I push a headphone off of her ear. “Bubba found us. We gotta run, or we’re it.”
The dresser drags eerily against the tiles sending a hysterical panic through me that Bubba is getting inside.
Scarlett’s bright blues flick over my shoulder, but I jerk on her arm to get her to focus on me. “Watch the glass and jump down,” I order.
Her little brows furrow in unease. “It’s too high.”
“You’ll be okay.” Another scrape of wood squealing at me to hurry up. “C’mon, Scar.” She looks at me hesitantly then behind me again.
“Kace,” she mutters. “Bubba looks mad.”
Fear continues to thrash against my whole body, but I don’t bother to turn around.
There’s no time.
“Scarlett, go!” I snap. She blinks once then proceeds to carefully swing a tiny leg over, but glass is everywhere. She’s going to cut herself, and I won’t have anything to clean up her wounds.
All of a sudden, my t-shirt is jerked from behind, my back slamming into the smushy chest of the goblin we’re trying to get away from.
“Kace!”
I glance at my sister and point outside. “Get out, Scar.”
“You stupid motherfucker,” Bubba growls, spinning me around just to slam his large fist into my face.
I see stars, like how they do in cartoons. They circle in my vision as my balance begins to give out.
“I’m gonna kill you!”
“Get off my brother!” My eyes widen at how close Scarlett’s voice sounds, and I find her with my wooden baseball bat in her tiny palms.
She swings weakly and hits both Bubba and me in the process. And like a blood-thirsty shark, Bubba’s focus narrows in on her, and I take the only chance I’m given. Ripping our lamp out of the wall, I crash it over Bubba’s head.
It doesn’t break like it does in the movies, but it gets him to back off and haunch over while streams of curse words flow from his lips.
Scarlett lets out a small scream as Bubba stumbles towards us. I snatch her hand and lead her back to the window.
She climbs over quicker this time, and when her legs are over, I push her out, watching her land safely in the soft grass with a thud before I jump out right after her.
“You shoved me,” Scarlett accuses as she brushes her bare knees off with her hands.
I don’t bother defending myself.
I just clutch onto her and run to the woods, where we have a small spot made up for us.
Where we’ll be safe...for tonight.
“Remember me, motherfucker?”
My tone is raw and frigid.
Two adjectives that have summed up the last thirty-some-odd hours that I’ve been back in Pittsburgh with a chip on my shoulders.
A shard of fury that I want off and put out indefinitely.
The red handkerchief that I just ripped from my victim’s eyes falls to the dirt as dark, and confused irises peer up at me. It doesn’t take but a few measly seconds before immediate recognition dawns in them instead.
A wave of genuine fear washes over his aged face as he takes me in, up and down like he has so many fucking times before.
However, it doesn’t make my body shake with anticipation or break out in profuse sweats anymore. Rather a new bodily motor response kick-starts, and it’s pure unadulterated blackout rage.
A blackness that I’m currently having a hard time containing and keeping tame.
Involuntary memories seep in from my past, reminding and creating my frame to stiffen in disgust and contempt.
Both for him and I.
“You must have balls of steel or the brain of a fucking dumbass to walk up and back here,” I sneer through my clenched jaw. “You forget something?”
Bubba Walters finally blinks as he continues to gape at me. I’m not the scrawny kid he used to abuse and chase on his motorcycle. Nor am I the teenager that he’d have his nephew and shitheaded cronies jump when I was alone.
No, I’m almost a decade of Navy SEAL muscle, violence, and carnage all wrapped into the perfect killing machine with zero remorse or emotion for the aftermath.
“Kace Bishop.” My name is said slowly, almost delicately, and with caution as the wheels in his fucked up head relive the unkempt things he used to do to me.
The circumstances he created still make it hard for me to be touched, cornered, or even looked at for too long. Monsters aren’t born. They’re designed in wicked and evil doings with a tiny chance of becoming more of something one day.
I didn’t get that luxury.
I only got worse.
”You got big,” he mutters as if we’re good friends and that the fact that I have him on his knees is for him to suck my dick.
I blow smoke from my mouth, flicking the excess ashes off the end of my cigarette. “And you got old.”
He furrows his bushy eyebrows at me. “This ain’t your home anymore, boy.”
“Yeah?” I take another hit of my fag and keep it in my lungs. “Then why are you back at Shady Grove harassing my brother?”
“I don’t know anything about that.” He shrugs his shoulders nonchalantly. “Just got here.”
My entire ass.
Time has not been kind to the soon-to-be-dead corpse in front of me.
I mean, he almost looks like the crypt keeper. There are so many wrinkles on his face he should use them to his advantage and stash his old drug of choice, cocaine, in them. Shit, if his lips weren’t moving, I’d actually have to look for them centered between saggy cheeks.
“Regardless—“ I lean down and fan the smoke over his face. “—you’re here, and I told you never to come back. Or it’d cause you more than what you’re willing to give up.”
“Fuck you,” he sneers through his crooked teeth. “Last time I checked, you’re no king over this shitty ass trailer park, boy.”
Boy.
It sears my ears, and I can feel them redden.
“Don’t need to be,” I convey.
Bubba readjusts his weight, grunting at the extra forty-some-odd pounds he threw on over the last two decades. “Listen, I’m not here to start any trouble.”
“Sure
