41. Helene
Helene
Safety is relative.
It’s one thing you learn pretty early in life, if you’re smart.
Safety isn’t a place but a state of mind.
The apartment, with its slanted partitions like crooked teeth in a failing smile, used to feel safe. Gaps in the windows and walls seep air into the space, too hot in the summer and rigid in winter, but it’s ours as long as there’s money to slide toward rent.
Mrs. Laverne is a decent type of lady who always says she’ll do something about the mouse problem and never does.
Right now, I’m warm.
Blankets cocoon me in normalcy, the weave on the indigo quilt loosening and the ends dragging the floor. I pace frantic lines from one wall to the other, only five paces before it’s time to turn around.
But warmth and security are different things, as well.
I’ve got one of them. The other I might never have again.
There’s no safety, and no rest. Anxious energy winds me up like someone cranked a cog in my back and set me loose. The apartment isn’t the same.
I hike the blankets higher up on my shoulders. Neither am I.
I close my eyes, and the creature’s ice teeth flash, dangerously flush with my neck.
The drip of blood down my torn wrist haunts me. I scrub my opposite palm across the lines of the bandage.
“Pretty monster, I beg of you. You’re making me dizzy with your pacing.” Wren lounges on the couch and takes up the entire space with his long limbs. “Sit. I’ll donate my lap to the cause.”
I shake my head and awful laughter clogs my throat. “If you don’t like it, you can go,” I say.
His shadows toy with the curling edges of wallpaper, lifting them into place before allowing them to gradually unwind down. The walls beneath are yellow and black spotted, age and mold continuing to warp plaster and lathe from their original positions.
Safety and trust are not mutually exclusive.
Both come slowly no matter how badly I want them. How can I trust Wren? Or any of them?
They have a bad habit of showing up whenever Audra and I get attacked by things that should not be a thing.
Wren stops, working shadows like a coin over his knuckles, between his fingers. “You’d rather be left alone?”
My jaw clenches.
Audra’s sleeping peacefully in the bedroom. My bed is empty except for the memories of the last time I was there. Filled to the brim by the three of them and aching, wanting. Needing.
Lust like that isn’t a help, it’s a burden.
Do I want company now? Or do I need some fucking space to figure it all out?
“Yes. Outside. With Forest.”
Wren throws back his head and laughs. To make my point, my insides tighten, and heat shoots unerringly into my vagina. Or is it my heart? My brain?
Either way it’s a straight dose of serotonin, hearing the sound.
Wren’s laugh makes it feel like I’ve got complete control.
“Throwing me out with the dogs already.” He gazes at me.
“There are no dogs out there.”
“I’ll let you collar me if you want.” Wren smiles. “As long as you wear the collar later.”
Nicholas is skulking somewhere below us, in the foyer. Or in the quiet forgotten places in the house where the dust collects and the spiders are free to live their happiest and best lives.
Warm. Safe.
Anxious.
Losing it.
The threads of sanity are down around my feet now, slipping right through my fingers. The sensation is made all the worse because I understood how the shattered pieces fit together before. I learned to live with them.
Wren is only here to watch me and make sure I don’t come apart.
But the last time I was whole and hale, we were in a small apartment in Sedona with Mom dancing her way through the kitchen.
We spent most nights there, drawing cushions from the couch onto the cracked black and white linoleum. Making a fort under the table until I got too old for those games. And Audra got too sick.
Wren waves an arm and shadows slither free, caressing my ankles until I kick them and they scatter. “All right, fine. Forget the collar. For now. There’s plenty of time for it later.”
“How can you be so calm about this?” I cry out, bending to sweep more shadows away from my hips.
“About?” he asks.
“This!” I turn and look at him, catching Wren staring.
Tears flood my eyes. Which is horribly inconvenient because crying accomplishes nothing.
I was fine. Struggling, but surviving.
These men came along, and I realized what was missing. Them. They were missing, the visibility they provided, the safety and the intrigue and the mischief.
Life.
I can’t trust any of it. What will happen when they disappear? What happens to me if one of them dies?
This kind of situation isn’t sustainable.
When they leave, their loss will punch through me, puncture the already scarred surface of my heart, and I won’t recover.
I snuggle deeper under the weight of the blankets and form strange patterns in the dust on the floor from the dragging fringe. I stop when Wren fails to lift his cute ass off the couch.
“Oh. You really wanted an answer?”
I sniff. “Please. Go,” I tell him in the same careful cadence.
My hands twitch, and I tangle them in the quilt. They all flat out refused to leave but at least I can make them stay downstairs, outside...anywhere but in the room with me.
Wren holds my gaze as he stretches tall, all the time in the world at his disposal. His arms reach overhead and the tips of his fingers practically graze the ceiling.
Either it’s sagging, or he’s gotten taller in the last day.
Shadows seep from him, trail him, mark him. The tattoo, Perthro, stands a darker black against his pale skin, and my mouth goes dry.
Fate, chance, cycles.
He shifts forward on silent feet with his entire attention focused on me. I tilt my face automatically to hold his gaze when he stops in front of me. Near enough to breathe the same air. Not touching.
Awareness sends heat spiking down to my abdomen.
“It’s all real,” he says in an undertone. “And you’ll see soon, monster.”
Something pulls me toward him, something unbreakable. I want this man almost against my will.
“Sure. From the mouth of the master of illusions.”
This might be one of them. The resolve I’d felt in the car, to try and escape, trickles away the longer he stares at me. This has to be a trick.
There’s no way in hell for me to feel this bound, this tied, to a man like him. Man, hell. He isn’t even human.
Wren grins. “At least now you understand what we’re up against. There’s no value in taking the high road. If you play by the same rules as your enemy, they win.”
And if I trust him? If I go all in, and they finally realize, after all this time, I’m not acceptable? I’m not strong enough for them to stay. And I’m not strong enough to handle them leaving, either.
“I’m not the person you think I am,” I insist. “How many times do I have to say it?”
“Eventually you'll get sick of your voice, I imagine.”
His shadows aren’t touching me. They float in the air around us, a teasing torment.
“I’m not her.” I hold his gaze.
Wren angles his head. “Is that what bothers you?”
There has to be something in his expression, a dead giveaway to show his hand. But the mask is drawn on tight.
I jerk when his fingers pinch my chin, lifting my face to his for inspection. Why am I nervous?
“When you want to get out of your head, monster, I’ll be here. We’ll talk.” He dips his mouth to mine and pauses with inches to spare. “Whatever you want to share about your new self, I’ll eat it up. When you’re done avoiding it.”
He knows.
There is no sweet comfort with him. Of the three of them, he’ll be the first to figure it out, to notice. They are ready to stand up and fight. For Hellevi. For the person I might have been once.
Centuries ago.
I’ve got it wrong this time. Or they have. I’m not the lovable Valkyrie they fixated on.
I’m going to fuck this up the same way I fuck everything up. And then they’ll never want to love me again. They’ll leave the second I take a risk and open the gates around my heart.
Wren chuckles, flashing his teeth, and when I purse my lips at him, he pulls free.
“Whenever you’re ready, pretty monster. But I won’t wait long.”
He slides both hands in his pockets as he slinks to the door. It closes behind him with a squeal of protesting hinges. The silence isn’t the comfort I thought it would be.
It’s a reminder of the smallness of my life.
I’m by myself, Audra resting in too deep a sleep for me to disturb her with some inane chatter. I’m used to being alone because when you’re the one who keeps shit together there is no one else to lean on.
You adapt. You grow stronger, smarter, more resilient.
And so fucking lonely it stings.
She is my sister and my best friend, and I’ve done everything in my power to protect her. My bullshit has pulled her under this time.
What the hell am I going to do now?
I groan, my head falling back on my neck. I grab the end of my braid and tug it sharply like the pain will clear things I need cleared.
Newsflash: it doesn’t do shit.
“Okay.” I stop at the dead center of the room with its warped picture frames, peeling wallpaper, and air of neglect. With dusty Christmas lights I have to put away. It’s on the to do list, right below cleaning out the car. “Yeah. It’s totally fine.”
A shadow casts across the window but the sun is resolute today. It shines regardless of the cloud cover. I want to think it’s a gift for me.
The glow, the warmth. I thrust an arm out from the nest of blankets, goosebumps lifting along my forearm.
“I’ve slept with a vampire and a Fae. A raven shifter.” The words bubble out. “I’ve slept with them at the same time and let them love me and fought off things that don’t exist in the real world.”
I shake my head.
“Except they do, because I saw them. They bleed like anything else does. The way I did. What’s worse? The sex or the monsters?” I’m disgusted with myself for even saying it out loud. Which is part of the reason I do. “Sex with monsters, Helene, clearly.”
What would Mom say if she were here?
She’d gotten her heart broken more times than I had fingers to count. After Audra’s dad left and we picked up and moved, she’d gone out. Date after date. Man after man.