Home > Bury Me with Lies(7)

Bury Me with Lies(7)
Author: S. M. Soto

That was my dilemma. Mackenzie came into my life at the wrong time. The time when I wasn’t looking for love or anything more than someone to fuck. I didn’t do relationships. I didn’t care about women and their feelings. I had my own problems to deal with, my own secrets and skeletons in my closet I needed to wade through. I had promises that I made, and promises I intended on keeping. I was a man of my word, something I prided myself on, and Mackenzie’s very presence in my life put all that in jeopardy. She changed things so swiftly and quietly that I didn’t see it coming. She made me want to switch up the rules for her, and therein lies the problem. Women didn’t come between the Savages, but she almost did.

Things weren’t as clear anymore. The water staring back at me was murky. I still had a mess I needed to clean up, and things I had to do to hold up my end of the bargain. I just didn’t realize the bargain would cost me her. Everything revolved around her. I should’ve seen it sooner, but I was blinded by what I felt for her. I won’t make that mistake again.

I had one intention now and that was following through on my word. I never went back on a promise, especially to my brothers. If Mackenzie knew what was good for her, she’d stay away, far away.

Weighing the heavy stack of pages in my hands, I toy with the idea of throwing it away, but I can’t seem to bring myself to do it. Instead, I flip open to the first page and am just about to start reading when someone starts pounding on my door. With a frustrated grunt, I toss the stack back onto the coffee table and throw the door open with too much force to be necessary.

“Something’s wrong.” Marcus pushes inside, pacing the floor. I let the door slam shut, ignoring him. Grabbing another bottle of liquor from the bar, I reclaim my spot on the chaise. Without a single fuck, I drain the contents, ignoring the burn in my chest with each gulp and swallow.

I’d very much like to forget Mackenzie Wright ever existed.

“Vincent was acting weird, man. I think something is wrong. Have you spoken to him or any of the other guys?”

I sigh, resting the bottle between my legs. “Does it fucking look like I have?”

“What the hell is the matter with you, Sebastian? Don’t you care that Vincent, of all people, is acting shady? You know what he’s capable of.” There’s a panicked gleam in his eyes I should care about, but I don’t.

“Not really.” I close my eyes and tip my head back. The alcohol coursing through my veins makes it a whole hell of a lot easier to tune out Marcus and his antics. He drones on and on about this and that, and finally having enough, I thrust the bottle of liquor out at him.

“Just shut the fuck up and drink, or get the fuck out.”

He grimaces but grabs the neck of the bottle and takes a healthy swig. He plops onto the couch opposite me, and we spend the rest of the day there, killing the bottle and passing out. It’s the first time in days I’ve been able to sleep. The first time in days I’ve had a reprieve from thinking about Mackenzie and the unbearable ache in my chest.

Nothing good ever lasts, though.

 


Past

 

I sulk in front of the roaring bonfire. The waves of heat seep through the fabric of my clothes, the flames dying to lick at my flesh and peel them clean from my skin. I wish it would. I’ve been drinking recklessly this entire night.

Summer and I broke up again.

This back and forth shit is getting old. I wasn’t heartbroken. In fact, I didn’t care all that much about Summer or any other girl I’d dated in the past. I was numb, merely going through the motions. In reality, I didn’t know why so many others cared if we were together. Every breakup was the same. The town whispers, the gossip, the same old fucking drama. Summer was an escape I was all too eager to use.

A decent guy would feel guilty for not being upset, but I wasn’t a decent guy. I was just irked by the fact I wouldn’t be able to use our relationship as an escape for my own issues anymore.

Summer was a warm body who occasionally made me laugh. I don’t know why I kept her around as long as I did. The guys hated her. My parents thought she was a useless waste of space in my life.

I was bored. Plain and simple.

I hadn’t found my place in the world yet, and I so desperately wanted to, because this role? The one I’d been playing since I was a kid—leader of this fucked-up pack of misfits—

was not doing it for me anymore.

When I was younger, it felt good to be needed by the rest of the guys. We each had our own story, our reasons as to why we were all as fucked up as we were. And mine? The attention and the recognition I got from the guys was everything I didn’t get at home. It was always, “Be better, son,” “Swim harder, Bastian,” “You’ll never amount to anything, Sebastian.” It almost always came from my father. I was never good enough for him. I was either too privileged, which led to the lecture about his childhood and how he had to work twice as hard just to be where he is today, or I wasn’t deemed strong enough to take over his throne when the time came.

The great Benedict Pierce was a force all on his own. He was richer than sin and was amongst town royalty here in Ferndale. The town royalty consisted of the founding families of Ferndale. And even though my father wasn’t technically a “founding member,” he had amassed so much money that he had no qualms about buying his way in. He bought the town’s fear, their respect, and their admiration. That was Benedict’s biggest downfall, his fear of not being enough. He grew up with nothing, and oddly, his father brought him up the same way he did me, though his circumstances were much different.

My father grew up in a trailer park with white trash parents who swore up and down that he’d never amount to anything. He worked his entire life to try to prove them wrong and gain their respect. That was when he met my mother in Brazil. Born to a millionaire, my mother was an heiress who fell for the lower class. My father had a new goal. Rather than gaining the respect of his parents, he wanted it from my mother and her family instead. He wanted to be enough for her. Until one day he was. Then he wasn’t.

That was the thing about money and striving for success. You could never have enough of it. All the money in the world couldn’t make you happy. That was Benedict’s problem; he’d go the rest of his life trying to prove to the world that he belonged, instead of enjoying what he already had, what he had already built. It was a vicious cycle I could feel starting all over with me, but I planned on breaking it.

Because I would never amount to anything in his eyes, it only made me hate him more. It only made me want to prove him wrong. See, I didn’t want to be my father or have the life he has. I wanted to beat him. I wanted him to look at me one day and see everything I’ve built and then give him the fucking middle finger.

While I may not be as fucked up as the rest of the guys, it did feel good to be needed. To be someone’s leader, the person they ran to when they needed help and had no one else. It felt great for a while, until one day it didn’t. I was tired, tired of cleaning up messes and tired of worrying about everyone else.

We wanted different things out of life. All they wanted to do was this shit: the partying and the fucking, while I just wanted to go to college without carrying someone else’s baggage on my shoulders. The guys hated the fact that Summer was always around because, in their eyes, she was an imposter in our brotherhood. She was the reason they could feel me pulling away. Only it wasn’t her at all. It was me.

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