Total pages in book: 79
Estimated words: 74225 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 371(@200wpm)___ 297(@250wpm)___ 247(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 74225 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 371(@200wpm)___ 297(@250wpm)___ 247(@300wpm)
I looked from the notebook to him. “We were just kids, Boss-man. We were just fucking around,” I said, closing the notebook and tossing it up onto the tray.
King blew out a frustrated breath. “Preppy, since we were kids we’ve always said we were gonna go out into the world and we weren’t going to wait for anyone to give us anything. We were gonna do what we wanted and take what we wanted. Since day fucking one, man. Me and you on that playground with that fucking notebook. We mapped out our lives in those scribbles. Don’t tell me you don’t fucking remember that and what it meant because I sure as shit do.”
“I remember,” I muttered, wondering where King was going with all this.
“You know; I don’t think you fucking do remember.” King stomped his way over to me, stopping only when his knees were pressed against mine, towering above me, glaring down as if he were about to strangle me with his bare hands. His nostrils flared. “You claim to remember. So tell me, what do we do when we want something?”
“We...we take it,” I said, rubbing my temples and recalling the words the naive kid versions of ourselves wrote down that day.
“Louder,” King demanded roughly grabbing me by the shoulders and lifting me off my feet.
“We take it.” I said a little bit louder, pushing his hands off of me only to have him grip me again, harder this time, and step even closer until he was right up in my face and our noses were almost touching.
“Louder, motherfucker,” King demanded with a growl.
“We take it!” I yelled, pushing against him only to have him push back against me yet again. He grabbed me by the back of the head and pushed his forehead against mine so he was staring right into my eyes and I had no choice but to stare back.
“Again! Louder! What do we do when we want something?” King screamed, anger pulsed from the vein in his neck as he talked through his teeth. “Tell. Me. What. We. DO!!!!”
I hit my boiling point. His fingers dug into the back of my neck as we squared off. “We take it!” I yelled. “We motherfucking take it! ‘Cause it’s ours! It’s all fucking ours to fucking take!”
“Scream it! Show me you still fucking believe in this! In us!” King said shaking me by the back of the neck and screaming in my face.
“We fucking take it!” I roared back with everything I had, my teeth clenching together as King held his forehead against mine. “We fucking take all of it!!!!!”
King clapped me on the back and released me, but he continued to crowd my space, his eyes never leaving mine. “Good. Now tell me what happens when someone stands in the way of us taking what’s ours?” He grabbed the notebook and thrust it against my chest. I closed my hands around it and looked from it to my best friend with new found determination I felt building in my soul.
“We fucking kill ‘em’,” I huffed feeling more like myself in that moment than I had since before I went into the hole.
“Damn fucking right we do,” he said with a satisfied smile and another slap to my back. He pulled me in for a one armed hug before pushing me back down into the chair and turning around to pick up his stool. He placed it upright and sat back down, rolling back over to me and again picking up the needle.
“Now what?” I asked, feeling like he had more to say and wanting to hear it.
“Now? I’m gonna work on some of those scars of yours and you’re gonna spend some time working on getting you right again. Whatever it takes.”
“And then?”
King lit a joint and passed it to me. “And then you tell me.”
A wicked smile spread across my face. “And then I’m going to get my fucking girl.”
Bear stormed in with his helmet in hisl hand looking like he’d just driven his bike at break neck speeds. “Sorry to interrupt your little pow-wow,” he turned to me, “but that kid you’ve been looking for, Prep? My boys found him.”
I was instantly sober. “And?”
Bear shook his head and blew out a long breath. “And...it’s not good, man.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
PREPPY
Bear told me that Bo was in the hospital and my fucking heart sank into my gut.
Twenty minutes later I was staring at the nurse at check-in looked like she’d been on the wrong end of a beating herself. She had purple bruises on her face. One on her chin and the other under her right eye. I could tell she’d tried to cover it up with makeup, but no amount of concealer could cover those angry fuckers, and they were fresh, it would only get worse. “Car accident,” she said when she saw me staring.