Dark Alleys Hide Dark Intentions
Do you know how sad you look sometimes?
“I don’t do sad,” Bradley dismissed, a vague air of disgust sitting pretty on features hardened by the shadows playing in the alley. “Sad’s an ugly habit.”
They’d been thrown out of a club hosting her father’s event for getting in the way of business. Maybe not those words, but something similar. Somewhere in the dark beside her Pearl kicked up a pebble, bickering lowly with Reid after it bounced off his shin. He was sporting a bust lip and an even angrier brow, furrowed into oblivion as the group of them contemplated their next move. Sawyer loomed against a brick wall, flask clutched dispassionately in his delicate fist like an instrument he couldn’t play properly. At her last words, his lips fell crooked – a small glimpse into the state of his conscience, or lack thereof.
“Sad’s your only habit, Bradley. It’s impolite to lie to friends.”
“Friends. Who needs friends when you have friends like these?” Siting the quote under her breath, she lifted her chin, expression growing determined. “Better than getting a hard on over a cracked skull.”
His eyes purred with the challenge, not a flicker of emotion registering. “Sorry, I wasn’t aware we were talking about your father.”
Something tensed in her at that, fingers twitching by her side like he’d plucked a nerve with a steel tipped guitar pick. It didn’t matter if she was expecting it, talking about him always made her lose something. This time, it was her temper.
“Shut your fucking mouth.”
To their right, Pearl sucked on a bottle of stolen Moet, a brief “Oh, boy,” muttered into the lonely contents.
“Oh… Did I say something wrong?”
Registering the situation, Reid yanked the bottle back from the pit bull blonde, pointing it between them to establish a wisp of authority. “Can we not? I need to take a shit and I’m not doing it in this alley.”
“Yes, Bradley, can we not?” Sawyer repeated, cool and deliberate, eyebrow raised as if he was waiting for a child to stop throwing a tantrum.
He looked so smug. It was enough that in the next second, she’d stepped forward and grabbed his jaw, fingers pressing light crescents on the skin beneath them. She waited a moment, ignored Reid’s exasperated ranting, swelled in Pearl’s runaway laughter. When she finally spoke it was something small – the only thing she could manage as her grip loosened from anger to soft acceptance. “Sometimes I wish you’d just kill me, too.”
She dropped her hand, following the shadows down the alley to find the next street over. She could hear him even as she tried to block him out by lighting a cigarette, satisfaction threading his voice like the veins in a limp wrist.
“Now, now, Bradley. Where would the fun be in that?”
