Chapter 27

~John~

 

“Are you listening?” Mitch demands, slapping my arm as we walk over to my truck in the parking lot.

“Shit. Yeah, I’m listening.”

He steps into my path, folding his arms across his chest. “Then what did I say?”

“Something about…the movie. Yeah, something about the movie.”

He smiles with amusement. “Yeah, but that’s a lucky fucking guess. I said; it’s been too long. We’ve been ignoring our pact lately.”

Our pact is that we see every single superhero movie that comes out together on the opening weekend. No one else. No women. Just us. We’ve had the pact since the first year of college. “We have,” I agree.

“Yeah, we have. So no talking about girls and no thinking about them either. Yeah?”

I nod, but what he’s asking is easier said than done right now. I’m worried about Nicki and this thing with her mom. I can’t get it out of my head until she finally texts me to let me know she’s okay. But Mitch is right. The two of us haven’t hung out for a while so I need to keep my mind here and not elsewhere.

“So the movie and then we hit the pub?” I ask.

He smiles. “Sounds good.”

As we make our way across the parking lot, he tells me, “I checked the band website and we’re getting some good traffic now. Ever since we uploaded those demos.”

That gets my full attention. “Good. I’m working on getting us some non-campus gigs too. We need more exposure outside of college. We’ve done all we’re gonna do around here.”

“Sweet. Like the city circuits?”

“Exactly.”

We reach my truck. I pull out my keys and disable the alarm. As I reach the driver’s side, something stops me. A note on the windshield, held there by the wipers. What the hell? I snatch it up. It’s folded with just my name on the front. I open it and read: Johnny boy. The truck was just foreplay. This isn’t over. I warned you not to cross me.

“Come on.” How persistent is this psycho?

Mitch snatches the note out of my hand. “Shit. There’ve been rumors going around about Axel being a complete head case since we walked onto campus, but here’s the proof.” He hands the note back to me. “What do you wanna do?”

I haul open the driver’s door and gesture to the passenger side. “Get in. We’re gonna make a pit stop before the movie.”

 

 

***

 

I wait patiently for someone to answer the door to the frat house.

“You seem…calm,” Mitch says from beside me.

“I am.”

Before he can say another word, the door is opened by Blake. “John. This is…a surprise.”

“Where’s Axel?” I demand. I might be calm enough right now to actually take the time to knock on the door rather than kicking the damned thing in, but there’s a limit. And making small talk is beyond that.

“Why?” Blake asks. I can see the concern all over his face. I’m not surprised, seeing as though every time Axel and I are anywhere near each other, we fight.

“This is why,” I say, shoving Axel’s note at him.

He grabs hold of it and scans it quickly. He blows out a breath and shakes his head. “Unbelievable. Look, I’ll talk to him, John. Okay?” He hands it back to me.

“That won’t do it.”

“I can’t let you in here to use one of my guys as a punching bag. You know that.”

“I’m here to talk.”

He seems stunned. He looks at Mitch. “Do you believe it?”

Mitch nods. “He’s actually calm right now. This isn’t fight mode with him.”

I cock an eyebrow at Blake. “See? Let me in, man.”

“He’s out on the patio,” he says, finally stepping aside.

I nod and stride into the house with Mitch following close behind.

“Mitch stays with you the entire time!” Blake calls out.

I raise my hand in the air. “You got it.”

With Mitch right behind me, I push through the patio doors at the rear of the kitchen and into the backyard where, sure enough, Axel is sitting reading a newspaper and drinking from a bottle of scotch beside his half-empty glass on a patio table.

I pull out the chair opposite him, spin it around and straddle it backwards, glaring at the fucker while Mitch hangs back to give me some room.

Axel smirks at me as he looks up. “Johnny boy.”

I drop the note onto his newspaper. “It is over. This thing between us is done. We’re even.”

“Even?” he asks, amused. “You attacked me twice, beat the shit out of my friends, stole my girl and humiliated me.”

“And you’ve come at me more than enough to make us even, Craven.”

He leans back in his chair and studies me. “Shit, you’re afraid, aren’t you?”

“What?” I snap. “No one’s afraid of you.”

“Not of me. Of what you might do.”

“You talk a lot of shit.”

He smiles. “Since this little feud escalated, I’ve looked into you, Johnny boy.” He leans across the table, his eyes boring into mine. “Didn’t you almost kill a man once?”

Hearing those words, having that awful day thrown in my face so out of the blue like this, really catches me off guard. I can’t keep the shock and pain from my face. His eyes flash with victory as he notices. I attempt a recovery, clearing my suddenly dry throat as I tell him, “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You couldn’t control it could you? That nasty temper of yours? You were prepared to kill a man. Now that’s fucked up. Tell me; how did he survive? Did she stop you?”

My eyes narrow. “You little shit.”

His hand grips mine suddenly. Roughly, his pretty boy nails digging into my skin. I growl low in my throat. But I don’t make a move. I can’t. I can’t risk it.

“What’s the matter? Pull your hand away,” he challenges.

“Axel. Stop!” Mitch commands, coming closer.

Axel ignores him and tells me, “You can’t, can you? You can’t just walk away, because that would be submitting; allowing someone else to have power over you. But you also can’t react, because one shot isn’t enough. You’re afraid you won’t be able to stop. And so here we are with you frozen in place trying to fight yourself.”

Before I can get a word out, Mitch intervenes and rips Axel’s hand off mine. He grabs me by the shoulders and hauls me out of the chair, because I’m sinking under the weight of Axel’s words. The guy has done his research. He’s just outlined my worst fears.

“He’s stopped plenty of times with you,” Mitch says.

“But it takes a hell of a lot of effort,” Axel fires back. “More than any normal person needs. He has a problem and he knows it.”

“This conversation is over,” Mitch tells him.

But Axel isn’t the least bit deterred, cuz he knows he has me on the ropes now.

“Tell me, John. What happens when she makes you lose your temper? Will you be able to control yourself? It’s a split second reaction, isn’t it? How can you guarantee it?”

“I would never hurt her, you fuck!”

“John, let’s go. Ignore him,” Mitch urges, pulling me away.

“You’re the same as him, John. The same as Greg,” Axel calls out.

I stop in my tracks, resisting Mitch’s pull.

“That’s right. I know everything. As you know, money can buy you anything. In my case: information. In yours: no jail time for almost killing a man who is just like you.”

I snap and lunge across the table at him. “You piece of shit! Don’t you dare compare me to that asshole!”

My hands are around his neck before I can even register it.

“You’re just proving my point,” he chokes out.

His words jolt me out of my suffocating state of rage and I loosen my grip. Mitch does the rest, wrapping his arms around my chest and pulling me back. I let him.

“Be seeing you around, Johnny boy,” he shouts as we glare at one another before Mitch pulls me around the corner and back into the house.

“I’m good. I’m good,” I tell him, holding up my hands.

He releases me and I slump against the wall. I feel sick to my stomach. Axel really managed to get into my head. And I hate it. But what I hate more, what nags at me, is the fear that he could be right. How much control do I really have over myself? I almost killed Nicki’s stepfather, Greg. I didn’t want to stop. I was so far gone. If she hadn’t been there, I know I would’ve killed him.

“Fuck,” I breathe, sliding down the wall and cradling my face in my hands.

Mitch kneels beside me and lays his hand on my shoulder. “He was wrong about Nicki. You would never lay a hand on her. She’s everything to you. You don’t have it in you to hurt her. Please tell me you know that; that you know he was just fucking with you?”

I know Mitch is right about that part. I would never hurt Nicki. But the rest? Can I control it around other people like my enemies; Axel and whoever else may cross me one day?

I honestly don’t know. And it scares the shit out of me.