I wanna talk back and get yelled at
Fight for nothing like we used to

Chapter 12 ~ Get Back

Owen Bailey

Trey was gone.

Raven's words echoed throughout my head endlessly as my brain struggled to piece together what that could mean. I knew what it meant—that Lucifer wasn't going to leave me alone until he killed me, that he'd kill me and everyone that I had ever cared about, that he would win, again—but I refused to listen to what she had just told me. I figured it'd be better for my own sanity if I forced myself to believe that she was joking.

Before Raven showed up as the bearer of bad news, I was actually enjoying my day. I had forgiven her for disclosing personal information about me and allowed her to take Trey along with her to retrieve the guns I had ordered form Diablo (because a man's gotta protect himself), despite having underlying doubts about her capability to carry out a plan on her own.

When they left the apartment, I sat back on the futon and watched reruns of How I Met Your Mother simply because it was on and I was too lazy to change it. Jonah bothered me several times about needing money to buy food and cigarettes, even though he knew all about the current predicament we were in. But because I lived in a house full of brats who took everything for granted, I shoved twenty dollars in his face and told him to leave me alone.

Somewhere in the middle of the show, I had thought about what life would be like if I wasn't constantly looking over my shoulder. I would've gotten a real job where I didn't have to worry about quitting once one of Lucifer's minions found me. I would've visited Liam more often, knowing that I wasn't putting him in danger. I probably would've bought my dad more birthday cakes even when it wasn't his birthday, just because. It sucked that a stupid decision I had made when I was still a teenager was still haunting me in my adult life. I would give anything and everything to live a normal life, even if that meant selling Trey to Lucifer.

So when Raven returned with a bright smile on her red-stained lips and the straps of a backpack with an unknown school's logo patched on the front clutched tightly in her hands, without Trey, I was livid. "Are you fucking kidding me?" I shouted. "Tell me you're kidding, please, tell me you're fucking with me!"

Raven's perfectly groomed eyebrows were sewn together in a straight line. "Baby, it's okay. I got him to give us money." She slid the backpack off her shoulders and unzipped it, allowing me to see the cash that was nearly spilling out of the bag. "Ten thousand dollars."

A smile had made its way onto her face and seeing it only made me angrier. "I don't fucking care about money!" I barked at an incredibly loud volume that made Raven cower away from me. "I tell you to do one thing, one thing, and you fuck everything up!"

She shook her head. "But I thought we needed him for money. We've got it now, so why are you—"

"The money means nothing if Lucifer is still on our ass!" I yelled angrily. I was just seconds away from completely losing my shit.

Raven's lips downturned into a frown. "What does that mean?"

"I was going to sell him to Lucifer in exchange for our freedom. He and his family are a big deal in Summer Hill. Do you have any idea what that means? No, you fucking don't! Because you ruined it! You useless whore!" I was vaguely aware that I had stooped to an all-time low, but at the same time, I was very aware of my rage. Besides, it wasn't like what I said wasn't true. The only thing Raven was good for was sleeping with people to get information out of them.

Her eyes widened as she backed away from me, shaking her head in disbelief. I watched as she tugged out a small object from her back pocket; it took me a while to realize that it was my cell phone. "I wouldn't have had to let him go if you hadn't dropped your defenses around him," she said sullenly as she shoved the phone into my chest. I frowned, inwardly scolding myself for allowing him to swindle me.

"And you know what?" she continued. "I'm glad that I let him go because you just crossed a line. There's no way I'm letting you sell him to Lucifer! You know just as well as I do what he would do to him, but you don't ... y-you don't even care! All you care about is yourself! God, I can't believe that I invested eight years of my life with you! The Owen that I knew would've never done this!" She had gotten so upset that her voice came out like loud shrieks, occasionally cracking.

My muscles relaxed when I realized that she was on the verge of tears. "Raven..." I took a step closer to her.

"No!" she shrieked. "If I'm such a liability, then I guess I'll just get out of your way! You want to sell Trey? Fine, but I'm not gonna be apart of it." She shrugged the backpack to the floor and tossed my car keys at my chest before pivoting on her heel and dramatically storming out of the apartment. She slammed the door so hard that the doorframe rattled and I was sure that it would fall of its hinges.

Jonah appeared from out of nowhere with a look on his face that said he had something to say. I snapped my attention to him, practically glaring holes into his forehead. "What?" I spat.

"You were gonna sell him?" Jonah questioned with an unbelievable amount of incredulity in his voice.

I gritted my teeth in anger in lieu of answering him.

"Look, I know I don't know what you and Raven went through, but that sounds really, really fucked up, man."

A wave of bitterness washed over me and I wanted nothing more than to strangle the life out of him. Somehow managing to find an anchor to keep me grounded, I ignored him completely and walked out the front door, fully intending on getting my property back. It couldn't have been that long since Raven let him go, so I hung onto the hope that he was still stupid and naive enough to not contact the police.

When I started up my truck, I found myself reflecting on what Jonah and Raven had said to me. Didn't they know that I was doing all this for them? I wouldn't just sell the kid for sport; I had a perfectly good reason! It was survival of the fittest and I was trying to keep us alive—there was nothing wrong with that!

Releasing a heavy sigh of frustration, I punched the steering wheel and sunk into the worn-out leather seat. Jonah and Raven had succeeded in making me feel like utter shit and to make matters worse, my cell phone stated to ring with Liam's face lighting up the screen. Groaning, I answered the call and held the phone up to my ear, attempting my infamous carefree attitude, "Did you call to ask for a pound of weed because I thought you'd never ask."

"Hi, Owen," Liam said.

"What can I help you with, little brother?"

"I feel ... lonely," he spoke in a sad, sullen voice. "Can you come over?"

As much as I would have loved to spend time with my brother, I had more pressing issues to deal with. "Can't you call your little boyfriend? I'm sure he can satisfy your needs in more ways than one."

He sighed on the other end. "He's at camp, Owen."

"Visit him, then."

"I'm not interested in driving three hours for a visit that lasts only ten minutes," he spat. "Plus, it's not like you're doing anything besides getting high."

I forced a laugh at that. "You know me so well, brother."

"So, are you coming?"

"No, I'm not. Too high to drive," I lied.

"Oh, then I'll visit you. Where are you?"

"Liam," I said in a stern voice. "I'm caught up in some stuff right now. Just ask mom to read you the bible or something."

The way he said his next sentence had my heart tearing in two, "I'm really sad, Owen. Everything just seems so dark and I need my brother to cheer me up. Please."

I wanted to say no because I had much more important things to worry about than Liam's sadness, but I didn't. If he had been a normal teenager, I would've shut him down in heartbeat. But ever since his best friend died a year ago, he fell into occasional, uncontrollable episodes of depression and somehow, that meant way more than any typical person's sadness. I needed to be there for him. "Okay, whatever, but just because you said please."

"Cool," Liam chuckled weakly, "see you in a bit."

*  * *

I've always envied my brother. He had the life I always wanted: loving parents, decent house, a significant other that encouraged and supported him, and freedom. Hell, if I had half of those things while I was growing up, I probably wouldn't be so fucked up. But even with all that, he was still unhappy which made me wonder if I was unhappy, too. "I had to drive forty five minutes to get here, so you'd better get rid of that frown and appreciate my love for you," I spat as soon as I entered the house.

"We need to talk," Liam stated as he crossed the living room to take a seat on the plush white sofa, expecting me to follow suit. He gazed at me with concerned, blue-green eyes for a full minute before I sighed at his tendency to care too much about me and waltzed further into the house, refusing to take a seat because that would only imply that I intended to stay which I didn't.

"God, Liam, you make it seem like you're gonna break up with me. What'd you do this time?"

"Not me, you."

"What about me?"

"You need to tell me why you were bleeding out yesterday," Liam ordered like he was suddenly the boss of things.

I folded my arms across my chest and shrugged. "Got into a fight. Some guys fucked me up pretty bad."

"A fight where you needed a tourniquet?" he continued to pry because it was in his nature to ask too many questions, especially when it came to me and my lifestyle. "You'd only need a tourniquet if you were impaled by something."

Poking the inside of my cheek with my tongue, I narrowed my gaze at me. "You know, for a high school dropout, you sure are smart." Liam raised a prompting brow in response in which I replied with, "I didn't come here to be interrogated. I came here because you were ... you motherfucker! You totally just used your depression to get me to come over here."

Despite being right with my assumption, Liam didn't bother to acknowledge my comment; instead, he stood to his feet and walked towards me. "And you were with Trey? Why?"

"I told you," I spat rather bitterly, "he was just a stray I found at the side of the road."

"That's bullshit," Liam spat, "Trey would never wander the streets alone not when he has a big mansion with high security."

"You'd be surprised," I muttered under my breath when I recalled how I had stumbled upon Trey in the first place. He was far from Summer Hill and because he was such a naive little shit that didn't see the problem with a black kid walking in the dark with a dark hoodie on, he got himself beat up.

Liam kept taking steps closer to me until we were just inches apart, his turquoise eyes staring me down in the most intimidating way possible. "Tell me what's going on, Owen. What kind of trouble are you getting yourself into? I can get mom to help and—"

I held up a hand to silence him. "No," I refuted immediately. The last thing I wanted was to get that traitor involved, but Liam wasn't going to let this go until I supplied him with an answer that he couldn't doubt. "Look, it's not much trouble, all right? I accidentally got shot, trying to protect Trey. We were in a bad part of town, but I'm okay. We're okay. Actually, I've been meaning to tell you this, but I think I might've scared him away with all of the stoner stuff. He threatened to call the cops on me like ten times and I'm scared that he actually will and I really hope he doesn't because I really like him."

Liam raised an eyebrow. "What? What do you mean you really like him?"

"I really like him," I repeated, lying through my teeth. "You know, like dicks in holes and stuff."

His eyes widened at that and he swung his fist at me, hitting me right in the shoulder. "What! You're gay?"

I shrugged. "Stop making it a big deal."

"I'm making it a big deal because you always make fun of me for being gay, but you..." He cackled, "...this is great, really, but Trey? He's horrible."

I wanted nothing more to agree with him, but if I was hoping to get the kid back and sell him to Lucifer before it was too late, then I needed to milk this lie for all that it was worth. "You don't see me making fun of your boyfriend."

"Um, yeah, actually you do. You insult Max all the time, but wait, did you just say that he's your boyfriend?" Liam questioned, his eyes growing to the size of saucers. This was really exciting him. "Why the hell are you keeping all these secrets from me?"

I shifted uncomfortably at the weirdness of this conversation. "He was my boyfriend. Like I said, I think he might call the cops on me."

Liam combed his fingers brought his short chestnut brown hair and nodded,
seeming to understand where I was coming from. "Then we better get over there and knock some sense into him. I hate him so damn much, but if he makes you happy ... then we gotta get you guys back together! This is so exiting." Before I was able to fully comprehend it, Liam's hand had snaked around my waist and he started to pull me towards the exit.

He was practically beaming with excitement as he dragged me to my truck and he didn't stop smiling for the entire drive. My lie had managed to make him feel all giddy for some reason, even though he claimed he didn't like Trey. Somewhere in the middle of the drive, Liam even asked me if I had sex with him yet.

"You're getting a little bit too excited about this," I commented, slightly peeved at the way that he had gotten more excited about my fake gay relationship than any of the girls I had ever lusted after in his presence—one of his close friends, Marcy, for example.

"I just wanna know what you thought of it ... like dicks and stuff?"

I clamped my teeth down on my bottom lip to refrain from teasing him about being gay. There was a reason why I openly expressed my disgust with his sexuality, so that he wouldn't think it was okay to talk to me about things that I wasn't attracted to. Judging by the way he seemed to be so fascinated by the topic of gay sex, I knew that I wanted to avoid this conversation as much as possible.

"Yeah, yeah, dicks are cool," I said with a ridiculous amount of nonchalance in my voice. Before Liam could retaliate with something else, I turned on the radio to completely drown out the sound of his voice. He seemed to get the hint after that gesture, leaving me to my thoughts on how the hell I was gonna give the best gay performance of a lifetime.

________

a/n: So this chapter was a little shorter than usual, but there's more to come, I promise. In other news, I wanna point out that BTR is nominated for a Grand LGBT Choice award! I'd appreciate it if you guys voted on the chapter titled Breaking the Rules in the designated book by GrandLGBT  That'd mean a lot!

This question doesn't have much to do with this particular chapter, but more about future chapters to come. What would you like to see from this book? Would you like to see some of the dark elements and emotions that I've put in place so far, or would you like to see more lighthearted jokes and non-seriousness? I feel like when I get to the dark stuff (guns, Owen's past, drugs, racism), people lose interest because it's not always funny all the time, but when I do implement the humor, it takes away from the seriousness of the particular scene and make it seem, idk, fake? Let me know your thoughts!

If you enjoyed this chapter, then please leave a comment and a vote!

Until next time,
Lara <3