Chapter 19 Poe
POE
Peace wasn’t easy to come by the morning after the Hunt. It didn’t help that I was cold, the November air like a frigid wind on my naked body. I considered grabbing for my sweatpants, or at least my sweatshirt. Anything to ease my discomfort.
But I forced myself to sit, to focus on my breath rising and falling.
Running from discomfort never worked, and nobody knew that better than me because I’d tried. After Whit had gone to prison I’d done pretty much everything not to think about how much he’d fucked over our grandparents, how much he’d decimated what remained of our family after our mom went missing.
I’d beaten and bruised my way through Blackwell with Bram and Remy. I’d played in Hunt after Hunt. I’d had my share of fun with my share of women. I’d tried to lose myself in the hunks of metal I shaped in the studio.
None of it had done a single thing to make me feel better.
Finally, I’d stopped.
I’d just… stopped.
I’d stopped trying to figure out where everything went wrong, what I could have done differently to save Whit.
To save my mom. To save all of us.
I’d forced myself just to be with it all, embrace how much it all sucked. How much it all hurt.
It didn’t make the hurt go away, but something else had happened: I realized the hurt was just a feeling that came and went. And when it came, I could breathe through it.
Usually.
Now I accepted these thoughts, these memories, and returned my focus to my breathing.
That lasted about a minute before Maeve’s face swam in my mind.
I tried to release it — for now anyway — but it didn’t work. She was there, just like she’d been since the day we’d brought her home from the last Hunt.
It had hurt me to see her chained to the wall, naked and scared. Had hurt me to know the Ghosts had done that to her against her will. And then, after the hurt had passed, it had pissed me the fuck off.
My body coiled at the thought of the Ghosts, which was easier to think about than Maeve, who was back in the loft, everything way more complicated than it had been the first time she’d come to live with us.
And that was the thing: I didn’t want Maeve to be our guest for three months.
I wanted her to stay.
The Second Noble Truth in Buddhism was that the root of suffering was desire. The path to liberation then, to not suffering, was not to desire anything, not to become attached to anything.
Or anyone.
But I’d never claimed to be Buddhist, and I felt the clinging of my own mind, a futile death grip on something — someone — that wasn’t mine.