Page 63 of Dirty Love

“I’m not getting caught.”

“Why did you let him beat you?”

Because if you hurt, I hurt.

“Because I need the bruises for later.”

“What’s happening later?” he asks, but then the clever fucker figures it out and he blinks again, his white flesh paling even more with fear and disbelief. “Kade…”

“I won’t let anything happen to us,” I promise, gently pulling him up to his feet, shaking my head when he opens his mouth to argue with me. “I know you’re in pain, and I know this isn’t how it was supposed to happen, but it’s now or never, Nicky. It’s—”

“Now,” he says clearly. “I choose now.”

Decision made, I release another breath and bring him back towards the entryway, letting go of his hands to pull the gloves and mask from my pocket. I kiss him one more time and then quickly pull them on, satisfied when I realize he’s still got the other gun in his pocket. Throne by Bring Me The Horizon plays loudly through the speaker on the table and I turn it up even more, leaving it there before I walk him outside and lock the front door behind us.

“Keep your head down,” I whisper, pulling his hood over his nose to ensure his face stays hidden.

He does as he’s told and I walk him out to the street, hidden by the thick trees on both sides as well as the lack of lights out here. Passing the truck Dad must have picked up from school at some point today, I get my brother into the passenger seat of the cop car and then walk around to the driver’s side, quickly starting the ignition to pull off towards where we’re going. I turn the radio off and whip the heat up as high as it goes, glancing at the clock on the dash to check the time.

It takes six minutes to get there from here, which is both too much and not enough all at once.

“Baby, tell me,” I rasp, curling my gloved fingers around the steering wheel. “Tell me what they did to you.”

He hesitates, anxiously playing with his cuticles while he makes himself even smaller. “All of it?”

“All of it,” I insist, and he shudders, his eyes closing while he relives the torment he went through today.

I don’t want to do this to him, but I need to hear it before we get there, and I need him not to let this nightmare eat away at him every day for the rest of his life. If he tells me, maybe I can take some of the pain from him, and I can carry it with me until the day I die.

Ten long seconds of silence follow, stretching in the small amount of space between us, and then he tells me everything—everything that happened from the minute those girls were talking shit in the library to the minute they had him on the floor in the showers.

He tells me about Jasper, and I wish I had more time on the clock, more minutes to make him scream for every second he made my brother feel weak and helpless and alone…

“Kade,” Nicky says quietly, and I don’t miss the shake in his voice, the fear in his eyes when he catches the black rage in mine. “Are you mad at me?”

Fucking hell.

I pull up onto Mark’s huge driveway and shove the car into park, leaving the headlights on while I lean over until our foreheads are almost touching. “I love you, you idiot,” I grit out, stressing each word to ensure he hears me loud and clear. “I’m so fucking mad I can’t see straight, but it’s not at you. It’s for you. Every fucking thing I do and every move I make is for you. Okay?”

“Okay.”

“Okay,” I repeat, breathing hard against the inside of my mask. “I’ll be back for you in two minutes. Count them.”

“Huh?”

“It helps,” I explain, and then I’m moving, climbing out of the car to make my way up to the front door.

It swings open before I have the chance to knock politely, and Mark’s mom smiles at me, fake as shit and scared for her son, I’m assuming. “Officer Rivers,” she says sweetly, lifting her hands up when I don’t stop walking towards her. “Look… I know why you’re here, but he didn’t do it. He would never do such a thi—”

I quickly slap my palm over her mouth and hold the back of her neck with my free hand, blocking her view of Nicky while I force her back into her own house. She squeals and wraps her fingers around my forearm, mumbling something useless and unimportant while I drag her through to the kitchen. Avoiding her eyes, I keep my head low and shove her into a dining chair, taking my dad’s handcuffs from his jacket to secure her wrists behind her back. She struggles and keeps talking, but I don’t hear what she’s saying as I search for something to blindfold her with.

Forty eight…

Forty nine…

Knowing the boys could walk in on me any second now, I check my brother through the window and grab what I need from the island, the chair scraping her expensive wooden floors as I spin her to face the corner.

“Eric, please,” she begs, using my father’s first name to scratch at his humanity. “Please, don’t hurt my baby.”

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