1. Chapter 1

I hated the fucking winter. It was too damn long. Technically, it was spring, but my body couldn’t tell as I shivered my ass off. Wearing layers to stay warm was a pain in the ass and made movement hard. I liked to be in loose clothes, not constricted by scarves, hoodies, and jackets.

I leaned against the building in the alley, tucked away from prying eyes, smoking a cig, waiting.

Despite the frigid temperature, the overflowing dumpster next to me reeked, and I had to swallow back the acid forming in my stomach, rising in my throat.

“Hurry the fuck up,” I mumbled, patting my pocket to make sure the bag was still there.

When he was ten minutes late, I lit up another smoke, ran a hand through my hair, and paced around the garbage.

“Come on, asshole. I need the money.”

Movement suddenly caught my eye, so I dropped my smoke, stepped on it, and waited for my buyer as he limped over to me. He wore a black surgical mask over his face, so I couldn’t fully see what he looked like. Was he sick or hiding his identity?

“You got ’em?” he asked.

I nodded and pulled out the baggie holding thirty small white pills of OxyContin . My friend Storm, who worked at a pharmacy, would steal the meds, and I would push them, splitting the profits sixty-forty. He took the biggest risk, so he got the bigger profit.

We didn’t do it all the time, and we alternated which drugs we sold, but it was enough to keep ink on my body, food in my belly, and a roof over my head without having to hold a day job. And it was a hell of a lot better than the panhandling I used to do. Three to four deals a month was enough to cover my expenses. Not all the drugs we peddled made this much cash, but Storm and I pushed the expensive stuff when we could.

“Thank fuck, man. I can’t take this pain, and my doctor won’t prescribe them to me anymore.”

Whatever. I didn’t need his fucking backstory. “You got the cash?” I asked.

“Twenty-four hundred, right?”

“Yep.”

He pulled out a wad of cash in hundreds, fifties, and twenties, and counted it out into the palm of my hand. Once he reached twenty-four hundred, I closed my fingers around the stack and handed him the baggy.

“Fucking expensive, but it’s worth it,” he said.

“I give discounts to returning customers. Text me when you’re ready, and I’ll knock off two hundred.”

He shoved the bag into his pocket. “Thanks, man.”

When he left, I stepped out into the bright sunlight of Baltimore, which did nothing to warm me up, and made my way toward Storm’s place to pay his share .

I hopped onto the bus, enjoying the temporary warmth of the heaters, and rode for five stops before getting off.

The apartment complex, which was a hundred times nicer than mine, was two blocks up. I stepped up to the locked glass doors to the lobby and pushed the buzzer for apartment number 813.

“Yo?” said a voice on the intercom.

“It’s me.”

The buzzer sounded, and I let myself in. I stepped into the elevator and took it up to the eighth floor. When I reached the apartment door, I knocked, and it opened a few seconds later.

Storm was taller than me, but then again, everyone was fucking taller than me. He had a mop of curly golden-brown hair on the top of his head, pierced ears, and a septum ring. He was shirtless, wearing sweats, slung low on his hips. I tried to ignore the muscles in his back under smooth, lightly tanned skin as he walked toward his living room and sat down on his sofa.

His place was so much nicer than mine. I guess it paid to have a job and make cash on the side. In my previous life, I didn’t need to work, coming from a wealthy family. But I detonated my life and ended up with nothing.

I struggled to find work and stick with it. When I say I have nothing, I mean it. I had no driver’s license or any documentation to prove who I was, so any small job I’d held was all under the table and hard to come by.

I’d known Storm since high school. We’d been friends for years. Once upon a time, I’d been attracted to him, but I hadn’t been out at that point. He knew later on, but I was no longer as drawn to him as I used to be.

When I’d been desperate for money after having an abundance of it, I fucking struggled. So, I finally reached out to him for some help. His scheme got me back on my feet and off the streets. Well, he did as well as Cueball, my friend and roommate.

Storm lit a blunt and handed it to me. “Wanna hit?”

“Thanks.” I took it from his offered hand and pulled a drag from it, holding in the smoke for several seconds before blowing it out and handing the blunt back to him.

“He pay what we asked for? ”

“Yep.” I counted out Storm’s share on the coffee table. “One thousand, four hundred, and forty.”

“Dope. I’ve got some Adderall and Xanax for next week. Come on by on Wednesday night.”

“I’ll be here.”

He took another drag off the blunt, looking at me with creamy brown eyes. “Have you tried to reach out to your mom? To, you know, live a life of luxury again, instead of selling for me? It’s been years, man. Maybe she’s forgiven you. She could at least give you your ID back.”

“I tried once, two years ago. She made it clear she wanted nothing to do with me and didn’t let me get a fucking word in edgewise. It’s been five years, man. There’s no reconciling.”

Only Storm knew of my story because I’d gone to him when Mom kicked me out of the house. He’d still been living at home with his family, and they let me stay for a couple of days before I was on my own.

Storm also knew what I’d done to get the boot, and he still stuck it out with me. But over the years, we sort of drifted apart, not as close as we once were after we became more supplier and seller than friends. Now it was more of a professional relationship.

“You can hang if you want,” he said as I stood.

Since dealing, I’d kept my walls up when I was around Storm. I couldn’t explain why. I had walls for everyone I met, but it shouldn’t have been like that for Storm. He really did try to reach me, but I kept pulling away.

“Can’t. Gonna meet up with a friend. We’ll hang next weekend. There’s a club I wanna check out,” I said, but we both knew I wouldn’t reach out.

“Sounds good.”

We slapped hands, shook, then fist-bumped.

“Later,” I said.

My pocket felt heavy with almost a thousand in cash, giving me a sense of warmth and security that I could pay my bills this month, especially with rent due in eight days.

When I left the apartment building, I hopped onto the bus again, which would take me closer to Old Town Mall, where I would meet Cueball and Stone, who were skating .

Fifteen minutes later, I reluctantly left the warmth of the bus and stepped out into the cold again. I shivered and shoved my cold hands into my jeans pockets as I walked toward the abandoned outdoor shopping mall. It’d been neglected since the 1980s, falling to ruin as the plant life tried to take over, turning it literally into a concrete jungle. It was like right out of some dystopian movie.

Years ago, some skaters gutted a couple of buildings and turned them into a place where people could skate inside to get out of the cold or snow.

I was the only one out of all of us who hated to skate. Give me a motorcycle or a sports car, driving fast on the highway or windy road any day over trying to balance on a narrow piece of fucking wood on tiny wheels.

I pined over my Ford Mustang Shelby . It had been royal blue and gorgeous. When I got kicked out, I wasn’t allowed to take it with me, either. All I was allowed to take were the clothes on my back since Mom had paid for everything, not that she gave me any time to grab shit.

When I stepped inside the abandoned and gutted store, filled with graffiti and skating ramps, blaring with some punk rock, I looked around to find my friends. My eyes landed on the ever-familiar bald head of Cueball.

I’d met Marco Maldonado, who we called Cueball, after living on the streets for a couple of months. He’d seen something in me and started chatting me up back when I was still panhandling. Each day, he’d find me, give me some cash, and soon we became friends. I had no idea what he saw in me or why he even cared, but I never questioned it, desperate for a friend and ally.

I’d been so fucking bitter and angry. Fuck, I was still bitter and angry, but Cueball put up with my ass. I needed him more than he would ever know. He probably did know because he seemed to know everything about everyone, especially me. All my protective walls were nothing to him.

Whenever I felt like my mental state was spiraling, he’d bring me back using this control I desperately needed.

I stopped for a moment, closing my eyes as I was suddenly hit with an unwanted memory. I tried shoving it away, but it was fucking insistent beast. These thoughts hit especially hard when I felt like my life was heading out of control .

I sit on my knees, naked, with a swollen cock and hands tied behind my back as I look up at the older man.

“Open your mouth, my blaze, my fire.”

His words warm my already heated skin. I love it when he calls me that. I instantly obey. I have no idea how he knows how much I crave to be controlled and told what to do. Like my life has been in complete chaos, and he just understands how to stabilize me and feed me a sense of calmness, like righting my upside-down world. Even more, he gives me the attention I’m starving for.

He looks down at me with firm but kind blue eyes. They are always kind when I obey. If I didn’t, they would turn hard, and he would punish me. I love to be punished as much as I love to be rewarded and praised.

His thick, hot cock, bitter with pre-cum, slides into my mouth. He pushes it all the way in until it hits the back of my throat, and his pubes tickle my nose. I gag and drool, but I breathe through it. It’s all for him. I want to choke for him. He is everything to me.

He fists my hair tightly and thrusts, making me gag again.

“You are such a good boy, my blaze. Look how much you love me to own you. Look how good you take my cock. Beautiful.”

A shudder travels through my body as the memory bubble bursts. It filled me with a surge of anger at my loss and being without him, despite him betraying me.

Cueball jutted his chin in greeting when I arrived. His intelligent amber eyes focused on me as if he could read my damn mind. He always gave that vibe. It’d been weird at first, like he saw into my very soul, but then I craved him to be mine, needing to be owned again.

For two fucking years, I’d had a crush on him. Eventually, I gave up. Cueball had no interest in me, or anyone, for that matter. It was futile even to try. Still, only he could keep me in my place and from spiraling into my anger and recklessness. Sometimes I even acted up just to have Cueball set me straight. It was all I could hope for.

I stood next to him, lit a smoke, and watched the skateboarders do their tricks. Stone was there with his new boyfriend, Stix. The two couldn’t have been more different. I didn’t fucking get it. Stone had hated Stix for the longest time, and because Stone was a friend, I had hated Stix, too. But suddenly, they were fucking, and Stix was hands-off.

I dug into my pocket and pulled out three hundred and fifty bucks, handing it to Cueball, who’d pay our rent. We used to share the place with Stone, but now Stone lived with Stix and Stix’s mom and sister.

“When are you going to get a real job?” Cueball said.

I took a long drag off my smoke. “Never.”

“You can’t deal forever.”

“I can and I will. No one’s going to fucking hire me, anyway.”

“You end up in jail, I’m not bailing you out.”

“What the fuck ever. I never asked you to do shit for me.” I didn’t know why I bothered to lie. He always read me like a book.

He pinned me with a hard amber stare. “Is that what you think?”

No . “Yep,” I said out loud instead.

“I could make you stop.”

I inwardly shuddered with visions of me on my knees for him, which I shut right the fuck down. It would never happen.

“Not stopping. I’ll need to be desperate to find a job, forced to work with people I fucking hate.”

While that was partially true, what I really wanted was to challenge his words. To dare him to try to make me stop. He was the only one I knew who could give me what I needed, but he refused to, and I didn’t know how to find someone else who would.

Movement by the front door caught my eye as soon as three dudes walked in who were friends with Stix. Because Stone was a part of Stix’s life, Cueball and I were forced to befriend them, too. I didn’t mind Pippin and Nacho so much. They kept to themselves mostly, skating or fawning over each other. Most importantly, they left me the hell alone.

Following behind them was Ajax. Tall and moody, with dark brown hair and eyes that matched.

It was Ajax who I hated the most.