Page 74 of Brutal
My hands on her shoulders. Her back against the wall. The hot little catch in her breath when I took her mouth. The way she kept those lips shut like defiance could save her. The way her body gave her away anyway.
I should have walked out sooner.
I should have never gone there in the first place.
Instead I stood in her home and breathed her in like she was my oxygen.
That’s not weakness. That’s hunger.
I know the difference.
The trouble is that hunger can make a man do foolish things.
I head for the shower. Cold water. No steam. No comfort. I stand under it until my skin numbs, but it still doesn’t wash her away.
By dawn, I’ve stopped pretending I’m going to sleep.
I dress in dark clothes—black jeans and a black button-down. No suit. Not today. I take the ring from the dresser where I left it and slide it onto my finger. The black metal catches the pale morning light. The key cut into its face looks almost simple from a distance.
It isn’t.
Neither am I.
I leave before the sun fully comes up.
I tell myself I’m going to assess risk.
She found the contractor. Someone went into her apartment. Nate called her a weakness because he saw the line I crossed, not because he knows anything I don’t. This is about loose ends. Exposure. Knowing how much trouble she can still cause.
That’s the story I feed myself on the drive over. It would almost be convincing if I believed it.
Her building comes into view just as the sky starts to lighten for real. I park across the street and kill the engine.
A delivery truck idles at the curb. A jogger runs by. A man in a suit walks too fast, his coffee jostling.
I sit in the car and watch her window.
Her curtains are open but I see no movement.
I shouldn’t be here.
I stay anyway.
Weakness.
The word triggers something.
Not memory at first.
Instinct.
A tightening in my shoulders. A familiar readiness in my body, the kind that used to come when my father stepped into a room.
My father doesn’t believe in softness. Not in boys. Not in grown men. Not in himself. He believes in pressure. In finding the precise point where a person stops pretending and shows you what they really are.
I’m seventeen.
The room is concrete. Bright lights overhead. Too bright. A drain sits in the center of the floor. Its purpose? It makes the room easy to clean.
