Chapter Fourteen – Hawthorne #3
That is definitely not something I would ever find fun, but to each his or her own.
“So, have you really been sleeping in your office this whole time?” I hear the first snip of the scissors behind me.
“Even before you were here, I tended to.”
“You must have a lot of aches and pains, then. That can’t be good for your back. I bet sleeping on the couch is better for you.”
All I do is shrug. Coming downstairs to sleep on the couch in the living room seems like a lot of work when it’s well past midnight and the house is eerily silent. Besides, I really am used to passing out at my desk these days.
Drowning myself in my work, in finding more possible targets, is the only thing that keeps me sane most days.
Abby doesn’t really take the hint that I don’t want to talk.
The entire time she cuts my hair, she’s a chatterbox—which goes in line with how she was the night she fell out of the closet, if what the guys told me is true.
Chatty, chatty, chatty. Rambling, some might say.
At the time, she was worried for her life. I wonder what her excuse now is.
It feels as though the haircut takes an eternity, but in reality, I believe it’s only a few minutes.
I don’t have that much hair to cut, and it’s just a trim to get it out of my eyes.
It’s when she moves to stand on my sides, when I can see her with my peripheral vision, that time stretches on to infinity.
Looking at her too much is a bad idea, but I can’t really control my peripherals. She’s there. She’s there and she’s concentrating so intently on me that it makes me uneasy in a weird way.
I was so young when my entire life changed. I don’t really have much experience when it comes to women—other than the typical, three-second experience that goes hand-in-hand with being a horny teenage boy with an equally horny teenage girl. You can’t really include those encounters.
Yeah, it’s been a long, long time.
And the thing is, it really isn’t something I put a lot of thought into. Why would I? I was content with how things were, the turn my life took the day the Benefactor sent a lawyer to help me with my case.
My murder case.
My mind wanders a bit too much as Abby finishes my haircut. I find myself glancing at parts of her I shouldn’t—namely, her mouth and that perpetual smile she seems to wear. Those lips of hers seem to draw my attention far more than they should.
“There,” she says, moving to stand before me. She holds the scissors and the comb in one hand, her other hand on her hip as she inspects her work head-on. “All done, and not a moment too soon. Do I make you uncomfortable or something? I know my personality is a love-it or hate-it kind of thing.”
“No,” I say quickly, “it’s not that. It’s… not you, it’s me.” Such a clichéd saying, but it has found its way in the cliché hall of fame for a reason: more often than not, it’s true. Not always, but in my case, it certainly is.
“Why?” she asks, the one-worded question spoken softly, faintly, so much so that I hardly hear it. The question is accompanied by a curious yet concerned look, as if she really does care about the answer.
Which is simply ridiculous. She wouldn’t. She doesn’t.
Does she?
She is terribly confusing.
When I don’t say a word, she tries to piece things together on her own: “Are you still upset about what happened between me and Royal? Is it because I’m here, a complication you didn’t see? Use your words, Hawthorne. Talk to me. I’m not that bad.”
“No,” I finally say. “It’s not any of that.
” I haven’t told the Benefactor about what happened, and I don’t know if I will.
I’ve also come to terms with the fact that she’s an unseen complication to our lives—but the thing is, I’m starting to believe she’s a much bigger complication than any of us could have possibly thought.
In the beginning, I assumed she was just a woman caught up in some far-fetched extenuating circumstances.
Now? Now I’m not so sure. I was never a man who believed in fate, for how could fate deal such terrible hands to those who don’t deserve it?
If fate was a kind, merciful thing, surely those we all love would still be here now.
We’d have them instead of memories locked away in our heads.
But how else can you explain Abby? How else can you possibly describe how perfectly she seems to fit into our flow? Granted, she made Royal break one of our rules, but… is the rule really such a bad thing to ignore when, as she’s pointed out, she already knows everything about us?
We’re not a team who does everything. We simply hunt and kill. How much can a physical connection every now and then get in the way of things?
Abby leans forward, mere inches from my face as she seemingly peers straight into my soul. “Hawthorne, you’re lost in your head again.” The corners of her mouth quirk upward even more. “You do that a lot. I have the feeling your head isn’t a fun place to be, though. Am I wrong?”
I don’t like that she can read me like an open book. I really don’t. And yet, at the same time, it’s kind of nice not to have to speak things aloud, for her to simply know. “No,” I say again. “You’re not wrong. I’m… not like Royal or Ezra.”
“How so?”
“We’re all lost to the past, to some degree.
Royal has moved forward, and Ezra has too, to some extent, but I don’t think I’ll ever get there.
The person I lost… it didn’t happen overnight.
It wasn’t some one-off from a stranger who took advantage.
I was young, and I watched it happen for years before I took matters into my own hands. ”
Abby lets out a sigh of a breath, but she doesn’t say a word more.
Strangely enough, her talkativeness must have rubbed off on me when I wasn’t looking, because I continue, “I could have saved her if I would’ve acted earlier.
She thought she was strong enough to take it, that she could handle it.
I was just a kid, and I believed her. I wanted to believe that, someday, I’d wake up and everything would be fine. ”
“But it wasn’t.” The way she says it, she says it like she knows first-hand it’s never fine.
“A body can only take so much before it gives out.” Try as I might, I can’t ignore the flashbacks this time: me standing in the kitchen, staring at the knives. Listening to him make a joke about how she couldn’t take the heat. It was right after the funeral, and I was a fresh man of eighteen.
Old enough to be tried as an adult. Considering how gruesome it was, I certainly am lucky the Benefactor found me. I still don’t know how; I never dared to ask, always fearing it wasn’t real and that the rug would be once again pulled out from under me.
Abby’s voice is a bare whisper when she asks, “Was it your mom?”
I nod and look away, closing my eyes as I try to push the memories back down.
They’re stubborn things. Now that they’ve surfaced, they don’t want to shrink back and release their hold on me.
Memories like that, memories so strong, are enough to make your chest tight and the air around you feel as if it’s not nearly enough.
I hear a sound, and though my eyes are closed, I assume it’s Abby setting the scissors and comb on the island. Out of everything she could do, I definitely don’t expect her to do what she does next.
She hugs me.
It’s a little awkward, given my place on the stool, but it’s a hug all the same.
A hug. I don’t think I’ve gotten a hug since… I can’t remember. My eyes crack open, and though my head is turned to the side, I can see one of her arms since it’s wrapped around my neck.
“I’m sorry,” she whispers, her cheek dangerously close to mine. “I can’t imagine what that must’ve been like.” She squeezes me harder before she lets go, and I hate to think it, but I feel the loss immediately.
I… don’t want her to let me go.
“I know it’s not enough, it’s never enough, but at least what you guys do might stop someone else from feeling the same kind of pain,” she says.
My mouth opens. She still stands directly in front of me, so close I could easily lift my hands and touch her, pull her in for another hug, something, anything, but before I have the chance, Royal strolls into the kitchen, clearly-mid workout if his sweat-covered torso is any indication.
He goes to the refrigerator and grabs an energy drink, and then he turns to face us.
Standing on the other side of the island, he cocks a dark brow and says, “Am I interrupting something?” And then, to show just how unbothered he is, he opens his drink and takes a slow swig.
Abby glances at me, apparently giving me the lead, and I take it. I stand, let go of the towel around my neck, and shake out the hair that fell on it during the haircut. “Not at all,” I say, mostly because if I were to say anything else, I’d never hear the end of it.
Not after I made such a huge deal over Royal and Abby hooking up. I’d be the world’s biggest hypocrite, and if there’s one thing I never aspired to be, other than the type of man that makes a D.D.K. victim, it’s a hypocrite.
I fold the towel and leave it on top of the stool, barely looking at Abby when I tell her, “I’ll clean this up later.” I walk away, not sparing her or Royal a second glance. I can’t look back, for a whole multitude of reasons.
Mostly Abby.
I don’t know why I opened up like that, why I told her all of those things. Royal and Ezra know, of course, but it’s another thing entirely to spill my guts to someone new, someone who shouldn’t even be here with us.
Seriously, what got into me? What happened to the man who follows the rules without hesitation? I don’t know what to think anymore. She’s making me doubt everything I thought I knew, and for the first time in a long time, the future is hazy.
I can’t see where we go from here.