Don't Walk Away, By...Christine Gray

"I had told Mateo to keep that rabid bitch away from me. I should have known from that weak ass nod he gave me that he was just saying what I wanted to hear to make me shut the fuck up. Shit!! All these years, I hadn't seen her. Even while working for Mateo, I kept my distance. Now...ugh..my hands are trembling, and I know it ain't all anger that got me sweating. I'm a fool for still wanting this woman. Christine is a nightmare that I have as a recurring dream still to this day. The pain, the scars, the sex. She was my first kiss, my first orgasm, my first love from my youth that I can't shake... but I just don't think my heart can take it or my fucking sanity. No, NEVER again. Yeah, I know I don't sound too damn convincing."- ELMO

For different reasons, Life has stepped in to allow Elmo and Christine to reclaim what was cruelly taken away; their child. Now, secrets of the past are revealed that will bring pain of the truth. Will a looming danger in the present, rekindle a passion they both don't want to acknowledge? With this second chance being offered, will Elmo and Christine walk away?


*****TAKE A PEEK*****
CHAPTER ONE

Elmo limped into his bedroom. Now that he was out of sight, he allowed the fatigue that was growing every second to come to the surface. He tossed his duffle bag of gear on the floor as he hobbled over to the bar in the corner of the room. Placing his cell in the crook of his neck, he poured himself a whiskey straight as he listened to Fabrizio on the other line. The strong liquor burned a path to his stomach. It wasn’t called "rot gut" for nothing. He made a mental note to cut back after he was gone…after he was free of what had been plaguing him.  He shook his head of the thoughts that tried to invade. He was already having a hell of a time splitting his mind to follow the two conversations going on.

“I can confirm the kill,” he spoke.

He eyed the bed but knew damn well it would be lights out once he hit the mattress. He walked over to the uncomfortable chair, instead.

“Not only did I watch, but Cristine took proof,” he mumbled.

“Proof?” Fabrizio paused. “I don’t want a damn head in my office.”

“No, something a lot subtler,” promised Elmo, shifting in the chair.

His leg was killing him. The hand to hand combat he had engaged in a few hours before going to the restaurant, took it out of him. Honestly, that’s why he didn’t put up a fight when Cristine had insisted on killing that fat bitch that had caused all this war shit in the first place.

Cristine, he sighed mentally. Thinking about her caused him to take another sip from his glass.

Elmo couldn’t help but marvel at how cold and calculating she had become. Watching her stalk her prey, wait, and squeeze the trigger was a work of art. Yeah, he should have been worried. He should not have smiled secretly while he let her lead in front of him, which was a way of watching her back, but he couldn’t help feeling pride and warmth for the woman she had become.

As a matter of a fact, time was all he had as he sat in his vantage point in the restaurant. During the time he waited for the bowel losing agent to take effect that had been slipped into the big mouth granny’s food, he let his mind take him back. He pretended to play a game on his cell, casting his eyes over to the large table of family and friends that were celebrating the death of Mateo, he was sure.

“Fuck,” he grunted.

That was the signal Cristine had been waiting for. He tossed the cell down. It chimed his defect of the level he had been playing. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Cristine excusing herself from her guests to go to the bathroom. He timed it just right. He needed the man at the bar to be focused on him in hopes that the man wouldn’t remember Cristine walking towards the bathrooms.

“Hey, you ever played that Candy Crush game?” he groaned, scooping up his phone to show the man.

Of course, the bartender had played the game. Every fucking body had played this addictive ass game. He played off his grin by acting as if it was something that the man behind the bar said. However, it was the facial reaction of the old bitch when her stomach really started to churn that made him laugh.

“I’m just gonna cheat,” he admitted to the man. “Hey, can you see what’s taking so long for my order?”

His cell rung. He slid from his stool, making sure to give the excuse of a poor connection as the reason why he was walking off from the packed bar area to stand in the hallway of the bathrooms. He kept his face to the wall when their target tore up the walkway to make it to the ladies’ room before she shits herself. As soon as she crossed the threshold, Elmo turned and removed the ‘Out of Order’ sign from his coat to attach to the door. He entered the bathroom just in time to witness Cristine’s handy work.

“The old bitch ran into the bathroom. She was so focused on making it to a stall that she didn’t even give Cristine a second glance. Just when she passed Cristine, Cris took out her knife and gutted her. One stroke like a fucking samurai…from hip to hip. She was dead before she hit the floor. Cris took two of her fingers as proof,” Elmo reported to Fabrizio.

Elmo continued to play the scene in his mind while Fabrizio replied. What happened next was a work of art. Cristine leaned over and grabbed the hem of what he had thought was a dress to pull it up to reveal a pair of skinny jeans underneath. A few tucks, a tie of the fabric, and she had created a whole other outfit. She had entered wearing a striped dress but glided out in jeans and a very bright, colorful shirt.

“Ready?” was all she said before walking out.

Cool as a summer breeze, she sat back down to join the table with the other men that were all part of their murderous band. Once he got back to his stool at the bar, he calmly did what he knew she was also doing. In the shadows, he hid his hands from the eyes of others to remove the paper thin, specially made, flesh-colored gloves from his hands. He balled them up and tossed them into his drink to be dissolved on contact.

“Oh, let me get that,” he offered, holding the door for Cristine and her party as if he didn’t know them with his takeout bag in his hand.

Elmo walked right by them, still talking and laughing in the parking lot on his way to his car.

“Yeah, I hear you,” he mumbled into the phone right before Fabrizio hung up.

Sure, he heard the man talking, but he wasn’t listening to a damn word. His attention had been on the conversation that was happening downstairs in Cristine's room. Mindlessly, he pushed the earbud deeper into his ear canal. Like lead, his head fell back to rest on the chair. He narrowed his eyes to stare mindlessly on the wall across the room.

The voices of the two women came through nice and clear. He was a sad motherfucker to be reduced to eavesdropping on Cristine with the bug he had placed in the light feature that hung from the ceiling of her bedroom. He mostly switched it on when she had closed herself up in the room for long periods of time….to keep from seeing him, he was sure. Even still, he was nosy. He wanted to know what she was doing. Other than those times, Elmo would use it at night to listen to her heavy breathing. The sound was enough to trick him into believing she was lying next to him.

Now, however, he waited for the shoe to drop. For days, Carmella had been fishing around Cristine. It was plain to see that she wanted to hear the story behind why he and Cristine were breaking their necks not to see each other. Carmella had to repair the strained relationship first. Cristine had told her how and when she had met Mateo. With the two being thick as thieves again, Carmella didn’t dance around the bush any longer.

“Ok, I’ve waited and hinted off that I wanted to know what’s up with you and Elmo.”

His body slid further into the chair. He could hear Cristine sigh. Then her deep voice began to retell the tale. He couldn’t help rolling his eyes at the fucked up version she spoke to her hungry audience. It was so far off the mark that he felt rage building in his chest. He should be used to being made out to be the monster that preyed on the hearts of the innocent. To a point, his skin had thickened over the years, but never where Cristine was involved. She was his first everything; first kiss…the first girl that he got his fingers wet in…the first pussy that had ever wrapped and held his dick tight. 

No other girl would approach him. They all looked, but no one was brave enough to step to the silent boy that chose to sit and observe life as it unfolded around him. It wasn’t long till it was said that he was dim-witted, but that was far from the truth. He saw everything. The skill of observation had kept his pockets fat at the poker tables. It later helped him in his life of crime. However, he did nothing when it came to picking up on the social cues of women. Did they want to fuck or not? That’s all he wanted them to say. Instead, girls chose to play mind games that left him sick to his stomach. Therefore, he left them alone. He stuck to watching and being teased for being dumb to the point that he was nicknamed after a preschool character that acted more like a clueless idiot than a silent, yet intelligent boy. 

He had lost sleep for an entire week when Cristine started going out of her way to hang with him. It blew his mind. Was she doing it as a dare? Was it just because he and her brother were growing and selling weed together? It couldn’t be that the pretty ebony skinned girl with the small boobs and killer body liked him.

Elmo couldn’t ask her brother. What if his best friend flipped out and went apeshit over his little sister lusting after a boy that was four years older than her? What he didn’t need was to catch a rap case from fuckin around with a fast in the ass girl. It didn’t matter that Cristine was so smart that she was in the ninth grade after skipping a year, while he was held back in tenth grade. Now, he was a nineteen-year-old senior. The numbers didn’t lie. She was jailbait…pretty jailbait didn’t change a thing.

He chuckled while Cristine went into recounting the story of how she got her way. Elmo’s heart beat double time. At least this part of gossip she relayed to Carmella correctly. In spite of them not actually being a couple, people treated her as if she belonged to him. The fact that he was known for his iron fists and concrete skull, no one would dare to mess with her.

“You crave the attention, don’t you?” he had asked her one day after school.

Elmo leaned with his shoulder pressed on the metal lockers. The school's ill attempt to keep from getting new lockers had failed. The sky-blue paint that singled the freshman wing had already started to peel. Cristine glanced up at his face. The twinkle in her brown eyes always made him laugh when nothing else in his shitty life could.

“I’m not the one spreading the rumor.”

“Oh no?” he smirked, tilting his head. “Your actions say otherwise. The way you hang around me…on me is saying that we are a couple.”

Elmo closed his eyes tightly to let the memory take over.

“My actions, huh,” mumbled Cristine.

He could almost smell the CK One that she used to wear even now. The imprint of when she stepped into his orbit was just that strong. For the life of him, Elmo still didn’t understand why he didn’t back away? No, now as a man, he knew why. He wanted something to happen. For months she had been teasing and running after him. For months he had been whacking off to the thought of recreating every porno he had seen with her.

This time, he didn’t back down when she rolled up on the tips of her toes to brush her full lips against his. He wished he would have played it off better than he did, but his moan of excitement had been loud in the halls. If students weren't watching them before, they sure were now. A mixture of awe, fear, and curiosity waged war in her wide eyes. Elmo snaked his hand around her waist to pull her towards him. The little bit of space that had been there vanished.

Leaning to brush his lips to her ear, “What are my actions saying, Cris?” he whispered.

If he could have penetrated her through her clothes, she would have been fucked right there. That’s just how hard his dick was. It strained, bucked, and damn near put a hole in her stomach.

“You can tell that Elmo is still into you, girl. History like that doesn’t fade. You ever thought of giving him another chance. I mean for the- “

Suddenly, Elmo reached up. He removed the earbud from his ear. He wanted to hear nothing else. He wasn’t interested in listening to Carmella beg for a second chance on his behalf. He didn’t want it and didn’t need it. He wasn’t going to eat more ass than he had already all those years ago. Nope, Cris could keep her ass on the ‘don’t fuck with’ list.

He leaned over and yanked the black shoelace of his combat boot to loosen them before he kicked the shoes off. He repeated the action to the other, then stood to undress.

What he and she had was wonderful. He had never found another woman that burned as bright as her. God knows he had tried by fucking countless other women. Nothing. He felt coldness with each one to the point that he would leave them. He had no desire of scaring another the way that Cris had him. He loved her… shit still did. He was mature enough to admit it. 

“Love,” he whispered the word as if it was a strange, priceless object that was out of his reach.

Men had fought wars, kingdoms had gone to ruin, and innocent people had died all for love, or what those thought to be love. He too had done so much all for a love that he thought had been true. He had sold his soul to the devil and became his disciple because he was told in doing so, he would be rewarded with the heart of the girl that had said that she had loved him too.

The scraping sound of his even row of teeth echoed within the room. Once again, the frustration of being played the fool almost blinded him. In the end, Cristine was the biggest liar of them all. She had breached his stronghold with fevered words, a tight cunt, and promises that had brought him to his knees. Even still, he had gone through the desert and taken the torture that had been placed upon him, to fight his way back to her, only to be shut out. Imagine that the only source of light that had kept him sane and alive was shut off. Not by others that wanted to hurt him, others that thought he wasn’t good enough, but it had been executed by Cristine, herself.

Even now, he wondered if she had ever loved him, or was it just a word she picked to label her young feelings? Like when a person says, “I love that song.” Then says the same damn thing when the next tune begins to play. Maybe, Cristine was fucked in the head? It would explain the choices she had made with her life after him. Choices that she claims she made, and things she had done because of him. He was always the blame. Hell, so much so that for a time, he had started to believe it, but he knew the truth. It was a truth that he didn’t and wasn’t going to waste his time now trying to tell Cristine. Let her keep on thinking the worst of him. She could continue to soil his name to all that listened and shit on him. In fact, it was better this way. To be honest, Elmo didn’t know what he would do if she ever changed her view of him. The pain of rejection had created a moon-sized crater in his heart and soul that he doubted could ever be filled. He had believed he had found a source to heal himself once before, only for Cristine to snatch even that away from him.

He was fine with being a monster with no soul, no hope, the Devil’s Disciple.