Page 244 of Vile Boys

Goose bumps scatter on my skin before I pull up my coat and run off to the car, jumping into the back seat as my father hits the gas.

But I still can’t help but look out the back window at the girl hovering over the man’s corpse, bawling her eyes out before a visceral scream can be heard.

It’s the kind of pain one can only feel once in a lifetime.

The kind of pain that haunts not just one but two souls.

Present

“There isnothing I wouldn’t do to turn back time …” I say, “So I could’ve saved him.”

I turn around so she can look at my chest. Her eyes gawk at the scars etched into my skin, a name which quite literally chains me to her.

Murphy.

Her last name.

“I carved this into my own flesh that night to remind me of what I’ve sacrificed. What it cost me. What I have to live with for the rest of eternity.”

She sucks in a breath, and tears well up in her eyes.

She looks completely shell-shocked.

But this is the naked truth.

“Why didn’t you tell her about the letters?” Caleb mutters from the doorway.

“Did you know?” Crystal asks him.

Caleb shakes his head. “I never saw much of the scars. I was only allowed to dab them, but he didn’t want me to look. And the letters … I only saw partially.” Caleb swallows, like he’s realizing for the first time how much Ares kept hidden from all of us.

“Because I didn’t want anyone to know what he’s done to me,” I say. “But I realize now I should’ve shown this long ago.”

I lick my lips and fish a knife out of my pocket. “This is the knife my father gave me to prove my worth to him. Instead, he used it to punish me by slicing my back open that very same night.”

I don’t hesitate to step closer, closer to the edge of oblivion, closer to the fringes where we both belong. I push the knife into her bloodstained hand as she begins to tremble.

“Every time I killed to oppose him, he would whip me raw. Every time I went against his rules, he would slice me open. Every time I tried to save those who didn’t deserve it in his eyes, he would hurt me.”

I grab her free hand and place it on the letters I carved into my skin.

“But this pain? This is my own. This is the pain I chose to endure.”

Her lip quivers. “Your father hurt you every time you disobeyed?”

I nod.

“This Ferry guy we killed,” she mutters, tears welling up in her eyes. “You knew your father would come after you, didn’t you?”

I nod. “No amount of his rage will stop me from punishing the people directly responsible for destroying my life …” I look into her eyes. “And yours.”

She shudders in place as her fingers slowly traipse over the scars on my chest.

“Your father punished you … because of my father and me,” she whispers.

“The moment I met you, I wanted nothing more than for you to fear me so all my suffering would’ve made sense,” I murmur, grabbing a loose strand of her hair so I can tuck it behind her ear. “Instead, you smiled at me.Smiled. At the man you thought was your father’s killer.” My jaw tenses. “And it broke me.”

A tear rolls down her cheeks, and I pick it up with my index finger.

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