MAVERICK
My knuckles split as I hit the bag again and again. I don’t feel the pain. All I feel is the trickle of wet down my fingers and that the bag gets a little slippery. Everyone says not to hit these things with bare knuckles, but how else do you prepare yourself for a real fight?
Real life is a lot more painful. There aren’t gloves or wraps to protect you. All you have is yourself and your ability to block out the pain for longer than your opponent.
I’ve had a lot of practice at blocking out pain. I almost thought I’d become immune to it. Living my life in a numb state.
I thought I had no weaknesses left.
Until Octavia Royal blew back into my life.
I was a fool to think I had conquered pain and fear. Because now I realize that I was just living a half life. A life where I had just become used to the pain because that’s all I had left.
But now that she’s back, she’s buried herself under my skin, and for the first time I can remember, I’m afraid.
Truly afraid.
Because if my dad did kill hers, I think I might lose her. And without her, the only future I have is either turning into my dad or being buried.
I almost don’t want to know the truth, it’s why I haven’t looked at it too hard, but I can’t keep hiding from it. The guilt is eating me alive. She might say she doesn’t blame me for the actions of my father, but there is no way that she’ll look at me the same if it’s true.
If I was her, I wouldn’t be able to look at me at all. I’m basically his mirror image. I hate it about myself, but there is fuck all I can do about it.
I stop hitting the bag when the slick becomes too much to land a decent hit and lean back against the wall. All day I’ve tried to distract myself from the fact that I’m here. I’ve tried to spend as little time at home as I could since my dad nearly killed me, but leaving my mom here alone with him permanently just isn’t an option.
If we could be rid of him, life would be much simpler.
I leave my gym and grab a quick shower to wash off the blood and sweat. Mom asked me to be home today and I can’t say no to her. She might be just as bad as he is, but she’s still my mom. I’ve never been able to hate her the way I do him. Maybe that makes me weak, Dad sure thinks it does, but it’s not something I can change.
I pad downstairs and grab a bowl of cereal, glad for the quiet in the house. It’s rarely quiet. They’re usually either screaming at each other or my dad is in the basement so my mom blasts music to drown that mess out. It doesn’t matter that the basement is soundproofed, it’s impossible to ignore what happens down there.
Most of the time I’m just thankful it’s not my mom or Octavia down there. I’m aware that it makes me a terrible person to ignore it, but I’ve suffered too much to die at the hands of my father.
I have too much to live for now.
Unless he did kill Stone. If that’s the case… well, I don’t know what happens then.
Octavia is a better person than I am, a thousand times over, she probably wouldn’t hold it against me. But I’d hold it against myself.
She’s already too good for me, but I’m too selfish to let that be a reason to give her up… but this, I don’t think I’d ever recover if it’s true.
I finish eating, and rinse out my bowl, putting it on the draining rack by the sink when I hear my dad on the phone. He sounds pissed.
He walks into the kitchen, eyes dancing with rage as he slams his phone down on the counter. “You.”
The single word makes my blood run cold. “What did I do now?”
I try to sound unaffected, bored almost, but his sadistic grin tells me I failed. I grab a bottle of water from the fridge, turning my back to him, which I know is stupid, but I hate that he makes me feel like a scared little boy.
I am not as weak as he’d like to believe.
I hear his footsteps as he strides across the kitchen, and shout when he grabs my hair in his fist, dragging me out of the room toward the basement door.
“Stupid fucking children! None of you know what you’ve gotten yourselves into. It’s time for you to learn.”
“What the fuck are you talking about?” I shout as the door slams closed behind me, my hands gripping his, trying to release his hold as he drags me down the steps.
The click of the light switch is all I hear before the pitch black room flickers as the overhead lights come on, bathing the room in an awful yellow light. He throws me to the ground, the crunch of my knees hitting the concrete echoes in the space. I groan at the pain, though it’s only a shadow of the pain I’ve endured at his hands, before I look around the room.