Riot Act (Crooked Sinners)

by Callie Hart

Of course you’d be safe with Jonah. But Dad doesn’t have a fucking clue what he’s talking about. I’ve never been safe with my older brother. If only he knew the truth. Hours later, Jonah proves how little he’s changed. I wake up in the brand-new bed Dad bought me, sweating. He hasn’t made a sound, but I know he’s there. In the shadows. Waiting.

My heart races away from me as he bows his head, ducking the tiniest bit, purses his lips, and releases a trail of saliva from his mouth…that lands right on my pussy.

“Good girl. My good little slut. Come for me now. Come all over my dick. Give me what I want. Shhh. That’s it. That’s it. Good girl.”

To be Wren, to be anyone else for that matter, even for a few short seconds, seems like it would be such a release. Because, for those brief and fleeting moments, I wouldn’t have to be me.

I don’t need him to be someone else for me. I need him to be every inch himself if he’s going to make me forget everything that went down during break.

But being destroyed by Pax is way better than being eaten alive by the dark memories that threaten to claim me whenever I’m not around him.

We're alike, me and this girl.

I feel like I'm looking into the void, and people in possession of souls like ours don't sleep easily, I've found. Not at night. We prefer to sleep during the day, when the darkness can’t seep into our dreams.

“A bastard’s touch, the thought of you. Aye, a waking curse upon my days, I endure you like sun and rain, and both the heat and the cold you feel the same. I crawl atop the shattered panes that fell from the windows of the house you did destroy. And I relish the blood that seeps from me, even as I hate you, because it flows only through my wretched veins for you.”

“Eight-thirty. Come in and straight up the stairs. Do not pass go. Do not collect two hundred dollars. Say yes if you understand.”

I was stalked down its dank, winding pathways every night, chased and captured by hellish monsters, each of which were more terrifying than the last. They would always catch me. They would steal a piece of me and swallow it down, eating away at me night after night. They did it until there was nothing of me left. Then, and only then, did the night terrors stop.

Pax encompasses me. He always has. Every dark, angry, ugly part of him, wrapped up in such a devilishly beautiful package. He’s hostile and he’s hateful, and he wields his anger like a blade. There is nothing good about him. But when I’m with him, I can let go. I don’t think anymore. I don’t rage against my own inner pain. The waking nightmares that plague me every second of the day have no power over me in his presence. I used to crave him because of how he looked. Because of how he made me feel. Now, I crave him because, around him, I can surrender. I can feel nothing at all.

It isn’t until I’m climbing into my own bed, deliciously sore, my muscles melting off my bones, that I realize something: At no point did he wash me off of him. And he was still wearing the friendship bracelet.

In the small, dark corner of my soul that still wants things, I recognize that I’ve claimed her and she’s mine now.

I’ve decided that’s what Chase is now: a witch.

“Don’t worry,” I tell him. “I’ll look after her. I promise.”

She’s sleeping when I get back, curled up into a little ball. I take a photo of her, suspending the lens directly over her where she lies, tucked into the fetal position, and I know innately that it will be my favorite photo of all time; it could come out blurry as hell and super under exposed and I’ll never take a better one.

I have feelings for Chase. Big ones. Scary ones. Run-away-and-hide-in-a-dark-closet feelings.

No friendship bracelets around his wrist anymore.

“The path of least resistance doesn’t always mean taking the easiest option. Sometimes…it means that your soul finds its way home, toward something it loves, after you’ve held it back for too fucking long. So…do with that what you will, I guess.”

“The path of least resistance doesn’t always mean taking the easiest option. Sometimes it means your soul finding its way home, toward something it loves, after you’ve held it back for too fucking long.”

“I welcome the day I lose my mind, Chase. At least then, when I’ve truly lost it, I’ll be oblivious to the fact. I’ll just be crazy. Nothing in the world will matter anymore. I want you to be mine. I—I’m fucking in love with you, Chase. I want to learn how to show you that. I want to make you fucking believe it. ”