Chapter 73: Alone
Chapter 72
Jack
"Ha! Ha! Ha! One of our most promising recruits!" The Boss throws his head back, laughter thick with smoke and rot.
The air in the club is a stew of stale cigarettes, cheap liquor, synthetic highs, and something fouler—sex bought, not given. I keep my hands clasped behind my back, knuckles white. Not from fear. From restraint.
This stench is normal here. Expected. I stare straight ahead as he guffaws, two young women clinging to his sides like ornaments—naked, glassy-eyed, trembling. Fading bruises bloom across their ribs and thighs like wilted flowers.
My stomach knots. Disgust coils hot in my chest, but I swallow it down. He holds the power. And power here doesn’t negotiate—it executes.
"Serves those bastards right," he says, nodding at the box I handed him. Inside: three thumbs. Proof. Payment.
I hated doing it. I always do.
Killing stains more than your hands—it soaks into your bones. No matter how hard you scrub, that crimson never fades. It just... settles.
"It’s Christmas," he crows, raising a tumbler of amber poison. "Go on, Jack the Reaper. Take your vacation."
I bow—just enough to show respect, not submission—and turn away. Out past the writhing bodies, the vacant stares, the girls who still look like children beneath the makeup and bruises. Their lives are already ash. I’ve seen it happen too many times to count.
Jack the Reaper.
I hate that name. It’s stupid. Cringey. Like something out of a bad comic. But in this world, a name like that is armor. It keeps people at a distance. Keeps them afraid. And fear is safer than pity.
Outside, the city breathes its usual symphony of chaos: distant gunshots, barking dogs, a homeless man pissing against a crumbling brick wall. Two figures lie slumped near a dumpster—sleeping or dead. Doesn’t matter. This place eats souls and spits out husks.
But not tonight. Tonight, I drive away.
My old sedan coughs to life, and I merge into the sluggish Christmas Eve traffic. The radio crackles to life—some saccharine jingle about snow and joy. I almost turn it off... but don’t. Instead, I watch.
The streets are strung with lights—gold, red, blue—casting soft halos over crowds rushing with bags and laughter. Real laughter. Unburdened.
When was the last time I laughed like that? Did I ever?
Families. Couples. A pair of young men in matching, hideous Christmas sweaters—one with a little girl perched on his shoulders, her mittened hands clutching his ears. They’re drawing stares, sure, but they don’t care.
They’re wrapped in their own warmth. Then, without fanfare, the man without the child leans in and kisses his partner’s cheek—quick, tender, certain.
"Fags."
My Boss’s voice echoes in my skull like a curse.
I flinch. Even in memory, he poisons everything.
What would he do if he knew? If he found out I was one of them? He wouldn’t just kill me. He’d make it last. And no—that’s not paranoia. That’s fact.
The little girl squeals, bright, piercing, alive and for a second, the sound stitches something inside me. Hope? Longing? Or just the ghost of what might’ve been?
More families pass. Smiling. Holding hands. Carrying futures in paper bags.
Will I ever have that?
I glance at my reflection in the side window.
Baggy eyes. Two jagged scars—one from a knife, one from silence. A permanent scowl carved into my face like a warning. And beneath my collar, the burn mark—ropy, pink, ugly—peeking out like a secret I can’t hide.
I look away fast.
As if.
A family? Love? Who would ever choose this?
A man with blood under his nails, no diploma, no future—just a body stitched together with violence and regret.
Wakeup, Jack.
***
A tap on the passenger window drags me out of the fog.
Fuck.
How long have I been sitting here in this cold, echoing garage?
I turn.
Ciel stands there, scarlet hair pulled into a tiny, lopsided ponytail, Lanny balanced on his hip like a promise. His eyes soft, worried, meet mine through the glass.
I roll the window down. The winter air bites, but it’s nothing compared to the ache in my chest.
"You arrived twenty minutes ago," he says, voice gentle. "I was worried you weren’t coming up."
Lanny babbles in agreement, tiny fists waving like he’s scolding me too.
I blink fast, but it’s too late. A tear escapes, hot and traitorous, how embarrassing.
"I’m sorry," I rasp.
"I... got lost in thought."
In the past. In the blood. In a dark time.
"Okay," Ciel says softly. No pressure. No demand. Just... space.
"I just... I need a minute," I lie, clutching the steering wheel so hard my knuckles bleach white. I force a smile—brittle, practiced, the kind I used to wear. The thought makes me sad.
"I’m fine."
"Okay," he says again. And then he turns, Lanny cooing against his shoulder, and walks back toward the house.
The door clicks shut behind them.
This is stupid.
Pathetic.
You’re a grown man. Pull yourself together.
But it’s not just the memory. It’s the contrast.
The warmth upstairs. The smell of cinnamon and laundry soap. Lanny’s laugh. The sound of Ciel and Nolan bickering.
And then—that life. The cold tile floors. The taste of blood and fear. The way touch always meant pain or payment.
I glance at the side mirror. My reflection stares back younger, softer, clean. No burn mark visible. No fresh bruises. Hair trimmed. No visible scars, no dark circles.
I’m not that guy anymore. I know that.
But sometimes...
Sometimes I wake up convinced this life is a fever dream. That I’m still curled in a dumpster behind the club, shivering through the cold with only a cigarette to keep me warm, dreaming of hands that hold instead of hit. That Ciel...this life is just another trick my starving heart invented to keep me from swallowing a bullet.
I have to be worthy of this.
Not the killer. Not the ghost. Not the broken thing they left in the gutter.
I have to be someone who deserves to be loved like this.
But tonight... tonight I forgot.
Another tap.
I look up.
Ciel’s back. Alone this time.
Before I can speak—before I can lie again—he opens the door, steps up onto the running board, and climbs into the truck like he owns every breath I take.
The truck’s huge, but with him on my lap, it feels small. Sacred.
I fumble with the seat lever, reclining it just enough so he can settle against me without cramping. His weight is real. Solid.
I wrap my arms around his waist, fingers digging into his hoodie, well mine now that I look at it closer, like if I let go, he’ll vanish.
"I’m fine now," I try to say.
But my voice cracks. The words dissolve into nothing.
He shifts, turns slightly, and guides my head into the crook of his neck. His pulse thrums against my temple—steady, alive, mine.
He smells like home.
I don’t know if it’s his pheremones or his him, I don’t know what it is, but it’s home. A home I’ve never had. A home I now have.
I breathe him in like oxygen, and right now he probably is.
"Sunshine, I—" I start, desperate to explain, to apologize, to fix myself so he doesn’t see the mess—
"Shhh." His fingers thread through my hair, gentle as snowfall. "Not tonight. This is one of those moments where you don’t say a word."
And that’s it.
The dam breaks.
A sob rips out of me—ugly, guttural. Then another. And another.
I’m shaking. Can’t stop. Tears soak into his shoulder, hot and endless.
I’m a fucking grown man, a killer, a survivor—and I’m crying like a child who just realized he’s safe.
Ciel doesn’t flinch. Doesn’t pull away.
Doesn’t tell me to man up.
He just holds me tighter. One hand cradling the back of my head, the other rubbing slow circles on my spine, like he’s soothing a feral thing learning, for the first time, that touch can mean care.
And that’s what destroys me.
Because I’ve never had this.
Not when my mother chose drugs over my fever.
Not when my father’s belt left stripes I still feel in my bones.
Not when I sold pieces of soul just to eat.
Not when I paid boys to be with me for a fraction of their time, their hands cold and transactional, their eyes already looking past me.
Not even during chemo—when I lay alone in a hospital bed, vomiting into a bucket, wondering if dying would finally feel like rest.
No one ever just... held me.
No one ever said, "You don’t have to speak. You don’t have to be strong. Just be here."
And now—now I have it.
And I don’t know how to be it.
How to accept that I’m allowed to fall apart... and still be loved.
So I cry.
Ciel says nothing.
He just holds me as the garage fills with the sound of my breaking—and the silent, steady truth that I’m no longer alone. That I don’t have to wonder anymore, that I also have a home now.