EIGHT
Eli
"I'm just saying," Bobby said at my breakfast table the next day, because we were, apparently, breakfast buddies now. "I know the look of a man who got his dick wet after being locked up for a long time. You got that look. And you went out last night."
"What are you the neighborhood fucking watch?" I asked, smiling because it was so ridiculous. "Watching me out of the curtains like some little old nosy neighbor?"
"I was cleaning the fucking windows, okay?" he objected, clearly caught and trying to save face.
"Yeah, sure you were. With your fucking huff of breath and your sleeve."
"You're deflecting!" he accused, though he was clearly the one guilty of such a thing.
"Yeah, I am," I agreed, leaning back in my chair, stomach full of the hash browns and breakfast burrito he had brought me. Just a couple days out, and I was already eating better than I had six years in.
"So you did get laid! See, man, I knew it."
He knew it alright.
But to be fair, I wasn't exactly trying to hide my good mood.
Bobby was just doing some basic math.
I had been a Debbie fucking Downer for all the years he knew me inside and then the couple days I was out. Then I go out one night, come home late, and I'm suddenly in a good mood?
Yeah, two plus two equals four.
So he could know I got laid.
That was fine.
The cards I was playing close to my chest had nothing to do with the sex. Though, let's be real, that sex was fucking phenomenal. And I didn't just think that because it had been so long that I had gone without it. If you have had enough sex in life, you knew when it was just good technically because everyone involved got off and felt some good old-fashioned stress relief, and when it was more than that, when it was the kind of experience you wanted to have over and over and would never get sick of it. This was the latter kind of sex. This was the mind-blowing, obsession-inducing kind of sex.
I was sure I would never get enough of it.
Judging by the way she responded to me, she felt the same.
And Autumn, well, she owned a sex store. I bet her nightstand and closet were full of endless hours of fun.
I intended to explore that.
Often.
Enthusiastically.
Did I know there was a certain risk involved? Yeah.
I wasn't stupid.
I couldn't fuck her and not feel some kind of connection. She wasn't just some random chick at the bar. And she was, whether I liked to admit it or not, a connection to my old life. There was a thread there, small, but noticeable.
It was risky.
And I told myself I wouldn't be taking any risks.
But, well, there was no way now that I knew what it was like to be with her that I was going to give that up.
So long as the only time I was connected, opened up, was when I was with her, I figured things would be fine. I could still follow through with my plans, get my life back on track.
Hell, maybe the sex would keep me relaxed.
Relaxed, when you were dealing with rage issues, was a place you wanted to be.
"The dog thief, right?" he assumed rightly. "Tell me she's hot."
"She's hot," I agreed, but found that term wholly inaccurate. She was so, so much more than hot.
She was fucking beautiful.
I mean, I knew that going in since I had spotted her six years before outside that coffeeshop. She had a stunning, warm face, a huge, welcoming smile, and eyes that held secrets.
But last night, I got to see the whole package.
And 'hot' - while accurate - didn't do her a damn bit of justice.
She was fucking perfect.
Every goddamn subtle curve, every soft line, every dip, it was all goddamn flawless.
Add on the fact that she was confident, that she was comfortable being touched and getting touched, oh yeah, she was the whole package. Any man would have to be blind not to see that.
How the hell she was single was completely beyond me.
"So that's all you're gonna give me? No details?"
Clearly, he was offended by the prospect.
Most guys dished, no matter how much they claimed never to gossip. They did.
I had simply never been a kiss and tell kinda guy to begin with, and there was some strong urge inside to keep what Autumn and I had between the two of us.
So that was what I was going to do.
"That's all I'm going to give you. No details," I agreed.
"Man, that's cold," he said, shaking his head at me. "So what's on your agenda today?"
"I have to go back to the gallery to see how much space I have to play with so I can get to work on the pieces."
"When's the show?"
"Two days after Thanksgiving."
"That enough time?"
"I once whipped out a family portrait of three generations, including sixteen grandkids, in a weekend."
"Yeah. Inside. Where you had nothing to do but work on it. Where you had no fine piece waiting on you to make her toes curl."
That was true enough.
But Autumn worked.
And we were keeping it, ah, casual.
So that was only going to be taking a few hours out of my day.
"It should be fine."
He nodded at that, moving to stand, taking his coffee with him. "I got a nice profile, man. Just saying. I'd look good on a fucking wall."
With that, he was gone, leaving me to wonder if he was actually serious or not.
With him, it was sometimes hard to tell.
But I wasn't planning on using him anyway.
I had other ideas.
I had demons to exorcise.
And I figured that the only way to do that was to do it on paper.
--
"Eli!"
Shit.
Goddamn it all to hell.
I should have known to go to Home Depot two towns over instead of the damn small home improvement store in town. But all I needed was a drill bit so I could get some work done around the house. It seemed stupid to go out of my way for just one little thing.
But walking down the side street toward my new vehicle - a new, but not obnoxiously expensive, black pickup - and hearing my name called by a voice I most definitely recognized, yeah, it made me see why I needed to keep my ass off the main streets in Navesink Bank.
I didn't want to do this.
This was why I had the shitty duplex in the crummy area.
This was why I only left my house when absolutely necessary, especially during the day.
This was why I should have fucking gone to goddamn Home Depot.
I didn't want to see any of them.
I didn't want to have to look them in the eye and tell them I was done with them, that they should just move on and forget me.
I didn't want to have to watch as I stuck a knife in their guts like I had needed to do countless times to my own.
But there was no avoiding it, even as I tossed the bag into the open window of my truck and turned around to face him.
My brother.
Christ, it hurt to even think that word.
I thought I was over it.
I thought I had hollowed myself out enough not to be affected by this family shit.
But, apparently, preparing yourself for the inevitable, and actually facing it up, were two completely different things.
He looked the same. A bit older maybe, like I was myself. But the same. Same inky black hair. Same eyes that I saw reflected in my mirror every morning. Same bone structure. Same height. Similar built. Same ink. And a whole fuckton of it. More than there had even been when I had gone away.
But that came with the trade, I guess.
"Hunter," I said, keeping my voice hollow, praying to fuck none of the emotion I was feeling right then could be heard in my tone.
"What the fuck?" he asked, spreading his arms out, shaking his head, the pain I couldn't express plain in his voice, in his eyes, in his very stance.
Knife, meet gut.
Christ, it hurt more than I thought it could after so long.
"What the fuck, what?" I asked, going for hollow, and succeeding judging by the way his shoulders slumped further.
"Six years, Eli? Not a fucking word? We didn't even know if you were fucking alive in there."
"Pretty sure they inform next of kin when an inmate bites it."
His brows furrowed. "What is this shit?" he asked, waving a hand at me.
"What shit?"
If there was anyone who could tell you when you were being off, it was family. If there was anyone willing to call you on it when they saw it, it was siblings.
"Did you get a psych eval in there?"
"Think I lost my mind?"
"If your dead motherfucking tone is anything to go by, bro, yeah, I think you lost your damn mind. Do you have any idea how much Ma cried over this? Try as she might to hide it, you could see it on every fucking holiday. You know how many times we sat and talked about you, worried about what could be happening to you in there? Do you have any idea what it was like to try to tell the girls that it wasn't that you didn't love them anymore; it was just that you were in a bad place in your head."
The girls.
Fuck.
Whatever was left of my heart dissipated with that comment.
"Shoulda just told them I was dead."
I reached for my door, pulling it open.
"Why the fuck would we ever do that?"
I turned back to him, looking him square in the eye, willing him to see the truth in my words.
"Because it's true."
With that, I dropped into my seat, turned the engine, and reversed right the fuck out of there, my pulse pounding in my temples, throat, wrists, fast enough that it was alarming, that it was making my head start to swim.
I wasn't going to lose it.
I wasn't going to fucking let that happen.
I needed to shut it down.
But even as I tried to, tried to shove all of it back in the box, I knew I couldn't do it.
I needed to scream.
I needed to hit something.
No.
Not hit.
No more hitting.
Not even a motherfucking pillow.
Never again, goddamnit.
I couldn't go there.
But I needed to stop the cycle.
My head was swimming.
My vision was going tunnel.
My heart was a jackhammer in my chest.
If I didn't do something soon, I was going to lose it.
And I didn't even have a target for the rage.
Could the damage go collateral?
Could I become that monster who beat on someone innocent?
Without even knowing what was happening, I slammed the truck to park down the side along the building, hopping out, and storming up, hands down at my sides opening and closing, making nearly-bloody crescents in my palms.
Losing it.
I was fucking losing it.
I wrenched the door open, seeing one person inside browsing.
I reached into my wallet, pulling out a hundred, walking up to the guy contemplating different cock rings, and waved the money in his face. "Hundred bucks to come back in an hour," I offered.
There wasn't even a hesitation before he took it, pocketed it, and almost ran for the door. I met him there, turning the sign, and locking the door.
"Eli, what the hell are you doi..." Autumn started from her position behind the desk. But when I turned, her whole body seemed to stiffen, her eyes going confused. "What's the matt..."
"I won't hurt you," I said, words barely enunciated properly my jaw was clenched so hard, sending a grinding, shooting pain up into my temple.
"Ah, okay?" she said, brows drawing together as I started toward her, grabbing a few things off the shelves as I did so.
"Not like that," I clarified.
Her eyes drifted to my hands, taking in the items I had picked up as I got closer.
"Eli, do you want..."
"I am going to hurt you," I clarified, watching for any sign of hesitation. Even a parting of lips would have been all I needed to know to back the fuck off. "But not like that. This is your out," I offered, slamming the packages down on the counter at her side, towering over her, letting her take in the vibration that seemed to make the air around me shake. "Take it if you want it. No questions."
"I don't want it," she said almost immediately, confidently, trusting me fully when I hadn't done one single goddamn thing to warrant that.
"Got a room without windows?" I asked as I reached into the giant bowl of condoms she kept at the register with a sign that said 'Play safe' on it.
"Stock room," she told me, voice already airy.
She wanted it.
She wasn't just obliging me because I needed it.
She wanted it.
It was twisted of me, wrong, unfair even, to want her to want it, to be pleased by her enthusiasm for me to hurt her.
But as soon as I walked into the store, understanding my intention, it clicked. It made sense.
It wasn't that I needed to get rid of the rage. I was pretty sure that history - even very recent history - proved that that wasn't even an option. It was going to come. It wasn't even always going to be triggered on command, or by passing by something that made me furious. The more I denied it, the better the chance for it popping up more randomly.
I never stopped to consider before that the solution wasn't to tamp it down. I didn't even see that there was another option.
To let it out.
With control.
To harness it.
Would there be pain?
Yes.
But catharsis as well.
I could release it, little by little.
I could use it, then let it the fuck go.
I could bring a small amout of pain as the rage drained from me.
Then I could bring pleasure to her, to me, to us both simultaneously, washing the rest of it all away.
Then starting fresh all over again.
"Let's go."