Chapter Nineteen
My pulse is in the tips of my fingers.
They are throbbing against the painted brick wall, my head hanging between my shoulders.
My chest rises and falls, the pain at the center growing sharper.
I knew agony, just not quite like this.
I was fifteen when I took a shot at my father after watching him physically beat my mother.
At fifteen, I took a stand for violence against women.
At eighteen, that stand, that fight, had been stripped away from me. I had been severed at the vein.
My sister lost her life to a fucking psychopath, and I wasn’t able to stop it from happening.
I throw my fist against the wall. Bite my tongue when the wet crunch hits my ears.
If I hadn’t been drugged, if I hadn’t been beaten, if I hadn’t been locked up, would my sister still be here? Would this have happened at all?
Harlen asks Laiken how she got away, and I listen to her tell him how she ran, and how she kept running until she couldn’t. And I press my forehead to the cool wall, squeezing my eyes closed, wondering what this meant for Laiken. Wondering if he would come back for her.
A delicate tug at the neck of my shirt has me spinning, tears burning down the length of my face, a gushing stream at the column of my neck.
Laiken is standing in front of me, her tears trekking the same path as my own.
I reach for her, tug her to my chest. With her in my arms, I fall back against the wall, crying silently into the top of her head. And though every sob is quiet, I know she can hear them, the same way she can feel them, and maybe that’s why I grip her harder, holding her tighter.
How would I keep her safe? The thought terrifies me. But not as much as the one that follows at the heel of it. Could I keep her safe?
With every subtle movement, a tick of a muscle, a thud of my heart, with every proof of stilted life, the grip she has at the back of my shirt grows tighter, and she cries deeper.
“I’m so sorry, Chase. I’m so sorry. I tried. I…tried.” She repeats the same words over and over again, and something in me snaps at that. On my pull back, I palm the side of her head until her face is resting in my hands.
Both of my thumbs reach across her wet cheeks, cutting through and spreading the stream of tears when I shake her. But it isn’t rough or violent. “Why? Fucking why would you do that!?”
Her green eyes grow dark, the pools at the rims deepening. She looks hurt, but she didn’t need to be.
“Wh-wh—” her words tremble on her tongue, though they don’t fall.
“What the fuck, man!?” Harlen’s voice comes from behind me.
I ignore him. I keep focusing on my sister's best friend.
Laiken drops her head, then attempts to pull back. I don’t let her, instead forcing her chin upward with both thumbs until she’s looking at me.
And when I have her there, eyes touching mine, oscillating back and forth, I tell her, “Try to distract him? I could have fucking lost you, too.”
Silence hangs a beat, then she whispers, “Because she would have done the same for me.”
I shake my head, not because I didn’t agree with what she’d said, but because she was right. She was absolutely fucking right. I let go of her, pushing my sweaty palms back into my hair.
“That was fucking stupid, Laiken,” I tell her.
She shrugs, crosses her arms. “And I don’t care, Chase.”
I palm my jaw, adjusting my T-shirt on my shoulders, a cold sweat beading across the back of my neck.
Silence descends around our vulnerable truths.
And the air is charged and thick, because Laiken wasn’t just my sister’s best friend, she was mine, too. And she meant something to me. And what I said was the goddamned truth; I could have fucking lost her too.
I watch the back of her legs hit the window bench. She takes a shaky seat and pushes her knees to her chest.
She couldn’t look at me again, and she couldn’t look at Harlen either—who was sitting on the floor, head between his shoulders.
Laiken’s quivering fingers brush the delicate chrome chain necklace wrapped around her neck. A home for the cubic zirconia ‘J’ that dangles from the center. Jade had the same one, only hers held an ‘L’.
Laiken’s mother had bought those for them a few Christmases back.
I’m sliding down the wall when Laiken’s voice carries on a quiet whisper. “Th-there’s more…” She pauses to look between Harlen and me, before settling her gaze on mine. I watch her swallow. “It’s my mom, she…”
Every bone in my body snaps, and Harlen is shaking his head because we knew what she was going to say without her even having to say it.
Because we’d all been waiting for it, even if we never gave voice to that fear.
I didn’t know if now was the right time to tell Chase and Harlen about my mother. However, what I did know was that I may never get another chance.
Because losing someone close to you changes you.
With every death, a part of who you are dies alongside the person you are forced to bury.
I’m not the girl I was before I found my father dangling in the shadows.
I’m not the girl I was before I watched evil rip my best friend's life from her bones.
And I’m not the girl I was before I found out my mother had maxed out her veins.
Truth is, I didn’t know if the Chase I knew today would be the Chase I’d remember tomorrow.
Same for Harlen.
My fingers are cool when they wrap around the crease in my elbow, my thumb brushing across the pale blue vein. My eyes remain screwed down, locked to the floor. “She did it this time.”
I don’t look up. Not when I hear Chase cuss beneath his breath, and not when I hear him shuffling toward me. Instead, I sit flicking at my vein, watching how it flinches beneath my pale skin.
Dread fills every blue line, the opposite sensation of what my mother would have felt in the moment she sank the needle in.
“She…” I can barely get my words out when his shadow falls over me.
He is on his knees, his hands at my forearms, guiding me toward him.
My arms coil his waist, my head finding its place at his chest, over his thumping heart, and I focus on the way his large hand runs down my spine.
I fist the back of his shirt, tears are a wet puddle beneath my cheek, seeping through the already damp fabric turning it thin and bleak.
“She’s gone, too.” My throat feels swollen, each word expelled as a croak, “My best friend, and my mother, both just…gone.”
They don’t speak. Instead, Chase grips me tighter and Harlen reaches for my shoulder, offering a comforting squeeze.
And I knew it was better this way.
I didn’t need them to tell me they were sorry for my loss. I never understood why people apologized for things out of their control. And I didn’t need them to tell me that I was going to be okay, we all knew the girl I used to be would never see the light of day.
And I think deep down both Harlen and Chase knew that once they walked out of this hospital room, the boys they had been, would be buried, too.