Page 93 of Burn With Me

Rolling my eyes, I sat up to stare at my brother across the room. I could just make out his outline against the plain white wall of the room.

“Yeah, what’s up?” I asked, keeping my voice low.

There was a rustling from the other side of the room. A moment later, Asher was hopping up onto my bed with me. I was about to tell him, no fucking way, I was sleeping with him again. He was getting too old for his big brother to be holding him at night so he could sleep, but instead he held out his hand.

It was too dark to tell what he was holding, and I leaned over to my night table and grabbed the miniature flashlight I’d stolen from the convenience store. Flicking it on, I stared at Asher’s favorite football card. He’d spent months looking for this card and had to trade away almost all of his others to get this one rookie card of his favorite player. I looked at it and then up into Asher’s eyes.

“Okay, what about it.”

Asher looked down, his face falling. “I’m sorry, mom and dad forgot your birthday again. I want you to have my card as your birthday gift.” He lifted his shoulder. “I don’t have anything else to give you.”

My chest warmed as I stared into my younger brother’s face. “I don’t need your card. I don’t even like football. You keep it. It means a lot to you.”

He grabbed my hand and placed the card on my palm. “No, I want you to have it. I love you, Derek, and I have nothing to give you to show you how much you mean to me. This is what I have. It’s all I have. Take it. Please.”

How the hell was I supposed to say no to that? Nodding, I closed my hand and wrapped it around the card. “I’ll keep it with me always.”

I gulped for air as more memories hit one after the other. Ones that I’d long forgotten and others I tried to forget. Suddenly, something cold pressed into the side of my head.

“Give me your fucking money, man, and that bottle,” the unknown man said.

“Not a good time, friend. You may want to move along,” I said, giving him a chance to walk away alive. People had really fucking bad timing. Then again, most humans were shitholes and deserved to burn.

“Are you fucking stupid, man? I have a gun to your head.”

“Does it look like I care?” That should have been this idiot’s cue to run along. Don’t mess with people that don’t care if they die. That should be the first thing you learn before you decide to be an asshole.

He pressed the gun harder into the side of my head. “Just give me your fucking money, man. I don’t wanna have to kill you.”

The turmoil that had already been brewing in my gut erupted. Jerking backward, I leaned back on the picknick table seat and grabbed the asshole’s arm. Pushing it away from me, I hauled off and cracked him as hard as I could on his exposed ribs. He cried out in pain as my fist found the sensitive spot just under his chest cavity, and the gun went off with a loud bang. That shit had my ears ringing.

I stared in horror as the stray bullet took out one of the headlights on my truck

“Are you fucking kidding me?” I bellowed and stood gripping the guy’s arm so hard he cried out, but I was beyond caring. He started this. He could’ve walked away, I gave him the opportunity twice to fuck the hell off, and he didn’t. “Do you know how much one of those antique lights cost?”

With a hard jerk, the guy landed face-first on the table. “Do you know where I can get one? I don’t!” I raged as I thought about Dora and the smile she had on her face when I restored the truck. “You piece of shit,” I growled out and smashed his arm against the table hard enough that he let go of the gun.

I hated guns. They were a cheap and a chicken-shit way to kill someone. You want to fight, then fight but use your fists. You want to kill someone than have enough balls to do it right and slit their throat or burn them alive. Now, if you could stomach that, then you were worthy of the kill. If you have to shoot a gun and then run, you’re nothing but a cheap imitation.

“I’m sorry, man,” he whined, but it was too late for that.

I could tell the guy was a tweaker in the dim light of the lone lamp post. His eyes had dark circles and were sunken into his head, while his cheeks showed off every bone in his face. Terror stared up at me, but the hurt and the rage were too potent for me to see straight.

Grabbing the whiskey off the table with one hand and yanking the guy with my other arm, I dragged him toward the large garbage barrel. His struggles were pathetic at best. The girl from the warehouse had more fight than this guy.

“Please, man. I’m sorry. I’ll leave you alone, man.”

“You almost put a bullet in the side of my head so that you could get high. No, I don’t think we’re all right, man,” I drawled, my tone sarcastic.

I kicked over the green barrel. The top flew off, and the garbage inside, spilled out onto the ground.

“You know what my father always told me?”

“I don’t care, man, just let me go,” he yelled and pulled hard on his arm.

I had my hand wrapped around his bicep like an iron shackle. My boot found the middle of his stomach with a hard kick that drove all the air from his lungs and stopped him from struggling. I released his arm, and he crumpled to the grass in a ball. Sitting the barrel upright, I tossed in whatever I knew would burn fast and hot.

Life choices. It all came down to our decisions, didn’t it?