Risk: A Military Stepbrother Bad Boy Romance (7 page)

“I never thought about it that way,” I said with a laugh, reaching for his hand and knowing that I would have to let it go as soon as we came to a place where we could be seen…

DAMIEN

We found Mitch after our tryst in the parking lot, looking lost.

“Where were you guys?” he demanded. Tear stains were streaked down his face and his hair was mussed up. He had a black eye and his lip was swollen.

“Mitch!” Sarah squealed. “What the hell happened to you?”

He let out a choked sob, like a wounded animal. Sarah ran to him, threw her arms around him, and cradled his head against her chest as he sobbed.

“Was it those guys from last week?” I growled. “The jocks from the cafeteria?”

Mitch didn’t answer. Sarah glanced back at me. She nodded.

This pissed me right the fuck off. I wanted to do something. I wanted this to stop, and I wanted this to stop now.

“Mitch?”

“Yeah,” he finally said, his words coming in forced gasps. “Yeah, it was them. It was Ted and all them…”

“Ted?”

“He was one of the ones from the other day,” Sarah said quietly.

“Point them out to me,” I said, taking off my jacket and tossing it to Sarah. I unbuttoned the top few buttons of my shirt and rolled up my sleeves.

“No, Damien, don’t do anything—“ Mitch cried. “You’ll just get in trouble and it’ll be worse for me…”

“Not if I make them come out here and fight me like fucking men. And not if I kick their teeth in and put the fear of god into their sorry asses. Point them out to me.”

“Wait here, Mitch,” Sarah said softly, draping my jacket around her friend’s shoulders. I followed her back into the gym.

“Are you sure you want to do this?” she asked softly, holding onto my arm. I thought that was dangerous—her touching me like that—but damn near no one here knew who I was. I hadn’t really met anyone outside of my GED class and none of them were here. They weren’t really the dancing types—at least not at a high school dance like this.

“I don’t want to do it, but I’m going to anyway,” I growled. “Where are they?”

“Damien…”

“Where are they?”

She sighed and pointed to a group of three boys across the gym. Each one had a thin slip of a girl hanging off their arms. They were laughing, guffawing, punching each other in the shoulder—good ol’ boys will be boys, I guessed.

I marched right up to them. They saw me coming and I saw the smiles run away from their faces as I approached.

“Gentlemen,” I said, my voice full of ice and daggers. “I understand you had a run in with my friend Mitch over there.”

“So what if we did?” the one I remembered as Ted replied, a bravado-filled sneer on his lips. I didn’t believe the bravado, though.

“Let’s step outside and settle this like men.”

The boys exchanged looks. I glanced at my watch.

“I don’t have all night. Are you going to come outside and work this out with me or are you going to be pussies? You’re three big guys. You’re bigger than me. What’s there to be scared of?”

I turned to the girl closest to me.

“I wouldn’t go home with this one tonight, if I were you. He’ll probably be too scared to go downtown.”

She giggled and her boyfriend flushed.

“Fine,” growled Ted. “Let’s go and ‘talk.’”

I turned on my heels and marched out. They followed me out into the parking lot.

“I thought I told you boys not to be harassing Mitch anymore. Was any part of that unclear?”

They didn’t say anything. I scowled.

“Do you bastards fucking speaking English? What part of that was un-fucking-clear?”

“You’re not the boss of me,” one of them spat out. Before he could say anything else, I turned on my heels and flung my leg into his face, my heel colliding with his jaw. It wasn’t the kind of move I would try in a regular fight, but I wasn’t afraid of these guys.

He went sprawling to the ground and the two others—Ted and his friend—immediately put up their fists.

Ted rushed me and I caught him, working my arms under his. He was bigger than me, but you know what they say—the bigger they are, the harder they fall. I was definitely stronger than him, though, or at least I knew how to use what strength I had on another person better than he did. I worked my foot behind his ankle and lifted him up before pivoting and dropping him on the ground. He gasped as he collided with the concrete and gasped again when I dropped my knee into his gut.

From there, I pushed off of Ted’s bruised body and launched myself into his friend, catching him by the legs. The kid seemed to know some wrestling and he sprawled, falling forward onto my body. I still caught one of his legs, though, and I was still on my feet: I drove him forward into a parked car, slamming him hard against the car door and fired a few quick punches into his gut before he slumped over.

The boys were reduced to nothing more than a chorus of groans and half-hearted, half-hidden sobs. Pathetic.

“It doesn’t make you a big man to bully some kid,” I growled, glaring at their bodies, tossed to the ground like ragdolls. “It fucking doesn’t.”

They didn’t say anything. Of course. They were all ashamed. They should be.

“Damien…” I heard Sarah start to say. I glanced over my shoulder and nodded at her. I was going to have a little more fun before I was done.

Once of the kids tried to sit up and I kicked him, my freshly shined leather shoe colliding with his already bruised jaw. This was Ted, the one who I took for the ringleader.

“Damien!” Sarah cried. “That’s enough. You’ve made your point. They won’t bother Mitch again.”

“Is that right?”

No answer greeted me, and I was ready to wring an apology out of their sorry asses, but Sarah grabbed me hard by the arm.

“Damien, please. Let’s go. We need to go. Before someone sees.”

I sighed and turned away from the bullies. Mitch’s face was pale and he looked over his shoulder every few moments, half-panicked.

“I think one of the teachers is coming over here…”

“It’s too bad you boys got into a fight with each other,” I called back to the bullies as we took off jogging towards my car. “It’s too bad you’re going to have to tell that to whoever finds you—or else.”

A groan told me that they understood what I meant, what I was threatening: if they told anyone that I had beaten them up, I’d come back for them. Harder. Meaner. Bloodier.

We made it to my car and all tumbled in. In my rearview mirror, I could see a teacher or a chaperone or someone standing over the pile of bruised bodies, peering down at their pathetic faces.

As much as I wanted to stay around and watch, I knew Mitch and Sarah would want to get the hell out of there. So, without further ado, we peeled out of the parking lot and into the night, screeching rubber the only thing the herald our disappearance.

We sped into the night sky and Sarah put her hand on my leg.

“Damien… Thank you… But you didn’t need to hurt them like that.”

“It pisses me off,” I growled. “Assholes like that beating up someone defenseless.”

I glanced back at Mitch in the back seat.

“No offense, Mitch.”

“None taken. I appreciate it. But… I don’t think it’s going to stop.”

“Why’s that?”

“Ted’s dad is the chief of police. He can do just about whatever he wants in this town. It doesn’t matter. No one’s going to stop him.”

“What do you mean? If he commits a crime…”

“Then who’s going to investigate it?”

“The police.”

“Who work for his father,” Mitch said, by way of conclusion. I didn’t like that sort of thinking but I couldn’t argue with his line of reasoning. He knew more about this town than I did, after all.

“Then I’m going to have to keep coming back after them, I guess.”

“Damien, I don’t want you fighting like that.”

“You’re not my mother,” I grunted. “Or my girlfriend.”

That shut Sarah up pretty well. It was mean, I knew. But I was mad and I was amped up from fighting. I didn’t realize how much I had missed the adrenaline—how much I had missed the rush of going into battle, the rush of exerting my will, physically, over another man—the rush of seeing him break, of seeing the moment in his eyes when his will is broken, when he knows that he’s helpless, that he could die right now and no one would be able to prevent it… It was like a drug and I had gone cold turkey. And now, like an addict—I had gotten a taste again.

Fortunately, it seemed like Laramie was the kind of town that could give me more than just a taste of the stuff I needed.

I dropped Mitch at his parents’ home, an unassuming little bungalow on the other side of town, far away from the well-manicured historic downtown that I had first met Sarah in, the neighborhood where the Logan house was.

“Good night, guys. Damien… Thanks again for sticking up for me like that.”

“Don’t mention it, kiddo.”

I watched Mitch trace his way up the dark path to the door. As soon as he was inside, we started off.

“Are you mad at me?” I asked Sarah.

“No.”

“When a woman says she’s not mad at you, that means she is.”

“You really had to rub it in, didn’t you? You’re not my boyfriend.”

“I’m not.”

“I know that, goddamnit,” she cried and I saw tears glistening in her eyes in the darkness. “But that doesn’t mean you have to fucking make a big deal about it. You don’t have to remind me.”

“Do you want to be my girlfriend?” I asked. I wasn’t even heading home. I was driving around in circles, heading out of town a ways and then looking for a place to turn back. This was obviously a conversation we needed to have and not one I wanted to have at her father’s house.

“I don’t fucking know what I want, Damien…” she said, her voice on the verge of breaking. “I already told you—I feel like I’ve fallen harder and faster for you than anyone I’ve ever known and it’s all the worse because I can’t have you.”

“You shouldn’t be worried about getting a boyfriend right now, silly. You’re going to college. You need to focus on that. You shouldn’t be distracted.”

“Who says a boyfriend would distract me? And besides, I wasn’t worried about getting a boyfriend. Not till you came along.”

“So, it’s my fault? It’s my fault that I can’t be your boyfriend but I’m just so charismatic and sexy that you can’t control yourself?”

I saw a smile starting to play on her lips. There we go. That’s what I was looking for.

“Mea culpa, I guess,” I said with a laugh. I saw a sign out of the corner of my eye for an exit off the road leading up to a bluff overlooking the town. I took it and in silence, the car pierced the darkness, entering a forest preserve, the pale glimmers of neon orange signs guiding our ascent up the hill.

“Where are you taking me?” she asked, peering through the darkness. I liked when she looked confused. I liked the way my little sister peered into the inky blackness of the night, of the forest, trying to make out what was going on.

“I don’t know.”

I waited a moment and then asked: