“What was I supposed to do?” Zane snapped and slapped Roach’s face with the back of his hand. He felt it on his own cheek, but he needed to unleash some violence or he’d choke. “You dragged me out there like fucking bait for wolves. I was only trying to survive, to distract them!”
Roach didn’t hit him back, as if he knew he deserved any punch thrown his way. “You’re right. I should have died with them in that fire. I’m not a good person, Zane.”
Zane had told him so many times, but he felt no satisfaction hearing Roach agree with him. How could this guy be such a self-torturing moron? It was making his hand itch for pain, and he slapped Roach again. “What you should have done is punched me in the gut and thrown me out the door for trying to steal your wallet. Everything would be different now if you’d acted like a normal person!”
Roach wouldn’t look at him, but his eyes glistened with unshed tears. “So it was stupid, but you can’t know how much your rejection stung! I wanted to hurt you just as much!”
Zane couldn’t believe this shit. “Have you been living under a rock? No, you’ve been in the damn closet, so you don’t fucking get to tell me how much it hurts when people reject you because of who you are!” His heart beat so fast, full of fury and sorrow, and he wasn’t even sure if it was his own anger that caused this, or if his body was in tune with Roach’s.
“I’m sorry,” Roach uttered, shaking his head. “I should have never hit on you.”
Zane broke into laughter and hid his face in his hands, the hold on his chest dispersing as his mind went back to the night they’d met, and how good it had been before Zane’s decision to pick Roach’s wallet had thrown everything off the rails. “Are you kidding me? I hooked and pulled you as if you were a fish waiting for me in a tank. You’re very easy, Roachie. But your apology isn’t good enough, and for what they did to me, it never will be. So get your ass up, let’s burn all this shit and turn a new leaf tomorrow, huh? Because I need to kill you, and to do that, I need this curse broken.” Yet he stroked Roach’s beard as he helped him up. He couldn’t stop the instinct to do so.
Roach took a deep breath and nodded, but seemed lost when his gaze settled on the box. “How do we start?”
Zane stretched and gestured at the open door. “Put your stuff on the bed, so we don’t accidentally trash it. The rest goes in the container behind the motel,” he said, capturing Roach’s gaze to make sure he’d been understood.
Roach showed no opposition and nodded, walking back into the room that would soon become far more peaceful. They didn’t speak much, and as it turned out, sorting wasn’t even all that hard because most of the boxes with stuff that had belonged to Roach’s dad and brother were still sealed with tape like little coffins for their possessions.
Zane tried to stop thinking about his brief talk with Roach, but it wouldn’t leave his mind, and in turn, he couldn’t help but see Roach in a different light. He didn’t know how he felt about all that. Roach wasn’t only a victim. He’d been a member of an outlaw motorcycle club, and he’d surely done terrible shit in his life. Yet with an abusive dad, a brother he had no love for, he wasn’t just a predator either.
He’d been the underdog of that pack of hyenas, and now didn’t even have his claws left.
They carried the boxes to the metal container like a two-person colony of ants. Every time Zane walked out, the sun was that bit higher, but it was still very early because only one person had left their room and driven off. The effects of coke had worn off though, and if it wasn’t for the focus on finishing the job at hand, Zane would have collapsed from tiredness. The heat had been replaced by the chill of September wind.
By the time Zane toppled the final box of trash into the container, his eyelids were drooping, but he leaned against the rim of the thing and glanced Roach’s way. “Ready to send it all to hell?” he asked and opened a canister of gasoline taken from a back room at the motel. He poured its contents all over the pyre without a second’s thought. He couldn’t wait to see the flames.
Roach stayed silent for a long time, so Zane entwined their fingers to give him the courage for that last step.
“Yeah,” he rasped in the end and pulled out a lighter. For a moment Zane wanted to stop him, just so he could be the one to destroy what was left of his tormentors, but Zane had already burned their bodies. Roach could have this. From the looks of it, he needed that.