Chapter 7 #3
I knock instead, harder than needed, but still a knock.
Nothing.
I knock again and force my hand open before my fist decides for me. “Alice.”
A floorboard creaks inside.
Then the lock turns.
The door opens a few inches, and she’s there in an oversized sweater, hair messy, eyeliner smudged, face pale in the hall light. She looks tired as hell and angry enough to bite, and the relief that hits me is so violent I almost hate her for it.
Her gaze drops to my hands first, then my shirt, then my face.
“You look like shit.”
“Open the door.”
“No.”
“Alice.”
“Don’t say my name like that.”
“Like what?”
“Like it belongs to you.”
That shuts me up.
Her fingers tighten around the edge of the door. “You saw them.”
“Yeah.”
Her mouth tightens. “I hate that he showed you.”
“I don’t care about the pictures.”
She scoffs, sharp and tired. “Of course you do.”
“No.” My hand curls at my side. “I care about you.”
“That’s the same thing right now, Jagger.”
“It’s not.”
“Yes, it is.” She opens the door a little wider, still not enough to let me in. “Because you don’t just want to know if I’m okay. You want to know if Johnny hurt me badly enough that you get the green light to hurt him back.”
My jaw locks.
Alice sees it.
“Exactly.” Her voice drops, rougher now. “And that is exactly what he wants.”
“He touched you.”
“And you’re making it about him.”
“I’m making it about you.”
“No, you’re not.” Her eyes flick over the blood on my shirt, the split skin on my hands, the bruise already swelling near my jaw. “Look at you. You’re standing at my door covered in someone else’s blood, asking me for details so you can turn my answer into permission.”
I step forward before I can stop myself.
“Don’t,” she says.
One word, soft, but I hear it.
My hand drops from the doorframe. I didn’t even realize I’d grabbed it.
“He fucking touched you,” I say.
Alice’s mouth tightens. “And you think saying it like that makes this about me?”
“It is about you.”
“No, it’s not.” Her voice cracks, but she pulls it back fast. “It’s about you and Johnny. It’s always about you and Johnny. He did this to get to you, and now you’re standing here proving it worked.”
My jaw tightens. “He’s dead.”
“Exactly.” Her eyes flash. “That’s exactly what he wanted.”
“I don’t give a fuck what he wanted.”
“Yes, you do. You’re letting him drag you around by it.” She looks at the blood on my shirt, then back at me. “He wanted you angry. He wanted you messy. He wanted everyone in that warehouse to see you lose it over me.”
I say nothing.
Because she’s right, and I fucking hate it.
“He’s not scared of you hurting him, Jagger,” she says. “That’s the part you’re not getting. He likes knowing he can make you do it.”
My hand curls at my side. “Stop.”
“No. You need to hear it. Hitting Johnny won’t punish him. Pain isn’t a consequence to him. It’s attention.”
I hate that she’s right.
I hate it even more that she sounds like she understands him. That he even got close enough for her to understand anything.
“What do you want me to do?” I ask.
She laughs once, empty and exhausted. “Maybe don’t turn what happened to me into your little revenge fantasy.”
That shuts me up, my hands curling into fists as my sides.
“I’m not a reason,” she says. “I’m not a prize or some line he crossed that gives you permission to go full murderous monster and call it protection.”
The worst part is, I want to argue.
I want to tell her she is a reason. The reason. The only fucking thing I can see clearly right now.
But I don’t, because it would prove her point.
“You need to leave,” she says.
“No.”
“Jagger.”
“I’m not leaving you alone.”
“I don’t want you here.”
“Too bad,” I drag a hand over my mouth, feeling dried blood pull against my knuckles. “Your lock is shit.”
She rolls her eyes, and starts to close the door, and every part of me moves forward on instinct.
Barely, but enough that she stops and so do I.
There’s the line.
Thin as thread and somehow stronger than every fucked-up thing inside me telling me to push through.
I step back.
It costs me more than it should.
“I’m going to find him,” I say. “I’m going to hurt him.”
“I know that.”
“Then why are you looking at me like that?”
“Because I don’t think hurting him is going to be enough for you.”
I don’t answer.
It won’t be.
She sees the truth anyway and closes the door.
The lock turns.
I stand there staring at the wood while the fight finally catches up with my body. Jaw. Ribs. Shoulder. Knuckles. Everything hurts, and none of it matters.
I should leave.
Instead, I slide down the wall across from her door and sit on the floor, bloody hands hanging between my knees, head tipped back against peeling paint.
I tell myself I’m staying because Johnny could come back. Because her lock is shit. Because the stairs are loud. Because someone needs to be here.
All true, just not the whole truth.
The whole truth is that Alice is on the other side of that door, alive and too quiet, and I can’t make myself walk away.
So I sit there in the hall, bleeding through my tape, staring at nothing, knowing I’ll stay all fucking night.