Page 204 of Boys Who Taint

I don’t know why I helped him.

Why I’d trust him with my life, but I do.

He grabs the guy’s arm.

BANG! BANG! BANG!

The gun is knocked from his hand, and Ghost pummels him in the face, then puts him in a chokehold, hooking him tightly before throwing him on the ground on his back. The guy groans as Ghost straddles him.

“Touch her and you die,” he says with a low voice, before stabbing him right in the heart, twisting the knife a couple of times.

I crawl to my feet to see what’s going on, but Ghost’s hoodie blocks my view of a nightmarish scene as he pulls out the knife and thrusts it under the man’s chin and through his tongue.

In the darkness, I gaze at a dead man walking, his eyes bulging out of his face as they slowly fade into nothingness.

Ghost stands up, pulling the knife out of the body, as the rain begins to pitter-patter down onto our heads. The blood will soon wash away from the metal and his hands, but the violence will never be erased from my mind.

His explosive rage … feels strangely familiar.

I step closer, tilting my head as the images are still blurry from all the alcohol I drank. But there’s one thing I know for sure. He protected me.

When I touch his arm, he suddenly spins on his heels, the penetrative stare that follows swallowing my very breath. Butthen he picks me up from the ground and throws me over his shoulder like a rag doll.

“Hey, what are you doing?” I ask as he marches out of the alley.

He doesn’t respond.

“Put me down.”

“No.” His voice is soft, unlike before, as if he’s trying to whisper while still allowing me to hear. But I don’t know why.

“I can walk.”

He keeps going farther away from the scene of the crime. “You can’t.”

“Yes, I can.”

His grip on my body tightens, fingers splaying against my thighs. “You’re drunk.”

Why does it all feel so … familiar?

“So what?” I mutter.

He makes a tsk sound. “You know better than this. This isn’t you.”

I frown. “You don’t know me.”

“Yes, I do. I told you.”

Right … I remember. He’s always been there, even when I didn’t want him to be.

My Ghost … is someone I know.

Someone I used to trust.

“How did you find me?” I ask.

It takes him a while to murmur back. “I always know how to find you.”

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