Chapter Twenty-Five
The hospital gown falls to my feet. I kick it to the side and reach for the pair of cut-off denim shorts Nanna June had brought in early this morning.
She had been to the trailer—after it had been professionally cleaned—to collect some of my things when detectives ruled my mother’s death what we already knew it was…a suicide.
And that word permanently suspended itself above me, like a dark cloud.
Because first, it was Dad. Then, it was Mom.
A shiver racks my body, forcing my heart to shake against my ribcage.
The tote bag she’d stuffed a few of my meager belongings into had once been my mother’s, which had then become Jade’s when hers had broken, and her dip-shit father refused to buy her a replacement.
Now, it sat on the floor at my feet, becoming mine, because both my mother and my best friend were gone.
One, murdered. The other killed herself.
Hot tears glaze my eyes, sweat collecting in my palms.
When Chief Wynston and the detective assigned to my case, a middle-aged man with short sandy-blond hair and a round face, came to see me early this morning, I had told them everything I could. What he had done to us, what I ran from.
They had sat in front of me, banking on me being brave enough to share with them every detail that came with my best friend’s murder. Holding out hope that I could find the strength to live through it all again.
And I did, for Jade.
There was a certain disconnect as I spoke, forging ahead to provide details of a night I wished nothing but to forget. It was as if I had flicked a switch, speaking only from the nightmares I refused to give a fresh set of teeth.
Dipping my hand into the pink tote bag at my feet, I drag out the top my grandmother had packed for me, clasping my quivering fingers around the bubblegum pink tank I knew wasn’t mine.
I could still smell her. The scent of lingering apples and jasmine that clung to the fibers of everything Jade touched.
I wet my dry lips when a thick swath of grief expels through a shiver, rising in stippled bumps across the surface of my skin.
My throat squeezes, the tendons fighting against each other as I shove the vulnerability aside, the tank top too, and snatch up the black hoodie next to it instead.
Maybe tomorrow I could wear it.
But today wasn’t tomorrow.
I clench the hoodie tighter. It was Chase’s. I had refused to give it back to him a week ago, and he hadn’t so much as put up a fight. He had let me have it. I wished nothing more now than to be transported back to that moment when Chase was smiling, Jade laughing, and Harlen grinning.
I wanted my life back, I wanted my best friend back, my mother and father too.
Slowly, I guide my arms into the large sleeves, holding onto my breath, feeling the throbbing that becomes warm and tight at the site of my gunshot wound.
Thankfully, no bones had been shattered but it was highly likely that I’d be left with some nerve damage that might potentially require physical therapy or further surgery.
For the most part though, I had some minor tissue damage.
The doctor had spoken about physical therapy and pain medication, but I couldn’t focus on anything except taking my next breath.
A gunshot wound and the pain that would follow as it slowly healed would be nothing compared to what Jade had been through.
Clenching my teeth at the sharp pain, I drag the hoodie over my head.
The scent of amber and oakmoss cradles me, the comforting softness of the fabric landing half-way down the length of my pale thighs when a knock comes from behind me.
Glancing over my shoulder, I pull the hood around my neck and turn, expecting to see Chase, though Harlen stands in his place.
His broad shoulder is resting against the large door frame, his chin dipped, golden curls spiraling around his pretty face.
He has a bottle of orange juice clenched in his fist and he spins it in the palm of his hand, taking a step into the room, a small smile tilting the corner of his top lip.
“You look good today,” he states, stepping closer until he’s close enough to reach out and pull me in for a hug.
My fingers claw into the back of his T-shirt, and I rest my cheek against his chest.
“Liar,” I whisper.
His laugh is silent, though I feel it rattle behind his ribs, and I pinch him a little tighter, grateful that at least one person in this stale and lifeless building can look at me and see someone other than a victim, or the one that got away.
Harlen draws back and takes the tote bag, snatching the handles together.
He doesn’t wear it, though he keeps it fisted, throwing it over his shoulder.
I spin around, step into my studded black sandals and raise my chin when Harlen speaks, starting toward the door, “Let’s get you out of here, Laik. ”
But I reach out, snatch his wrist and tug him back toward me. He cuts his gaze over his shoulder and spins around briskly. “You okay?”
He’s the picture of concern, his light brows furrowing, though they settle the moment I find enough voice to speak.
“Where is he?” My words are so low, so quiet, I barely recognize my own cadence.
Harlen’s bright blue eyes stay latched to my green ones, and I glimpse resignation and remorse before he looks over my head, away from me.
He doesn’t meet my eyes again, sucking on his bottom lip, no doubt figuring out how to break to me that Chase wasn’t coming.
It has my heart falling like a stone to the pit of my stomach.
I just wanted him to say it.
“Har—” I begin to say when a knock comes from the door behind him. I let my hand slip away.
“You kids ready to go?”
Wynston, the police chief, with gray hair and bowed legs, stands at the opening of the small room.
Harlen drops his eyes to mine and the sympathy misted across the surface has my stomach clenching when he answers Wynston, though his eyes stay pierced on mine. “Yep.”
I drop my chin and rake my trembling hands through the front pieces of my loose hair, feeling my nose drip.
I catch the liquid with my thumb and follow behind Harlen, accepting the bottle of juice he holds toward me.
As I step up to Wynston, his head dips, eyebrows raised, and I swallow rigidly anticipating what he’s about to say.
“Laiken, sweetheart, I need to let you know that it’s a little intense out there at the moment.
” He pauses and sucks back a breath of air.
I watch it move through his entire frail-looking body before he continues to speak, “There are a lot of people that want to talk to you, that want answers to their questions…” I can see this is hard for him to vocalize, because humans often forget that behind the person they’re heckling, the person they’re trying to snatch detail from, is a woman, or a man, or just a girl, dealing with a pain that will never dull in intensity, an agony as raw and sharp, as debilitating as the wounds she will now be forced to carry.
“But I want you to know that you don’t have to talk to anyone, okay? ” he finishes.
I chew on the inside of my cheek, willing the tears at the back of my eyes away, dropping my head in a curt nod. A bead of sweat races down the length of my spine when Harlen places his arm around my shoulder and presses me to his side.
“I’ve got you,” he says.
I thought Chase did too, that’s what I want to tell him, only I can’t get the words out.
I keep my chin where it is, flick my eyes to him and I think he sees it, my need for his best friend, for my best friend's brother, for the person that held me when I found my father.
Chase is the only reason I got through that nine months ago.
I squeeze my eyes closed, and draw a sharp breath at the same moment Wynston clears his throat, and I snap to look at him.
He smiles sadly at me, then reaches and taps Harlen on the back as he moves out the door and down the long hall.
Harlen holds me a touch tighter and we follow behind the chief until we reach the big glass doors at the entry of Devil’s Peak Hospital.
A sudden paroxysm of fear releases through my bloodstream when I see the cameras and reporters stationed around the opening and I feel myself wanting to retreat, though I keep my head down, nestle myself as close as I can to Harlen, dropping my eyes to my feet.
All tones of voices, some high, some low, swim around me, a flurry of urgency as questions are shot like bullets toward me.
“How does it feel to have survived ‘the second killer of Devil’s Peak?’”
I keep my chin screwed down, focused on the studs on my sandals as Wynston and Harlen thread me through the urgent crowd.
And in this moment, I realize that my trauma, my loss, is on display for everyone; and there is nothing I can do about it.
I try to swallow, but I can’t. I uncap the bottle of juice I have clasped in the palm of my hand and push the opening to my lips when a hand, hard and determined, latches to my arm.
The same one decomposing, rotting from a gunshot wound.
I clench my teeth, twist and without thinking, I toss the juice into the face of the male reporter that still hasn’t removed his filthy grip.
“Don’t ever…ever…” I whimper, struggling to speak around the cry that cuts its way through the small gap between my top center teeth. I lick the tear that trembles on my top lip.
Chief Wynston shoves a hand against the man’s chest, and everyone must realize just how serious this really is because they part for us and Harlen guides me toward Rusty’s truck with little to no effort at all.
When we are both inside, he cranks the engine and I’m too shaken to find my seatbelt when the chief taps the top of our hood in finality and Harlen noses out from the curb.
“Let Me Be Sad” by I Prevail battles with the air whooshing through the open windows of the lulling truck.
I raise my cheek from the seatbelt it was resting on, curling my arms around the back of my neck and reaching for the elastic at the base of my fishtail braid.
Dragging it away, I loop it around my wrist and make good on loosening each strand until the mass of white-blonde hair sits in waves over my shoulders, cascading the length of my chest and torso.
“Your arm alright?” Harlen asks, turning to look at me for a moment before casting his eyes back to the road. One wrist is draped over the steering wheel, the other riding the shifter.
I swallow. “And if I said no?”
Harlen adjusts the stick roughly, the veins in his sun-kissed forearms push against his skin from the movement.
“Then, I’ll turn this truck around and—”
I squeeze my eyes closed and lie through my teeth, “It’s fine.”
The car slows when Harlen takes a left turn.
“When did you become such a shit liar?” he asks, chin jerking in my direction, white T-shirt stretching across his chest.
“When I lost my best friends…” I make a point to over exaggerate the s, twisting a loose thread around my pointer finger at the base of my denim shorts.
When he doesn’t reply, I flick my eyes upward, finding his blue ones already on me.
I wet my lips, I tell him, “He said he would…”
Harlen’s throat dips, his jaw tightens, and I feel my cheeks heat as the car comes to a stop, and he cuts the engine at the front of Nan’s.
He exhales; a resemblance of strain. “He wasn’t feeling well—last night was…a lo—”
And I scoff almost instantly, cutting him off, unclipping the seatbelt and throwing it away.
“Yeah, and when did you become such a shit liar?” I throw his words back at him, popping open the door, kicking it and getting to my feet, slamming it shut.
The reverb from the thud doesn’t settle before Harlen is throwing open his own.
“It’s the truth, Laik.” His voice is louder than mine, and he slams the metal behind him, matching my force.
I’m shaking my head.
I open the back door and snatch the tote bag sprawled across the back seat. I work to shove my things back inside.
“Can’t help but think maybe he doesn’t want to see me because he wishes I was the one that died.” Slamming the door shut harder this time, I walk around the rear of the truck and Harlen is in front of me, the tips of our shoes touching.
He sucks on his front teeth, then breathes so quietly, “Stop.”
I raise my eyes to him, feel tears lick at the back of my eyes, my bottom lip wobbles.
“I’m only speaking the—”
He cuts me off, “If you believe that’s the truth…then you don’t know him at all.”
Before I can digest what he’s just said, Nan calls out from the porch, “Harlen, sweetheart, I’ve got something for you; don’t leave yet.”
Harlen is watching me when he takes a step toward the house. I can tell he wants to say more, that he is biting back a truth, fighting the entanglement at his teeth, but he looks away, and replies to Nan instead, “You’re too good to me, Nanna June.”
He meets Nan at the bottom of the porch steps, accepting the container of what looks like frosted cinnamon buns. He pushes a kiss to the top of her head and gives her a quick hug, they chat for a moment, and she squeezes his waist a little tighter before letting go.
I’m walking past them, up the concrete stairs and beneath the white arch overhead. My hand is at the front door when Harlen calls out to me and my instincts have me instantly spinning around, catching in his gaze, while Nan flicks her eyes back and forth warily between the both of us.
“I meant what I said,” he states, his hands shaking as he places the container of treats under his arm.
I stare at him for a moment longer, and nod but when I turn around I whisper beneath my breath, “Yeah, and so did I.”