10. Peris

My hands tremblein front of me as I stare down at them. Calloused and filled with random lines and veins, they’re now also stained with Abel’s skin cells.

I can’t see them, can’t feel them—not really. But I know they’re fucking there because I touched him.

I touched him.

“Goddamnit!” I scream. My hands dive into my hair to yank viciously, ripping follicles straight from my scalp. I’m choking on the beat of my heart, where it’s now permanently lodged in my esophagus, ensuring I spend every breath choking on the reality of what I’ve just done.

Because there’s no going back. I’ve gone and done it, and now I know what he feels like. How soft his skin really is. How his gray eyes have the smallest, microscopic specs of blue.

How his pale skin really does blemish the moment he’s touched with more than a gentle prod.

And it’s too much.

Abel Silver is everything I’ve always avoided.

On the outside, he’s small and wiry with a crooked jaw and equally fucked up teeth. Ugly in every sense of the word. On the inside, he’s even nastier. The brain inside his head is infected with the worst kind of disease known to man—selfish exploitation.

He doesn’t give a fuck who he hurts, what he does to anyone, as long as he gets what he wants. So, why the fuck did I fall for it?

I’ve known for far too long what he’s been trying to do. Deep down, I had a feeling. Recognized his motives, implied his actions to the end goal. And every piece fit like a bespoke fucking suit.

So, why? Why did I let him do this to me?

In all honesty, all I did was watch him mess around with some dude. Abel was right in his little porn comment. I have seen worse, albeit with vomit ending those escapades, but still. I’m not a goddamned nun—far from it.

I snort pathetically, swiping at the snot dripping from my nose with the back of my still-trembling hand.

It’s because he made it real. Made me feel… like I wasn’t all wrong on the inside.

The thought sits with me, heavy and burdensome, as I pull out of the parking lot I screeched into. A Linkin Park song comes on while I sit at a red light, so I crank the volume as high as it’ll go in my piece of shit Saturn. It crackles through the speakers, making my eye twitch, but I still tap my fingers to the beat of the song, hoping the more I try, the deeper I fall into it. Into anything to take me out of my head. Away from it all—and from him. Where he’s probably still in my bed with his little fucking hand on his little fucking cock.

My fingers clamp around the wheel, and the leather creaks under the pressure. I twist around, fingers completely bloodless as I stare out into the rapidly descending night.

The one time I decide to leave practice on time—and this is what I get.

Well, fuck that.

My car rocks against the ruts in the earth, made deep over many years of constant driving and parking, through rain, sleet, and snow. The small park court is lit up by a single streetlamp, chain nets clanking softly in the breeze.

Slamming into park, I jerk forward and let my head fall against the steering wheel. Each breath is forced, enunciated with extreme care so I don’t fall into the spell of the panic attack I feel sitting against my chest with a weight that is all too familiar.

But I refuse to succumb. Refuse to keep letting what… what Luke did drive my life. He took years from me, from Ma. Years we can never get back, but I won’t give him anymore.

I can’t.

I’d rather keep pretending it all never happened, but I’ve never been able to—only managed to shove it all down, buried and embedded far too deep to ever see the light again.

But… Abel.

Fucking Abel, man.

Little runt really set out to ruin everything because of one mistake I made—and it was that; a mistake. I’d take it back in an instant if I could, but life has never been the generous kind. We don’t get to do shit over. Remake decisions. Wish for anything.

What we have is what we get, and every fucking thing we do influences it all. And I tried—since Luke went to prison, and we left that life behind to move to Ardent—to be… better. To be the opposite of everything I had become, deeply entwined with aggression and malevolence.

I met Gabriel shortly after the move. To this day, I still haven’t a clue why he even tried to be my friend. I was an asshole and really just terrible to be around, but he saw through it and was there. He taught me how to be a decent friend—a better kind of person really, even if it always felt surface level.

And Abel went and undid every single coil I’ve rewound.

Vile perversion oozes out of my pores like pus in an infected wound, and fuck,the release of toxins feels euphoric.

I drop my head back against my seat, eyes scrunched shut as I lift to slam it back again and again until a different kind of pressure builds behind my eyes. One that hurts more than it stings.

Once the dizziness sets in, I stop to catch my breath, vision swarming with the whispers of darkness. I can’t feel this way. I can’t allow it back in—but it’s too late.

I’ve touched him, tasted his candy-sweetened breath. My touch will mottle his skin with bruises I have spent months thinking about. My room, my bed, my sheets will be stained with his sweat and cum.

And my cock is still fucking hard.