Page 49 of Locke

And that thought there—right fucking there—was what made him stop abruptly. Bile rose to his throat, followed by a violent churning in his belly. Rage, cold fucking rage, drove him out of that bedroom and away from the girl who was clearly fucking him up.

He took an icy shower, waiting for the cold to cool the rage, but it wouldn’t taper off. It kept roaring like a furnace inside him, the twisted thoughts of holes and that girl and fucking her in darkness so he could hide from the shame of it.

He called Jem.

He fucking called Jem.

And he said to him on that line before he hung up, “My men are picking you up within the hour. We need to talk.”

And so that was how an hour later he came to opening the front door of his brand-new apartment to Jem.

Jem.

The bully of his childhood.

The man who had once been a boy and told him what a weak baby he was.

Jem, who he had tried to prove wrong during a game of hide and seek in the middle of the bush near where he murdered Pearson just the other night.

Jem, who had watched him hide in a storm shelter in the hopes of proving him wrong.

Jem, who Locke had tried to win over right before the storm shelter door snapped closed above him, trapping him feet from predators who were waiting for their chance to lunge.

Jem—fucking Jem!—whom he was seeking help from.

And Jem looked nothing like the bully of the past, but a tormented man with tired eyes, who lost his fiancé and watched his baby daughter die—and dare Locke admit it, but he had felt no compassion for him when it had happened that many years ago.

Because that was the power of rage. It muted your empathy. It desensitised you to the plights of men who fucking hurt you. It made you carry a flame of resentment fuelled by that hurt until you wanted nothing more than for that person to be embroiled in the same pain you once felt. Until the tormenter became the tormented.

It was only when Locke dug a little deeper into Jem’s life that he realized it was not what he had thought it was. That Jem, too, was a victim ensnared in his own suffering.

That beneath it all, this boy was his friend, but he didn’t know how to be one after the Hole.

Jem was darkness, like him.

And now that Conor had been brought to the light, Locke had nobody else to turn to that would understand.

They stared at each other for several moments. Jem was dressed in his jeans, a grey sweater and brown plaid jacket, looking every bit like a Blackwater, pub-owning hillbilly. But a well-built hillbilly with dark, cropped hair and blazing blue eyes.

And for once, Locke only had a pair of suit pants on, unironed and missing a belt buckle. His chest was still damp from his cold shower, his hair in disarray. Jem’s brows shot up, the sight of Locke so dishevelled unexpected.

“You keep surprising me, Max,” he said. “One second I think you’re taking over the town and maliciously bankrupting old men and destroying their families, the next you’re actually operating a full-fledged kingdom of cartel type activity, hunting down predators and acting part-vigilante, like fucking Blackwater Batman. And now you’ve got just your suit pants on, and your hair’s not done, and that broken watch you’re always fucking wearing is absent, and that tattoo is visible for the world to see. Which means something is up.”

Locke blinked, absorbing his words with a blank expression. “Is there a question in there?”

“Am I next on your fucking hit list? Is that why I’ve been summoned out to the sticks where there is not one single person living within screaming distance?” Jem seemed antsy now, like he was considering he’d been trapped. “You know, Charlotte hinted something was up, and now you’re calling me out, and I’m feeling a little bothered.”

“I’m not collecting a pound of flesh from you, Jem. At least, not yet.”

“How sweet,” Jem replied, dryly. “Then what the fuck, Max? Why am I here?”

“To evaluate a situation,” Locke responded. “Guide me. Tell me if I’m doing something wrong.”

“Show me your situation.”

And that was how Jem was led across the vast apartment to the bedroom, where Locke opened the door and stepped aside, staring intently at Jem to take the next step.

Jem was wary at first, and who wouldn’t be? Locke was not a trustworthy man. To an enemy, he was death. This shit right here? Ominous as fuck, especially to Jem, and their history together involving the Hole? Well, it went a step beyond him being the bully in Locke’s earlier life.

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