Bad Intentions: A Dark Hockey Bully Romance (Hellions of Hade Harbor Book 1)
Bad Intentions: Chapter 36

Jack was tiring out. He wasn’t fit, and his lifestyle was catching up with him, but hatred gave him strength he didn’t deserve.

He feinted right, and I saw it coming. Marcus had gone, carrying Lily off over his shoulder to his bike. I’d been so hyperaware of her that now that she was gone, I could concentrate on Jack and settling the score of a lifetime.

Anticipating his move, I kicked toward his rising knife, and the blade flew from his hand, disappearing into the grass somewhere. He looked down wildly, searching for it without results.

“Seems like it’s an even fight now, isn’t that right, Uncle Jack? Finally, you can pick on someone your own size,” I goaded. My side hurt vaguely, the pain registering in a distant part of my mind. I couldn’t think about it and get distracted. This confrontation had been ten years in the making.

I couldn’t believe he’d taken Lily. Lily. Sweet, smart Lily. Uncle Jack had known me better than I’d thought in the end. He’d immediately seen the one person I’d be attracted to and used her however he could. When I thought about her being in his clutches all night, I felt rage, a spiraling, never-ending darkness, taint my mind. Whatever Josh had had to do with it all, I’d find out shortly. Right now, I was just glad that Lily hadn’t been alone with Jack.

Jack swung for me, and I ducked under him, straightening up and lifting him off his feet. I pushed him back, and we crashed through the broken fence that kept the trailer park kids from the cliff.

I landed hard on Jack, crushing him under my weight. He slammed a hand into my injured side as we rolled over. The waves crashed below me. There was a storm coming, and electricity sizzled in the air.

Maybe this storm had been brewing since the day I’d started a fire in my foster parents’ kitchen. The day when I’d hoped that firefighters would carry me away and no one would take me back to the Cutlers. The day I hadn’t known that they’d been passed out in their beds and never even moved when the flames had taken the house.

“Are you enjoying yourself, boy? Hurting people is what you do, isn’t it?”

“Shut the fuck up, or I really will kill you,” I grunted, punching him two times in the face before he managed to get a hit in to my side. I rolled away, the pain making me want to vomit.

“That’s what you’re best at, isn’t it, Cayden? What you were born to do. Just like me, you feed on the weak and grow stronger.”

“I’m nothing like you,” I gasped out.

“You fucking liar. You are me,” Jack hissed, managing to move away from me while I was clutching my side.

I rolled onto my knees as he staggered to his feet, out of reach.

“You were born broken, and you’ll die that way. You destroy everything you touch, and that girl is no exception…you’re a cancer, a poison – a worm.”

I moved without thinking, the word a trigger that I’d never been able to control. With a roar, I closed the space between us and checked Jack hard, with all the strength that I’d use to send a defender into the boards on the ice.

But here, there were no boards to stop him as he flew backward. There was nothing at all.

His face was a picture of perfect surprise as he fell off the cliff. Time seemed to slow, and I knew I’d never forget that last look he gave me. I ran forward, acting on instincts that I didn’t know I had. I grabbed his hand and stopped his downward motion.

He swung from my grip. His hand was sweaty.

“Help us! Pull us up!” I called to my friends, and just like that, they were there.

We fell backward onto the grass, and Jack crawled away from us, coughing. Beckett kept an eye on him while I slowly gained my feet.

You fucking liar. You are me. Jack’s words sounded again and again in my head. No. I finally answered. I’m not.

“Well, that was anticlimactic,” the man said from the darkness beside us.

He’d introduced himself as Nikolai. He approached, and it took everything in me not to take up a defensive stance. Trouble knows trouble, and this guy was dangerous like no one I’d ever met before.

Jack curled up on the floor, groaning with pain. “Who the fuck are you, anyway?” he spat at the newcomer.

“Just a concerned citizen and local business owner. I’ve heard all about you, Jack of Midnight Falls, a stain on the good reputation of this area. You see, I live here now, my wife lives here…my son lives here. I can’t have fuckers like you giving the area a bad reputation. And I really don’t like the competition. I have a simple solution for competition. Want to hear it?” He swooped down and grabbed Jack in a sudden burst of violent power that was awe-inspiring to behold.

He held him up by the neck. A dark tattoo on his hand spelled out a word in Cyrillic.

“Who are you?” Jack mumbled again, clearly trying to get his tiny mind around the fact that he’d just lost, maybe for the first time in his life.

“I’m the Palach – and I’m about to share with you my method for dealing with competition. Are you ready? Listen up, you can’t get this kind of hands-on practical expertise just anywhere.” Nikolai, the Palach, sounded amused by the entire scene.

Jack nodded, finally realizing just how fucked he was.

Nikolai smiled, and my blood went cold, then his arms exploded forward, throwing Jack backward, into the darkness and the nothingness beyond the broken fence. The world seemed to still for a long moment, and Jack was frozen in the air. His eyes touched mine, and the expression of surprise etched itself permanently into my mind.

Then he was falling, arms pinwheeling, into the inky darkness where the night met the black sea.

A scream pierced the air and was suddenly cut off.

I ran for the cliff edge, panic tearing through me. I paused on the crumbling edge and looked down.

There was nothing but raging dark waters below, crashing against midnight rocks.

Uncle Jack was gone.

“He’s finished, Cade, don’t fall, man,” Beckett’s commanding voice called to me, and then he was there, pulling me back.

The horror of the events of the evening washed over me, and the pain of my injury suddenly registered. I staggered to the side, and Asher was there.

We turned our shocked eyes to Nikolai, who picked a blade of grass off his cuff, seeming totally unconcerned.

“Well, boys, what’s the story?” His lazy tone held no hint that he worried we might go to the police. He was supremely confident.

“It’s a dangerous cliff and the fence is broken…it’s a hazard. Anyone could fall from there,” Asher said coolly after a moment.

“I can’t believe it takes a tragedy like this, a local man slipping to his death, to bring attention to this safety hazard.” Beckett’s voice was forceful. Decided.

I glanced between them.

Nikolai chuckled. “Maladetz. I’m impressed.” He nodded toward an unconscious Josh. “You want to chuck him over while we’re here?”

“No. Not him… Just Jack. Jack deserved it,” I added quickly.

Nikolai nodded and then jerked his head to me. “Walk with me, kid.”

I complied, because I had never met anyone who would say no to a request from this guy. We headed away from the edge.

I walked stiffly. The place where Jack had stabbed me ached, but the cuts on my forearm that I’d done myself were worse. Nikolai cast a glance at my arm.

“You okay?”

A dry chuckle left me. “Not even remotely.”

“You will be. You know, I see a lot of myself in you, kid. Fucked up, angry, aggressive. I know what’s inside you. I know how it growls.”

We stopped a little way from the cliff edge, and I tried my best not to look down and imagine Jack’s broken body somewhere below.

“What you have to do now is decide if you’ll let it control you, or you tame it.”

“I want to tame it, but I don’t know how,” I replied immediately.

Nikolai stared out over the dark sea. He’d just killed a man. I’d never seen someone so laid-back about anything.

“You can’t tame something you’re afraid of. Take lion tamers, for instance—they show fear, that’s it, they’re breakfast. You need to look those animals in the eye and master your fear.”

“You’re telling me to face my fears. I hate to break it to you, but I think that slogan is trademarked at this point.”

Nikolai smiled and turned an approving grin on me. “Humor is good. Facing your demons is good. They can’t control you if you don’t let them. There is a girl out there who deserves a whole man, not a husk.”

Lily. Lily had been hurt because of me and by me.

“She deserves more than me, even if I was a whole person.”

Nikolai nodded, allowing me that. “Maybe so, but she wants you. Believe me, I know women who have a weakness for monsters. It’s too late for her.” He stuck his hand in his pocket and brought out the black business card from earlier. “The only thing you can do now is be a better monster. You’re young. You have time.”

I swallowed hard as he held out the card to me. “Who are you?”

“Your art teacher’s husband and a new resident of Hade Harbor,” Nikolai said lightly.

“I mean, who are you really?”

He smirked. “A fellow monster.” He tapped the card in my hand. “You need something, you come to me. Now, I’ll be seeing you around town, kid. Don’t hit on my wife if you want to enjoy a long life expectancy.”

He saluted before he turned and walked away. I stared at the business card. It was matte black, with black letters, only visible when you turned it just right, a shine rippling across the word, and a number below.

Palach.

I made my way back to the guys.

“I don’t want you to have to lie for me,” I started and stopped when Beckett snorted.

“What lie? A guy fell over the edge of the cliff. It’s a damn shame, but thank God it wasn’t anyone else, a kid or something,” he said and jerked his chin toward the unconscious Josh.

“What are we going to do with Samuels?”

Beckett frowned. “Leave him here. He made his bed, he can lie in it. We need to get your side looked at.”

“If I go to the hospital, I won’t be able to play in the game the scouts are going to be at,”

I said as we walked toward our bikes. Mine was surprisingly undamaged, considering how I’d used it like a weapon.

“Don’t worry, Marcus has it covered. Let’s get the fuck out of here, before someone sees us,” Asher said and snapped down his visor.

“You okay to ride?” Beckett asked, helping me pull my bike up.

My side hurt like hell, and I was bleeding pretty badly, but going to a hospital wasn’t an option, and I couldn’t leave my bike here and have questions come from it. My brain felt oddly hazy. I was pretty sure it was shock. Getting away from here before it wore off was probably a good idea.

“I’m good, I’ll be fine. Let’s go.”

We parked around the back of the animal clinic in Hade Harbor. I’d tied a tourniquet around the wound to slow the bleeding, but it was a relief when I dismounted my bike. S~ᴇaʀᴄh the (F)indNƟvᴇl.ɴet website on Gøøglᴇ to access chapters of novels early and in the highest quality.

“Why are we here?” I wondered, looking up at the back door and the dark sign above it with a cute cat and dog. “There’s no one here.”

“Not true,” Asher muttered and rapped on the darkened door.

It opened to Marcus’ relieved face. “Thank fuck you guys are here. I was starting to get worried that the wrong guy fell off the cliff.” At my dark expression, he shrugged. “Hey, I’m an Ice God, too. Don’t withhold the good stuff from me. That fucker had it coming.”

We went into the small waiting room, and the harsh smell of cleaning products and something faintly medicinal filled my nose.

The fact was that a huge secret now bound me to these guys. I’d never been so scared and so relieved at the same time. Uncle Jack was dead. Gone forever. It hadn’t sunk in yet.

“Why are we here?” I had been picturing doctoring myself in the bathroom at the Williamses’. It wouldn’t be the first time that hot water, a straight alcohol dousing, and duct tape had gotten me through a stab wound.

“Because you need to be patched up, and apparently going to hospital isn’t an option,” a soft, female voice called to me.

It was her.

Lily. She was still here with us. With me. Despite it all.

Her sweet voice was like a balm to my tattered heart. I turned toward the sound, like she had tied a string to my heart and I couldn’t stay the fuck away. I’d never been as scared as when I’d seen the message from her, or her standing in Jack’s grip. I’d thought that in my life, I’d learned what fear was, but now I knew I’d never experienced it truly until I’d seen Lily in danger. That was fear. That was real.

She crossed the room toward me, and I braced myself. I felt like what she did next could break me. Clearly, I’d been wrong about everything, just like she’d warned me. I hadn’t listened. I’d reacted too quickly. I hadn’t trusted her. I’d embarrassed her in front of everyone. She hated me now and she deserved to.

Being Lily, she didn’t act at all like she should have. Her slender arms reached around me, and I disappeared into her embrace, lurching forward into her arms. The reality of everything that had happened threatened to wash over me, but holding on to Lily, like an enduring rock in the sea, I clung on and knew I could survive it. It was a power unique to her.

“Are you okay?” I asked her immediately. “Did he hurt you?”

She shook her head against my chest, and the smell of her hair rose around me. It smelled like what I thought home might, if I’d ever really known one.

“I should be asking you that.” Lily pulled back, her eyes searching my body for injuries, a deep crease lining her forehead. “Come on,” she muttered, picking up my injured arm.

It had stopped bleeding, but the letter I’d carved in was weeping dark blood.

“It’s okay. It doesn’t hurt that bad,” I lied. Nothing hurt after seeing she was safe. Nothing hurt after the way she’d held me, like seeing me whole and relatively unharmed had been the most important thing to ever happen to her. If she found a smile for me, I was pretty sure nothing would ever hurt again.

She led the way into a small exam room.

“Here, get up here, and lose the shirt.” She pointed to the paper-lined table. “Sit here.”

I complied, undoing my belt that I’d tied around my side and unsticking the T-shirt from the blood.

Lily hissed, her eyes narrowing at the sight. I took off the shirt and dropped it to the floor. Now that I was here, sitting with Lily, seeing her safe, the adrenaline was wearing off, and my side hurt like a fucker. My arm burned too, but I didn’t even want to look at it and see the damage my cutting had caused. At least I’d only gotten one letter done.

“I have to clean it first before I can see how bad it is. You might still have to go to the hospital,” she warned softly.

I nodded, though I knew that going to the hospital was basically the same as giving up my position in the next game. The game that the HHU scouts would be at. I couldn’t let that happen.

She bit her lip as she assessed the damage, and I watched her. She doused cotton balls in alcohol solution and wiped away the excess blood, getting closer and closer to the wound, starting with my arm.

“This is really going to hurt,” she whispered, her eyes flickering to mine for a second.

“It’s okay. I deserve it,” I murmured back.

She swallowed, her slender throat bobbing forcefully with the movement. “No. You don’t. No one deserves that.”

Then she poured the antiseptic over the wound.

I gritted my teeth and grunted. It burned like a motherfucker, but I wasn’t a stranger to pain. I’d be okay. I’d manage this without the hospital, I could already tell.

A pressure closed around my hand, and I opened my eyes to see Lily’s small hand gripping mine, her knuckles white. Her face was drawn. It hurt her to hurt someone else. That was the kind of angel this girl was.

“It’s okay, it’s over, it’s over,” she was muttering over and over.

I wondered if she was telling me or herself. The feeling of her sweet comfort made the burn of the antiseptic fade into insignificance.

She blew out a breath, trying to clear a lock of red that had fallen over her eye. I reached for it before I could stop myself, guiding it into place behind her ear.

“Are you really okay?” she asked. Now that she’d cleaned it, the cut was clearly visible. A line-like shape. I hadn’t cut a w. There’d been no way Jack could have made me without coming over himself to check, and I’d already planned to stab him with his own knife, in that case.

No, I’d decided that I wouldn’t write that cursed word on my body ever again. I’d decided that if I had to write anything, it would be something I wanted. Luckily, I hadn’t cut for long enough for Lily to distinguish the letter as an L, the beginning of her name. She was already freaked out enough tonight.

I shrugged. “I’m a guy who just cut a letter into his own arm. I don’t really know how to answer that. Are you?”

She let out a raw laugh. “Nothing about today’s been okay.”

Guilt punched me in the gut. She’d gotten into this situation because of me. Her life had gotten worse since I’d come into it. She might be an angel to me, a sudden gift of grace that I’d never even imagined, but to her, I was a curse.

“I know. I’m so sorry. You should never have been there or gotten on that asshole’s radar. It’s my fault.”

Her voice trembled as she let out a shaky exhale. “Then it’s my fault your arm is like this. If it wasn’t for me, you’d never have gone there or had to hurt yourself. I’m sorry.” She lifted her green, tear-filled eyes to mine. “I’m so sorry.”

“Don’t. You’re not to blame for the evil of someone like Uncle Jack.”

“Neither of us are,” she said quickly.

I nodded slowly, agreeing with her, even if I knew in my heart, Lily being there was my fault.

“Josh Samuels,” I started.

Her eyes narrowed. “Nothing will happen to Josh.” Lily’s voice was firm. “Nothing. Too much violence has already happened. It has to stop somewhere, and it stops here.”

I thought about Nikolai Chernov’s words, about taming the monster inside, even while it hungered to be fed. I could go and fuck Josh up. He had dragged Lily into all this, too. And yet it would only go on and on. I could only guess that Josh had gotten involved in the first place because of me. Because I’d broken his fucking nose, for no other reason than petty jealousy and possessiveness. Because the darkness inside had held no relief, and what was one more shitty act of violence after the life I’d led? Karma was certainly a fucking bitch.

“Okay,” I heard myself say.

Lily blinked at me, surprised by my easy agreement. “Okay?”

“Okay. You’re right. It stops here. If you ask me not to go after Josh, I won’t.”

She studied me for a moment, and then the crease between her eyes eased and she smiled. It felt like a benediction. After all she’d been through today, she was still making good choices and doing the right thing, even for people who might not deserve it.

Lily might have been down, but she wasn’t beaten. There was a spine of steel buried somewhere beneath her straight-A-student exterior. Something wild, and headstrong, and far braver than anyone I knew.

“If I’d seen your message earlier, I’d have been there sooner. I came as soon as I saw it.” I needed her to believe that. “I know you don’t really have a reason to believe me, but the guys can back me up.”

She continued to blot the extra blood from the wound on my arm before dabbing on antiseptic and then smoothing a clean, dry bandage over it.

Lily held her silence as she moved around me to my side. The stab was shallow, his angle hadn’t been right, but it still hurt, and it’d still need cleaning.

She was looking at my side, prodding with a cotton ball, pressing the alcohol deep inside to root out any potential infection, when she finally spoke. “Why do you care if I believe you or not? I don’t exist to you, remember?”

The reminder of the harsh, unforgiveable things I’d said to her in the heat of my anger was a slap.

“Lily,” I began and jerked as she put her finger to my lips. Her skin was so soft, I wanted to kiss it.

“Don’t. I was just teasing you. After tonight…let’s just leave the past in the past. It doesn’t matter now.”

“How can you say that after what I did?”

“What you did was horrible, we both know it…but it forced me to confront some hard truths, and I don’t regret that now.”

I leaned down to peer at her. She stared down at my side, dabbing it with cotton balls soaked in cleaning solution.

“Seriously?” I wondered.

She nodded. “I had the best conversation I’ve ever had with my parents, and at the end of the day, that was because of you.”

A grin of relief touched my lips. “I suppose I should say you’re welcome.”

She poked me a touch harder for a second, her green eyes flickering to mine. “Don’t push it.”

A chuckle left me. How could I be chuckling when the last few hours had been some of the worst in my life? I had no idea. I only knew that I felt lighter than I ever had, sitting here with Lily, her smile gracing my unworthy face.

“Because of you, I can be honest with my parents about what I want.”

“And that’s going to California?” I couldn’t stop myself from asking.

She hummed an agreement, and I wanted to press her further, but she didn’t give me a chance.

“I think we’re done here, well, as much as I can be anyway.” She picked up the bloodied cotton balls and put them in a metal dish, then walked behind me to put them in the trash.

Her footsteps carried her to the trash can and then halfway back before suddenly stopping.

Oh, right. I’d been so distracted; I’d taken off my T-shirt without even thinking about my back.

The word the Cutlers had given me to remember them by forever. Not that it was a secret from her.

She was silent, unmoving.

I glanced at her over my shoulder. “It’s okay. You’ve already seen it, right?”

“No. I told you…I never really saw it,” she said quietly.

Fuck. I hunched forward, suddenly feeling exposed. She really hadn’t seen it before? Now, her reaction became the most important thing in my life.

It was so quiet, I was sure she could hear my heart pounding.

Then, a touch so soft, I wasn’t sure if I’d imagined it. Like the brush of an angel’s fingers, her finger traced over the word.

WORM

She outlined every letter, and I let her. I owed her that, after all. I’d shared her secrets with the world; it was only fair that I showed her mine.

“They were my first foster family, the ones who took me in after my mom died. The ones who died in a fire.” I took a long, steadying breath. “The fire I started.”

The silence couldn’t have been thicker. I could have felt awkward right now. Being seen like this should have been excruciating, but it wasn’t. It felt like a heavy weight was lifting off me as I confessed to my sins before the only judge I cared about.

“When you were eight,” Lily finally said.

I nodded, my heart lifting with the compassionate tone filling her voice.

“When I was eight, yes. I killed two people.”

“I don’t think I’d call them people.” Her voice was strong as she rounded me, her hand falling from the word and appearing in front of me. Her green eyes glittered and those perfect toffee-colored lashes were stuck together. Her cheeks were wet.

She was crying.

Crying for me.

“It’s not your fault, Cayden. They got what they deserved,” she whispered, and a long tear streaked down her cheek.

I reached for it, brushing the salt from her cheek with my thumb. She was close now, her slim body cradled between my thighs. So close I could smell the heavenly scent of her skin, even over the antiseptic and blood.

“Don’t cry for me. I don’t deserve your tears, and we both know it.” My voice was a raw murmur.

She shook her head. “Maybe not, but that eight-year-old boy does.”

I cupped her face, wanting to kiss her more than I’d ever wanted anything. I brushed her tears from her skin in gentle circles over her cheeks.

“He’s gone. Don’t worry about him,” I reassured her.

She shook her head again and placed a hand on my bare chest, just over my heart. “He’s not gone. He’s in here…be kind to him, okay?”

I couldn’t take not kissing her for one more second. She was too much, and she saw me too clearly. I leaned in and pressed my lips against hers—chaste kiss, considering all the things we’d done together—but it felt intimate in a way I’d never experienced. No one who had ever really seen me had ever wanted me. No one except her.

She pulled back just as the kiss deepened. “I have to bandage your side. You’re lucky, the knife didn’t go too deep.”

She stepped away, and it felt like a physical blow to lose her softness.

She took another bowl from the counter and brought it to my side. It was filled with gauze and tape.

“You’re good at this,” I observed as she worked, bandaging up my side.

She shrugged. “I’ve worked here for years. The basics have rubbed off on me…well, the animal basics, anyway.”

“Are you calling me an animal?” I teased her, but my words only made her wince, and I knew she was thinking about the word on my back, carved time and time again into a terrified young boy’s flesh.

“Is that why you were so upset…when I called you a parasitoid?” she wondered quietly.

I nodded. “I guess it hit a little too close to home, not that you could have known that.”

“I guess if I’d just called you a jerk, like a normal person…maybe everything would have been different between us. We would have just been strangers to each other. People who lived next door…our worlds passing, but never colliding.”

She patted the neat, dry dressing she’d placed on my wound.

I grabbed her wrist before she could turn away. “No, you’re wrong. You and I were destined to be more than strangers. We were always going to be more. We were born to collide.”

She stared at me, her green eyes as lush as ever. I wanted to wander into that sweet, calm forest and live there forever. Then she yawned, and I realized how exhausted she must be.

I nodded and stood, my side only aching a little now. “Come on, Freckles. I’m taking you home.”

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