Rave and Odin had to deal with some business back at their garage, leaving Abel and me in the empty house, just staring at the ceiling, silent. I didn’t want them to leave, but there was nothing more they—or anyone—could really do for me at that point. It was done. My mother was gone. Nothing was going to change that.
Finally, Abel broke the silence. “You should come stay at our place for a while, at least until we figure out what’s going to happen. You’re a minor—CPS isn’t going to let you live here alone.”
“Yeah, okay. There’s just something I have to do first.” I grabbed my leather jacket from its hook and made my way out of the front door.
I knew Abel could see it all over my face, and he didn’t stop me. He just followed me out into the front yard.
“Where are we going, Holt?” Abel asked, getting onto the hand-me-down Chief his dad had been helping him restore since he got his license.
“I think I need to do this one alone. It’ll be better that way. You’ve already done too much for me.” I stood next to his booming bike, arms crossed, feet firmly planted.
He patted the back seat. “Not a fucking chance in hell am I going to let you out of my sight right now. Whatever you’ve got in that damn head of yours, you’re not going to do it alone. Now get on before I knock you out, drag you back to my place, and chain you up in the garage for safekeeping.”
I knew he wasn’t joking. Abel would do whatever he thought he had to to keep me from making a huge mistake unaccompanied. He was a ride-and-die type of friend—not that ride-or-die bullshit people told themselves.
Reluctantly, I gave in. We were losing daylight and he wasn’t going to back down. Sitting bitch on his bike, I gave him the directions.
“That’s the house.” I pointed up the street. “That’s where my mom’s dealer lives.”
We watched from down the block as the scumbag who had sold my mother her last bag of dope fucked around in his garage. He looked so much smaller than I had remembered.
“Stay here,” I barked, climbing off the back of Abel’s bike.
To my surprise, Abel let me go in solo.
I didn’t have a plan. I just knew an ass-beating was in that fuckface’s extremely near future.
* * *
What have I done?
Staring at my blood-covered hands, still gripping the wooden handle of a now broken ball-peen hammer, I stood in the wake of my mayhem in disbelief.
Flashes of the fight assaulted me over and over: how I snuck up behind Marcus with a two-by-four that had stupidly been left on the side of his house…how I didn’t even give him a chance to defend himself before I let the wood connect with the back of his head…how the dull, rounded head of the hammer I grabbed from his workbench cracked right into the guy’s temple as blood sprayed everywhere, bits of skull and brain matter erupting out of the side of his head.
A life for a life.I kept repeating the mantra in rapid fire in my head as I fell to my knees next to the body of the man that I had just killed.
In one day, I had become an orphan and a murder—two things I never would have dreamed were possible.
“Holton! Fuck, man! Get up! Holt!” Abel was shaking me, blood transferring onto him as he tried to get me to snap back to reality. “We have to go—now!”
Chapter 2
Decades later
My cell blared on my nightstand, waking me up at what felt like the ass crack of dawn even though it was nearly one in the afternoon. Working the late shift at the bar had started to really fuck up my sleep schedule and it had been taking a nasty toll on my body.
“Yeah?” I answered before hacking up a lung.
“Holt? It’s Sherriff Kelley. I think you need to come on down to the hospital. Rave’s been in an accident and I can’t get Abel or Crickett on the phone.”
“On my way.” I barked before hanging up and throwing the phone onto my bed.
I got dressed as fast as possible and was at the hospital within minutes, but I was too late. They had lost Rave. My heart broke into a million pieces. Rave had helped raise me, helped me when I hit rock bottom and brought me back to life more times than I could count.
I tried Abel and Crickett a few times each, but neither of them answered. They didn’t even answer the bar’s phone.
Fuck.