“Mind your own business, you fucking psycho!”
“You squandered every cent down the drain. Booze, gambling, cheap women, and coke. You brought down a whole empire, Hen. Too damn bad it was your own.”
“You’re lying.”
“Well, you’d be too drunk to know, wouldn’t you.”
I pull out my cell phone and offer it to him. “Go ahead, call the police.” I stare at the blade in my hand and smile before turning to him. “I won’t even wipe my fingerprints off the evidence.”
Henry blinks at me, his one remaining functioning eye focusing on my phone. Hesitation and fear flash in his eye, and then I hear the faint shushing sound of liquid. I peer at Henry's filthy pajama pants to the big wet spot on his groin and quickly pooling yellow piss on the floor dangerously close to the toe of my shoe.
“Aww, Hen, did you just piss yourself? I’ll add diapers to the grocery list and make sure someone picks them up for us.”
“Where am I supposed to go?” he whimpers, looking up at me. “All I have is Wainscott Hollow. I don’t have any family or anywhere to go,” he pleads.
“I know exactly how you feel,” I tell him in mock empathy.
I pull a hundred from my wallet and drop it so it slowly flutters down to his lap.
“I don’t care, Henry, as long as you’re out of my house. Shelters in the city can get pretty crowded, but I’m sure you can find a McDonald's bathroom to clean yourself up, and maybe they’ll take pity on you and give you a job.”
Henry’s hands are stained with blood and dirt, and the half-moon crescents of his fingernails are black. “Please, Heath. Have some mercy. I’ve got nowhere to go.”
My foot connects with his face as I tug my leg from his grasp, but I pull back, not wanting him to contaminate my clothes. “I might have shown you mercy at one time, Henry. I believe there was a point when I thought maybe we could have been brothers, but that time has come and gone. Now get out of my house.”
“Please. I’ll do anything you want. I’m begging you.”
If I were a lesser man, I could think of a few depraved tests I could put him through, but truth be told, Henry Shaw means so little to me that I don’t want to waste my time dealing with him.
Chapter 13
Heath
Her room is the same as it was the day I left Wainscott Hollow. The same as the last time I laid in her bed and stroked her hair, inhaled her scent as we dreamed of our future together. In here, it’s as if the years haven’t passed at all. Time hasn’t moved, and nothing but the changing tides and the winds, and the rise and fall of seasons, indicates we’ve moved forward. Her room is the same, but all of us, we’re unrecognizable from the three Shaw siblings who graduated Fairmont and ran through the great halls of Wainscott Hollow under the watchful eye of their father.
Kat’s old clothes from high school still lie tucked away in her drawers. I lift out a yellow sweater, an old favorite because of the way it contrasted her eyes and made them look even bluer.
I inhale her scent, and my knees almost buckle at the onslaught of memories that besiege me. The entire manor is in disarray, unrecognizable from the home it was before, but Kat’s room remains like a shrine. An homage to the beautiful young and innocent woman she was. Her brush still sits on the chest of drawers laced through with strands of her flaxen hair. In a moment of carnal depravity, I yank open the small top drawer that used to house her bras and panties. White cotton, black lace, red silk. I pull out a cotton pair, bring them to my nose, and inhale deeply. Even though they’re clean, my cock is instantly hard at even the memory of her scent. I take them out and sniff them one by one as a jealous seed festers in my gut, bubbling and growing until I want to tear my hair out, screech into the void, and curse the gods for separating me from the other half of my heart.
I tuck the black lace ones into my pocket and move to the makeup table. Her perfume sits in its usual place as if she just ran out one day without packing and never looked back.
Vanilla. Soft, seductive, and simple. This scent is still my favorite and does unnamable things to my libido. I used to eat breakfast at a bakery in the city because of this scent. When you opened the door, it would envelop you, and I’d sit there and drink my coffee just to be near an aroma that reminded me of her. I’d linger at a small table staring out the window at the rush of people pushing past each other, always in a hurry, while I sipped my coffee and savored Kat’s scent, even if it was coming from a pastry. I never ordered one or asked which delicacy was responsible for the aroma because nothing would satiate my hunger for Kat, no substitutes, no proxies, no one-time distractions. Kat is my poison, my drug of choice, and I’d rather be sober, empty, and alone than waste my time on knockoffs that do nothing for me.