had gone over a year, most of it barely finished. The sandbags would have a hard time holding back the river after the rainy season, though, so they'd increased their efforts lately.

There was little sun left, an angry purple bruise in the sky and orange as bright as sherbet. It reminded me of Jacob's birthday party, how he had felt bad I hadn't gotten a party for myself, so he'd cut my name into the top of the cake with his finger.

His Gram had been pissed, but we'd both laughed.

He was my best friend. I would do anything for him. I knew he would do the same for me.

Voices rose over the hill. My heart was frantic, familiar sweat dripping down my spine. It always happened when my uncle was near me.

In the distance, his eyes were glowing with rage. The sight of Jacob following after him gave me a burst of confidence.

Cresting the dirt road, Uncle Nick started shouting. “So you
are
here, you little shit!” Spittle flew from his greasy lips. He was moving faster than I expected. “Your little friend told me you were going to run away again! But jokes on you, he led me right to you, Kite!”

Fuck, he was moving towards me like a truck.

Under the fire of my uncle's rage, my plan—
the
plan—peeled back.

I was supposed to pull out the gun I'd stolen from his house. I'd known he kept it in the bedroom between his mattress springs, he'd never tried to hide it from me. I think he was proud of the weapon.

Shooting my uncle was supposed to be the easy part of the plan. We'd even hit some cans in the woods for practice before the sound of the blasts made us stop, scared someone would hear us and come snooping.

The pistol was weighing me down, doing nothing but giving me a rash where it rubbed between my belt and lower-back.
Take it out,
my mind screamed at me.
Shoot him! Shoot him, do it!

I forgot about the gun. My fear was greater than anything else.

Lifting my hands, I started to cry. “I'm sorry! I wasn't really going to run!”

“Oh no?” he snorted, grabbing for the front of my shirt. We were near the edge of the ravine. If he wanted to, he could throw me right down into the bottom where the bulldozers rested. “You're coming home right now, Kite! You hear me? I'm going to make sure you never run again.”

My brain smacked around in my skull, he was shaking me violently. If we went home together tonight, he would have no remorse. He'd do things to me that would make me cry and vomit.

Inside, I fell apart.

I was no monster. I was just a beaten child.

He was still shaking me, shouting—and then it all stopped. Uncle Nick's grunt was loud, drowned out by a louder, wet 'crack.'

He dropped me, the wind kicking out of my body. Sitting there, I stared up as he spun, scrabbling at the back of his skull. There was blood dripping, smeared on his shirt.

Jacob held the rock high.

“
You fucking piece of shit!
” My screamed. He was breathing heavy, foam on his chin. He was as terrifying as a rabid grizzly bear.

Jacob's blue eyes shot to me, a beacon of warning.

Act now
, he was saying,
Or we both die here.

Fighting to breathe, I climbed to my feet. There was snot running down my nose, but I'd never felt so light in my life. The pistol was welcome in my hand.

There was no logic in me, just fight or flight and a visceral need to make him
hurt
.

To make him understand how
I
had hurt.

Revenge was all I cared about.

I raised the gun high and filled my lungs. Metal slammed down, catching my uncle on the neck. He screamed, falling forward in the dirt. Flecks of blood hit my cheek, but I didn't stop swinging.

I was as much a machine as the ones in the valley below.

Again and again, I hit him.

He was bigger, and powered by the realization that he was about to die. His leg came out, knocking me down. The gun bounced away, jingling on the gravel.

My uncle slobbered drool and strings of red. “You're dead,” he huffed. “You're fucking dead. I'll kill you, you hear me?”

On hands and knees he crawled towards me. Jacob's rock collided with his temple, ending the attack.

With a pitiful groan, my uncle toppled sideways. The boy who wanted to save me, who
had
saved me, bent over the fallen monster and kept going. His arm was red by the end.

The rock fell away, sticky and wet. My uncle didn't move, he didn't make a sound. All those nights he'd spent tormenting me in my bed... and now he was dead. I'd killed him.

We'd killed him.

Holding my stomach, I shuddered and vomited. Any joy I had felt evaporated. The fibers of my shirt clung to me, I was pouring sweat.

Jacob put a hand on my back. I jumped, gawking up at him with my lips slack. “Kite,” he whispered. He rubbed my shoulder, trying to soothe me. He was pale like me, the calmness had melted away. “Are you alright?”

“Yes. No. I don't know.” Hugging myself tight, I tried to stand—failed and sat down. “Is he really dead?”

He didn't look away from my face. “Yeah, he's dead. We need to finish this. Can you get up?”

Spitting into the dirt, I buried my puke under the gravel. I was irrationally upset at my reaction. “I'm fine,” I said, forcing my breathing to slow down. “I... I'm sorry I freaked out. I should have shot him. I just froze up.”

Retrieving the gun from the dirt, Jacob dusted it off. “Shooting cans was easier than this.”

“Yeah. It was.”

Together, we rolled his body down the slope. The angle did most of the work. Jacob brought the crimson rock he'd used as a weapon. “No evidence,” he said flatly. The crime stories had been clear, we had to make sure no one could pin this on us.

In the gorge, we walked past the bulldozers and cranes that stood like dinosaur skeletons in a museum. It was dark out, everything eerie and quiet. Our ears strained, but there was no one around for miles.

No one had heard my uncle scream.

Just like no one ever heard
me
scream when he was torturing me.

People kept to themselves up here. They always had.

“This one.” Jacob nodded at the hole in front of us. It was one of many, a long line of cavities that went straight down into the earth.

Far away, we could see a few that had been completed. Metal supports had been jammed inside, cement filling the gap all the way to the top. There were bags of the stuff nearby, a sign this hole would be filled next.

Crouching beside my uncle, I lifted a hand. “Wait. Just one second.” It was getting hard to see in the rich blue of the evening. The spray of stars overhead and the moon were our only light sources.

Hovering over my uncle, I studied his features—his open eyes that saw nothing. I'd vomited before, the excitement and terror too much when combined. Now, as my heart hardened and my mind found comfort in my new freedom, I felt... good.

The fear was fading.

“You'll never touch me again,” I whispered to his corpse. “You can't hurt me anymore. This is what you deserve.”

Jacob was silent, looking to the side to give me privacy. When I nodded at him, he tossed the rock down into the pit.

Some firm shoving, and my uncle toppled into his new grave. We didn't speak again until we'd finished kicking debris and gravel into the hole, covering up the body from any prying eyes.

“It's done,” Jacob said, wiping his forehead.

There was a chill in my blood. It flowed deeper, protecting me, telling me what we'd done was right. “No one can ever know about this,” I whispered. Lifting my head, I stared Jacob in the face. Starlight glistened in his blue depths. “We're murderers now. Both of us.”

The knife he slid from his pocket was like a sliver of an ocean wave. “Right. We can't ever let anyone know about this. They'd lock us up. They wouldn't understand.”

“They wouldn't,” I agreed solemnly.

I let him take my wrist, holding my palm open. The knife was wicked, but I wasn't afraid of him. Jacob would never hurt me. “Will you promise to never tell anyone?” he asked.

“I promise.” The cold pit in my belly spread further. What we'd done, it was changing me faster than anything ever should. My flinching, wincing former self was blossoming into a creature that had shown it could fight back. I only had one fear now, one thing above all else.

Losing Jacob.

“Do you promise that you'll never abandon me?” I blurted.

He stiffened, laying the edge of the knife on my skin. “Abandon you?” The seriousness in his voice could have cut me as easily as that blade. “Kite, I would never. I
will never
. What we did tonight... and what we'll always do for each other...” Were his eyes wet? “We're like brothers, right?”

Smiling sideways, my head bobbed. “Yeah. Brothers.” I pushed my palm into the knife, encouraging him. “Blood Brothers, we'll never betray each other.”

“Never,” he agreed, sliding the blade down my skin. Redness pooled, spilling over and to the ground.

Taking the knife, I held his wrist and copied the wound he'd made on me. Neither of us grimaced. We felt too alive, too indestructible, to crumble. “We'll never put each other at risk.”

Jacob pushed his fingers into mine, palms linking, blood mixing. We were connected in a fashion that extended beyond family. “Why do people fight?” he asked me, but it didn't sound like a question.

“Greed,” I said. “Suffering.”

Nodding, he gripped my palm so fiercely his knuckles went pale. “People fight and hurt each other because of jealousy. We'll be different, okay? Let's make a pact.”

The wind felt good on my damp throat. I thought of that birthday cake, our names sharing the frosting. “We'll share everything. Okay?”

With a new world stretching before us, our lives on a road painted with the tainted brush of murder and sin, Jacob and I shook hands. We wouldn't be like the people who had tormented us. We would take care of each other.

We would share everything.

Life had been hard. We'd made a choice we couldn't take back. The murder would weigh heavy on both of us, in different ways. But our bond—it was unbreakable. It was special.

No one would ever make us question it.

And if someone learned what we'd done—who we were—they had to die.

No risks. No mistakes.

The bond was all we'd ever had.

Marina

––––––––

“U
ntil now,” Kite said, standing over me on the edge of the bridge.

Jacob still held the knife, the tip leveled on my chest. It was hard to see, my tears made everything blurry.

Their story was painful. Kids who had fallen through the cracks and been forgotten. Two young boys who had committed an act so violent, they'd had to abandon their old lives, abandon the capacity to have a normal life.

They'd been determined to cut a place for themselves in a world that had been so cruel to them. I understood who they were.

I was the only one who'd been given a chance to understand.

The night Kite had held his gun to my temple and told me so confidently that I would never be ready to shoot Lars, he'd spoken from experience. If Jacob hadn't stepped in, Kite would have been murdered by his own uncle.
He
would have been the body left in that construction site.

Lifting my head, I stared at the river rushing under us. “It was here,” I whispered. “This was where you killed him.”

“Yes,” Kite said. He was having trouble looking at me.

I wiped my face on my shoulder, sniffling helplessly. “What happened to you guys... it was fucking awful. I'm so sorry.”

Fingers cupped my chin. Jacob rubbed the tears away, staring straight into the centers of my eyes—into my beating heart. “Don't be sorry. That was a long time ago. We didn't tell you the story so you would pity us.”

A twinge went through my chest.
That's why Kite won't look at me.
“I don't pity you,” I said, desperation making me raspy. Kite twitched, his jaw turning—I could see his profile now. “I just never knew how... how similar we all were.” Dammit, I just kept crying. The strain in my ribs was at its breaking point. I'd sob if I didn't control myself. “Please... I don't want to die like him.”

Kite spun, a tornado of charcoal and copper.

He embraced me roughly, his nose in my hair and his cheek damp. Was it just my tears soaking us? “Idiot,” he hissed at me. “You won't die alone in a hole. That way was for him.
Only
him.”

I couldn't breathe, and not because of how fiercely he held me.

Cold metal brushed my wrists; Jacob's knife. The ropes fell away, my cells tingling as sensation returned. Jacob crouched behind me, his chin on top of my head. “Do you understand what we're offering you?” he asked me.

My lips moved, the single word a cracking wheeze. “Life.”

“More than that,” Jacob whispered. “Beyond life itself.” Gently, both men helped me to my feet. Together, they blocked out the moon and the stars. That was fine.

To me, they were their own source of light.

“Lift your hand,” Kite said.

The blade was razor-sharp, but it didn't scare me. Nothing compared to what I'd been through. There would be no pain here, only hope.