Page 27 of PortCity Killers

Jaymes threw himself a second too late landing against the hard wood with a thud. Valentina’s tinkling laugh echoed behind the door as she made her way down the stairs.

“Well, that went better than expected to be honest.” I sighed, gripping my hands together, hugging them to my chest.

Jaymes turned on me, his eyes wide with his incredulity, “Better than expected? We’re locked in here, Alex.”

My laugh was hollow and tired, “But we aren’t dead, Jaymes.”

“There’s a whole lot worse things than being dead.”

I looked over to him and sighed, “Not for me there isn’t.”

Jaymes looked like he wanted to argue, but I shook my head. I’d been through too much in my life to be taken out in any other way than kicking and screaming.

If someone wanted me dead, they would have to work for it, which meant if I wanted to live...well, then I had to work for that.

If Jaymes didn’t want to put in the work to live, that was fine, but I wasn’t going to stand around and watch him try and kill himself anymore.

Bryce was right.

He was one disaster away from death, and every day he proved that was exactly where he wanted to be. I wasn’t going to be caught in the crossfire. I refused to be.

He could walk his suicide mission alone from now on. I found a pair of scissors in the kitchen that were just barely sharp enough to cut through the zip ties he had holding his hands behind him.

“Ay dios mio, Jaymes. We had a plan.” I threw the zip tie in a small trash can off to the side as I looked over my shoulder, “What happened to that?”

He shrugged, his long lean fingers gripping his wrists and twisting viciously, like he could punish the indents of the zip ties out. I shook my head: suicide mission. And he might have brought me down with him if Valentina and Don hadn’t beencuriousabout me.

I paced the room, running my hand over the large comforter as I looked to him.

He was pale, about as pale as me, despite both our fathers having rich, darker skin. His eyes were wide and glassy, yet they had the same dark, stormy, and blueish green color that our mother’s eyes had whenever she was upset.

When I was younger, I had resented looking so much like my father while being as light as my mother. He had been dark where she was light; his hair was jet black, skin bronzed, and eyes like two black pools of midnight where she had been strawberries and cream.

Her hair had been like flames, bright and vivid red that danced around her deep ocean eyes. I had thought I would turn out like my dad for a long time. But as time passed, my memories of him started to fade along with my resemblance to him.

My black hair had lightened to a brown so dark it tricked you into thinking it was black until the sun revealed the truth, and my chocolate brown eyes faded into a perfectly green hazel.

My blush was tried and true, taking up my whole body whenever I was angry, embarrassed, or aroused.

I had blamed my mom at first. It had felt wrong, like she had taken something away from me, but now that she was gone?

I relished every slip of my mom’s presence. I clung to the brassy red undertones in my dark hair and craved the bounce of my fresh curls even if they weren’t the perfect ringlets she had.

Mine were wider, more wild-untamed. I liked being able to look at the soft, light freckles on my shoulder in the winter when I’d been trapped inside from the cold and pretend I was looking at the freckles on hers.

By the summer they would be gone, hidden inside the golden skin that tanned under the beach’s sun like hers never would, and I would look even more like the man who had abandoned me to the piece of shit that was Jaymes's father.

I wondered if Jaymes felt the same way about his dad sometimes.

Resentful of the body he was trapped in, being so much like our dead mother but having the mentality and mind that was so much like his abusive father. But he’d said as much before, hadn’t he?

Hadn’t he cried himself to sleep in my arms, worried he would be just like him?

I pushed the thoughts away, turning down the bed, taking the pillows and fluffing them up for him.

I instinctively reached for my phone but shook my head at the lack of pockets. Maybe I would have still had it if I had been able to keep it on my person, but it had been shoved into the big pocket of Bryce’s coat.

I took the first layer of colchas off knowing he would have them kicked to the end of the bed by morning anyway. There was a large thick backed chair by the other side of the bed. I dragged a pillow and blanket with me as I trudged to it.

Jaymes didn’t say a word as he got into bed. We both kept our shoes on, as if waiting to dash out the door any minute, but I heard the faint and telltale sounds of his sobbing before he drifted off into sleep.

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