Only dead fish swim with the stream, I read over and over again as my heart thundered inside my chest.

Ten

Borden
What in the holy fuck just happened?

No, really, he needed to know. He’d only intended on getting to the bottom of why she’d never opened her mouth to the police, something that’d given him a brand new emotion upon learning.

It was the feeling of shock.

Gracious, she’d told the officer he’d been to her.

Gracious.

Yeah, as fucking gracious as a lion is to a gazelle after he chased it down and sank his teeth into its neck.

Borden had had similar problems in the past, and those bastards always opened their mouths to the police officer he sent them. So why didn’t she? When he was told this, he was compelled to come to this shithole part of town and understand. But now he was more confused than ever.

After he exited the diner, he stopped abruptly several stores down.

Did he…Did he just let a person talk to him like that? And did he… did he just fucking kiss that person after they’d slapped him?

What the fuck?

The shock only intensified.

He looked back at the vague outline of the terrible business that he couldn’t even fathom made money at all. The smell of it had churned his damn insides into minced meat.

He frowned.

Nobody talked to him like that! No matter who they were – even if they were twice his fucking size and packed more muscle than him– nobody had ever spoken to him like that in four years. And if they did – which they never fucking dared to do – they would have never gotten away with it.

He licked his lips, and still he tasted her. The girl abuses him and he kisses her for it. And not just kisses her, but fucking ravages her too. How the fuck did that make any sense? And why in the holy fuck did that make him even hotter?

A woman has just brought you down to your knees, Marcus. Just like that.

His blood boiled.

It was like anger had been injected into his veins. It ran rampant throughout his body. Always the anger, always the inability to fight it knowing the only way out was through. It made him want to storm back in there, grab her by her tiny little arm and demand an apology.

No.

No.

He wanted to storm in there, grab her by the fucking hair, and bend her over that nasty ass piece of shit desk and fuck her hard and deep, just to call it more even.

She was terrified of him! He saw the way she shook, the way her light brown eyes looked away from his, and yet…and yet she spoke to him unhindered by it! And that kiss had been returned so heartily, so fiercely, he knew she had been stripped of all her senses just like he had been. And just the memory of what transpired minutes ago instantly wiped away the anger and replaced it with… a weird rush. Like a fucking drug-like kind of rush!

The feeling was so foreign to him, it left him temporarily frozen to the concrete. He could practically taste the colours; they were there, lingering around the edges, trying to break through. He felt a stir inside of him, and something… thrilling emerged.

“The fuck you looking at?” Borden barked at a random passerby that had slowed down to look at him.

His eyes widened and he ran away. Yes, this was the reaction Borden was used to. Not being told off by a girl no more than half his size with the saddest looking eyes and the creamiest skin and the feistiest little mouth…

His cock suddenly twitched. Fucking traitor.

She was just as fucking hard now as she was when she was fourteen, and it intrigued him too damn much to ignore.

Little alley cat.

He pulled out his cell phone and dialled a number.

“Hawke,” he said, “I’ve got an errand for you. Emma Warne. I want to know every fucking thing about her. Where she went to school, who she’s friends with, who she’s fucking – hell, everyone she’s ever fucked before. Everything.”

Without waiting for a response, he hung up and placed the phone back into his pocket. He knew he was being impulsive, but it was a welcoming emotion. It broke the dull void of his day. He hadn’t crossed someone so resilient in a millennia, and even that five hundred pound of walking cholesterol was a disappointment.

Emma was different.

He just knew it.

“The fuck you looking at?” he barked out again at another set of horrified eyes.

Cue more running.

Eleven

Emma

Still in a daze, I made it to Granny’s around seven at night. The porch light was on for me, something she used to do every night I’d come home late while living with her. It was a two bedroom, one storey home, tight for the two of us but good enough for her. The house was over sixty years old and Granny had moved into it after she took parental custody of me when I was seven years old. This was sixteen years ago and I remember it clear as day: the confusion, the excitement, the questions she’d delicately answered following the events that transpired after my mother’s incarceration.

One thing I loved about the house was Granny never made any changes to it. Every time I walked through the door it was like walking back into my childhood, and she tried hard giving me a good one at that.

I carried a spare key with me always. When I stepped inside, all was quiet and dark. I called out to her and heard a muffled snore from the living room. She was sleeping in the armchair with a photo album flipped open in her lap. Her long white hair fell over parts of her aged face. I stood for a while, admiring her and loving her more with the bittersweet realization that she was only going to get older. She was in her early seventies and was beginning to really look it nowadays.

The floorboard beneath me creaked and she stirred immediately. Her eyes slowly opened and she smiled widely when she saw me.

“Oh, you did come!” she exclaimed, putting down the photo album to give me a hug.

“Of course I did. I missed you,” I said, returning her hug tightly.

Later she served me mud cake with a tall glass of lemonade, another child hood favourite. We sat down at the kitchen table and talked about her health, about my living conditions and my job. It took me no time to demolish most of my plate.

“I think you should keep searching for another job,” she said. “There has to be something else that pays better, Emma.”

“I know,” I agreed. “It’s just so hard. There aren’t that many jobs anymore, Gran. So many people are coming to live here now. I’ve applied for so many but the competition’s fierce. The diner is pulling me through enough for now.”