Risk: A Military Stepbrother Bad Boy Romance (10 page)

We broke up for the third time a week before I was supposed to deploy. And that was the last time I saw her.

Just about the last time anyone else ever saw her: I found out from a few buddies still in training weeks later that she had overdosed within a few days after the break up.

No one even thought to tell me.

Or maybe they were trying to protect me.

Whatever it was, I hated it—hated losing her, hated the thought of how her final moments must have been: strung out on a couch, the couch of someone who didn’t know her or care about her—this was her dealer—her arms scratched up, torn up, destroyed by needles, feeling her life’s energies slip away as she disappeared into the darkness of the final abyss…

That was the path that I knew waited for Dakota if she didn’t stop now. She was family. I couldn’t let it happen to her.

If not for her… Then for Sarah.

SARAH

Damien and I avoided each other on Sunday, as if out of a pre-existing agreement. I had to go to work anyway, and god knows I was already exhausted from my wild weekend—there was no way I had the energy for a long, drawn out discussion about our relationship or the argument that might result from it…

And there was no way I had the energy for the passionate encounter that might come next. There was no way I could take Damien again: my body was already sore and aching from our lovemaking, after all… My flesh was swollen and throbbed with each step I took as I arrived at my job.

I work in a pet store on the other side of town. Sundays are usually pretty busy days, though I rarely actually have to do much of anything: it’s mostly families with kids who come. The kids want to look at the fish, the gerbils and hamsters, and when it’s puppy season, you can bet we’ll be packed with little whipper-snappers begging their parents for a new dog…

But today, it was surprisingly quiet. And that was good, because I needed the rest.

As I arrived, I donned my green smock, imagining what Damien would think if he saw me wearing this dowdy thing. Well, he didn’t need to be with me all the time.

Mitch arrived after an uneventful hour with a big bag of French fries and two milk shakes. We split the fries and I told him about last night.

“Oh. My. GOD,” he all but screamed, covering his own mouth as if to keep from wailing.

“God, keep it down…” I murmured. “It’s not that big of a deal.”

“Um, yeah, yeah, it IS a big deal,” Mitch declared. “Not only did you just lose your virginity, FINALLY, but you…”

He looked around, catching sight of a family of four standing not far from us—the parents glowered disapprovingly at my friend and Mitch smiled sheepishly, waving at them and lowering his voice.

“But you lost it to your brother. That’s incest, Sarah! You’re so bad!”

“No, it’s not incest,” I scowled. “It’s not. He’s my stepbrother.”

“That’s almost as bad…” Mitch murmured, looking away from him. His black eye from the previous night was still visible. I decided to change the subject.

“Does it hurt? Your eye, I mean.”

“Yeah. No. I mean, it’s fine,” he said with a sigh, though I could see tears shining in his eyes. He had been bullied ever since we were kids, since before he came out. But now, it seemed to be getting worse and worse.

“You should tell the school,” I offered, for like the seventh time. “After all, this is, like, a violation of your civil rights…”

Mitch just rolled his eyes.

“Honey, this is Laramie, Georgia. They don’t give a damn about a sixteen-year old fag’s civil rights. They might just send me to Pray-Away-the-Gay camp. Besides… Teddy is the police chief’s son. There’s no way they’d do something that might jeopardize his chances of going to some big state school and playing football and date raping his way to graduation.”

I bit my lip. I knew he was right, but the truth sucks to hear sometimes. Teddy was indeed the son of Police Chief Oliver Richards. Richards was a good friend of my father’s, which made sense—a lawyer and a cop, they had had a number of run-ins over the years and eventually, I knew, developed a respect that soon became—collaboration? That was the wrong word. But I knew that unless it had the approval of my father and Richards, little got done in this town.

Small things would happen if Richards, or by extension, dad, didn’t like what you were up to: cops might show up, telling you that you needn’t a permit for your café, for your parking lot, or maybe that your car’s license plate was out of date. And then, low and behold, a different license plate would turn up affixed to the back of your car and you’d be fined, not to mention condemned to an afternoon at the DMV… I couldn’t say which fate was worse.

“I guess I’ll just…” Mitch continued, trailing off.

“Just what?”

He blushed and smiled.

“Oh, I don’t know. Wait till college to be happy, I guess.”

“God, that’s such a depressing thought!” I exclaimed.

“What? You mean you’re not doing the same? You’re miserable here too!”

I hesitated. If you had asked me that a few weeks ago, I would have answered, yes, enthusiastically, yes—I couldn’t wait for my life to really
start
once I got out of this town.

But now… With Damien… I didn’t know anymore.

“I don’t know…” I started, trailing off. Mitch could tell what I was thinking from the look in my eye. He always could.

“You’re thinking about Damien!” he declared. “You’re thinking about your step-brother, you hussy!”

We both giggled at the word “hussy.” Again, the family in the shop shot us a deadly look. Finally, they drifted out the door, not having bought a single thing. We both burst out laughing.

“Did you see…” Mitch started.

“…the way they looked at you when you said hussy?” I finished his sentence for him, giggling still, uncontrollably. I lived for these moments, hanging out with Mitch, laughing at stupid things. The silly things that were an indispensable, ubiquitous part of small town life.

I watched him leave and then, to my surprise, watched him meet someone on the other side of the street. A tall figure, wearing a hoodie—a hoodie from our high school.

“Who the hell is…”

I couldn’t see the face, but I could see Mitch standing on his tip toes to kiss the stranger. The stranger pushed him away and they set off together, down the street.

The stranger turned to look back over his shoulder and my eyes widened when I recognized his face.

Teddy Richards. Mitch’s bully. The police chief’s son. What the hell was going on? Oh, man, Mitch was going to have a great story for me tomorrow.

That was the last time I ever saw Mitch alive.

DAMIEN

One of the first things I did when I arrived in Laramie, this hell-hole of a town—the second time, I mean, not the first, since I didn’t know any better then and since I didn’t have any money of my own—was the swing by a music store and buy a guitar.

Something I learned while overseas is that music makes life easier. It makes the shitty parts of life easier to swallow. It makes the better parts better. You need music, even if you don’t think you do. And you’d better get some in your life as soon as you could.

My guitar was cheap and used, but it was a work horse. I had begun to stay up late, practicing, strumming—nothing in particular: chords and progressions at first to warm up my fingers, and then a few familiar songs. Some folks songs—simple ones at first—“If I had a Hammer,” and then later, “The Sound of Silence,” and other stuff from the sixties.

But I was beginning to write my own stuff, too. I was playing in a park after class one afternoon—I don’t remember where Sarah was—probably doing homework like a good girl—after all, this was in the week before we had slept together and before I had corrupted her—when a guy in ripped jeans with a beard that made him look like some absurd cartoon character approached me.

“Hey, man,” he said, lifting his hand in greeting. “You’re pretty solid. How long have you been playing?”

I had just shrugged. “On and off, two years? I started when I was deployed.”

He shot me a grin. “Oo-ra. I did embassy duty in Tanzania. What about you?”

A fellow Marine. Even though he didn’t look it, with the beard and sloppy clothes, not to mention the few extra pounds he had put on, primarily in the belly area—but he was at least ten years older than me, so it had to be forgiven.

“Iraq. Three years.”

“Right in the shit,” my new friend murmured. He offered me his hand.

“I’m Lance Powell. Listen, I’ve got a small band—we’ve been looking for a new guitarist, since our guy just moved out of town.”

I raised an eyebrow.

“We play folk, indie shit, stuff like that—mostly acoustic but if you wanna’ get wild, we’re down for that too. We’ve been playing colleges and universities and shit like that…”

“What, you mean you’re not signed?” I asked sarcastically, putting my guitar aside. I plucked a pack of cigarettes out of my pocket, lit one, and offered Lance another. He accepted it, and took a seat next to me on the park bench.

“Yeah, man, we’re a signed band and everything and I’m scouting a new guitarist in a fucking park,” he laughed.

“I’d check it out,” I said finally. “No promises—I can’t say how long I’m going to be in town. I’m just finishing up my GED and then I’m out of here.”

“Sure, man, no pressure. Ain’t no one want to spend too much time in Laramie—hell, I’d get out of here too if I didn’t have two kids and a woman who says they’re mine.”

I laughed wryly as I took a drag on my cigarette.

Sarah found me then—again, I don’t remember where she was—with Mitch in tow.

“Come on, Damien!” she called, gesturing towards me. “Let’s go home.”

“Your girlfriend?” Lance had asked.

“No. My sister.”

“Well, either way, I won’t compliment her ass.”

“Much obliged, Marine.”

We exchanged numbers and Lance told me where they practiced—in his basement, in a run down townhouse about a mile from the Logan estate. I had been going there after school for several days, playing for a few hours with the band until my fingers were sore, practically bleeding even. Then, I’d drift home to dinner with my “family”…

And by family, of course, I meant Sarah, Dakota when she was there, my mom, and Harry—who was often late, and always drunk.

The Monday after the dance, after Sarah and I had first gotten together, I found myself in my room, propped up against the wall, strumming slowly on the guitar. It was getting near evening. I had avoided Sarah at school, which wasn’t hard—she had a test right after lunch, and so she had spent all of it in the library, studying. I guess she hadn’t gotten much studying done over the weekend.

And I guessed I knew whose fault that was.

As my fingers danced over the strings, I let my mind wander. What the hell was I really trying to do here in this goddamned town? I wasn’t working, wasn’t getting ahead besides getting my GED. I had Sarah, but who knew how long that would last…

Sarah. The smell of her skin, of her hair, the touch of her finger tips: awkward teenaged hands, trying to make me feel good, trying to do what she must have seen in the movies or in porn. Did she even watch porn? I wanted to watch porn with her. I wanted to corrupt her. I felt like a bad man, an evil man, but I wanted to corrupt her purity, to make her wild, and then to feed on that sweet, sweet wildness…

That’s what Jenna had done to me, after all. That’s what we had: she found me when I was just a kid, and she was determined to make me wild, as wild as she was. I’m glad she didn’t succeed, of course, because then I might be dead now.

But I could make Sarah wild without hurting her. It would do her good to get wild. She was already on her way, I supposed—having sex with her step-brother was a pretty damned good first step.

But what was the next step? Maybe we’d go get tattoos together. Maybe we’d… I don’t know. There weren’t too many opportunities to get crazy in Laramie. It was the type of town you could get into trouble in, but not the type of town where that trouble would be fun. If your idea of trouble is robbing a liquor store, then sure. But if you want to stay out all night, howl at the moon like a wild animal, and wake up in a public park the next morning—Laramie had sadly few options for such indulgences.

I heard Sarah’s tell-tale steps coming up the stairs. I learned to recognize her steps immediately: they were much lighter than my mother’s or Harry’s, heavier than Dakota’s, and always quicker than everyone’s: Sarah had places to go. Things to do. She was on the mood, like a girl with a mission.

That was something I admired about her.

Something I loved about her.

Wait. Where did that thought come from? Love?

I needed to lock that down. That was what we had talked about. That was something that… No good was going to come from that. No, no, no, no.

She burst into my room. Tears were streaming down her face. I saw that she had tried to put some make-up on this morning (I knew she often didn’t wear make up; practically never, she had told me, because she felt like no one had ever taught her to put it on, and besides, she felt she had no one to impress) but now, it was smeared all over her face, deformed by her tears.

“Damien,” she wailed, collapsing onto my bed.

“What the hell is it?” I cried, tossing my guitar to the side with a loud twang. I mentally prayed that it would be fine, that I hadn’t cracked anything, as I wrapped Sarah’s body up in my arms, feeling her sobs wrack her bones, letting my own body move with hers as she whimpered, as she gasped for hair and shook.

“Damien,” she wailed again, this time quieter, her voice growing hoarse. “It’s Mitch. He killed himself, Damien. Mitch is dead.”