AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“I’m sorry, okay? Just come the fuck outside and talk to me.”
There was the tiniest hint of a slur, right where his Ts met his Ss, which told me to tread lightly. To anyone else, it would have been imperceptible, but I heard it. I’d spent the last six years of my life analyzing every subtle change in Knight’s posture, pitch, tone, and expression for signs of danger. And that tiny slur was one of them.
“I can’t. My dad’s still awake, and he’ll call the cops if he knows you’re here,” I lied.
“At least you have a fucking dad!”
I leaned my head back against the wall. I could almost feel Knight’s rage radiating through the weathered wood siding on the other side.
“Knight…” I took a deep breath as I absentmindedly rubbed the smooth leather pouch that housed my pepper spray. “I don’t have to come outside for you to talk to me. You can talk to me like this. I just need you to calm—”
“He’s dead!”
I sat up. “Who’s dead?”
“My fucking dad!”
I reached above my head and yanked on the cord hanging there, raising the blinds with one loud swoosh. Then, I turned and knelt at the window. As I looked down on the drunk, grieving psychopath below, Knight’s ghastly, colorless eyes locked onto mine in an instant. Even in the darkness, I could tell they were red-rimmed and bloodshot.
“Knight, I’m…I’m so sorry.”
Knight’s father had been a prominent businessman in Chicago with a picture-perfect family. An emotionally volatile bastard son wouldn’t have been a good look, so he never admitted that Knight was his son. He never even met him.
And now, he never would.
Knight growled and pointed at me with his free hand, then at the ground. “Come the fuck down here!”
I pressed my fist, still wrapped around the black leather pouch, to the glass. I wanted to go to him. I wanted to hold him and comfort him as badly as I’d wanted anything, but I knew that wasn’t what he wanted from me. Knight didn’t want my caress. He wanted my flesh. My blood. My broken bones. He wanted to use my body as a receptacle for his pain and then leave it bleeding in the street once he realized what he’d done.
“I’m right here,” I whispered, pleading with my eyes and my voice for him to calm down. “You can talk to me. See? I’m right here.”
“I don’t want to fucking talk!”
“I know, but it might help.”
“Grrrrrrr!” Knight growled and squeezed the phone in his hand so hard I could hear the plastic cracking on the other end of the line. “Fuck you! Come down here!”
“I can’t,” I whispered, pressing my forehead to the glass.
Knight stomped over to the house and punched the siding with his free hand. I felt the window rattle against my face.
“Come the fuck outside, Punk!”
“Stop it!” I looked down at the top of his head. His slicked-back blond hair had fallen forward with the force of his punch. “Knight, you’re gonna break your knuckles, and you’re a fucking tattoo artist. Calm down.”
Knight punched the wall again, and in that moment, I realized what it must feel like to be Ken.
I knew what it was like to be in a serious relationship with someone you couldn’t handle. Someone who experienced things much more deeply than you did. I knew how it felt to care about someone who demanded more than you could give them, then lashed out at you for not being able to give it.
I’d been doing it for six years.
Maybe Ken wasn’t the problem after all.
Maybe, like Knight, I just needed to take responsibility for my own fucking feelings.
“Knight,” I said softly, doing exactly what Ken would do if I were on his front lawn, throwing a drunken tantrum in the middle of the night. I stopped cowering. I straightened my spine. And I said, “I’m sorry about your dad. I’m so, so sorry. But I can’t talk to you while you’re this drunk and upset, so I’m gonna hang up now and call you a cab.”
