Chapter Forty-One
The air blasts against my face. I suck on a cigarette, watching Laiken’s shadow cast itself across the pale walls of her bedroom through the front window of my truck.
My blood is trembling.
I feel fucking sick.
You’re selfish.
You’re disgusting.
Did you forget that you left me and I had no choice but to protect myself?
I draw on my cigarette, watching the cherry glow bright, flicking my gaze to the handgun I’d thrown to the dash. I tug on my bottom lip when I feel myself being dragged toward the large gaping black hole that is my trauma.
I hadn’t touched a gun since I took my mother’s life, since I put a bullet in my father’s head.
I couldn’t trust myself.
Intention and action when fueled by anger and guilt and fear, could see their fluid lines blurred within a matter of seconds.
And I knew that firsthand. I also knew that once it was done, you couldn’t rewind time to fix it.
All you’re left with is blood on your hands, a rotten core and a hollow heart.
A chill haunts my spine. I don’t shift my eyes, they’re hammered on the trigger.
I fucking hated that Laiken had a gun, and I hated even more that I gave her no choice.
Reaching for it, I get it out of sight before I throw up.
My stomach is burning and I’m breathing through the nausea. I tuck it beneath my seat when my phone vibrates against my thigh. Taking the last hit of my cigarette, I throw it out the window, then reach into the front pocket of my jeans, sliding out my cell.
A message from Harlen tells me he’s got food sorted.
I choose not to reply. I wasn’t hungry. Not sure I ever would be again.
I flick the screen off, throw it to my dash where the gun had been, watching the trailer succumb to darkness.
Laiken barrels out the front door. She throws her shit down on the small patch of dead grass in the front and returns to lock it. She avoids eye contact with me as she pulls herself into my truck, dumping everything into the back seat.
She’s wearing a massive hoodie that's way too long for her arms and an oxblood ball cap pulled low over her eyebrows, as if trying to hide, block me out.
“So Cold” by Breaking Benjamin starts at the speakers. I throw my arm across the top of her seat, backing my truck out.
“You got enough for a couple days?” I ask, my voice void of emotion.
She doesn’t say anything, just draws one foot up to the seat, resting her knee against the door, not acknowledging me.
We ride in silence, driving out of town, taking the winding roads toward Rusty’s lake house in the woods.
“You know you’re gonna have to give it back,” she tells me.
The gun. I feel my limbs seize at that and my breath catches in my lungs. I don’t reply. I keep my trembling eyes forward, focusing on getting us around the next corner instead.
“Hmm?” she prompts.
I don’t look at her, I press my foot harder on the gas, telling her, “You don’t need it anymore.”
She laughs, pulling the sleeves of her hoodie over her knuckles. “You don’t know what the fuck I need.”
I shrug. “Maybe not, but I know for sure it’s not a fucking gun.”
When she doesn’t bite back, I turn to look at her. She stares ahead, tongue in cheek.
I shift the stick again, speeding up. “Where’d you get it? Do you even know how to fucking use it?”
She’s not as impervious to the questions as she wants to be. I see her bottom lip tremble, watch her bite into it, never meeting my gaze.
“Get out of my business, Chase,” she says, voice low.
I tsk, shake my head. “Hate to break it to you, Laik. But I’m all the way fucking in it, so, you better start talk—”
She drops her legs and turns in her seat, tearing at the seatbelt when it gets stuck, pulling her back. “You want me to talk, fine…” She raises her voice, starts to laugh. It cools my blood. “Let’s talk about how I’ve thought about blowing my head off like the guy…”
I slam my palm against the wheel and she stops talking, then I’m jerking the truck off the road, ripping up the stick.
You didn’t tell someone you wanted to kill yourself unless you were prepared to tell them first what drove you there.
My voice is loud in the cab, and I turn in my seat, chest falling heavy. I’m white knuckling the steering wheel, palms slick. “What do you really want to say, Laiken!?”
Laiken slumps back in her seat, stares ahead, the expression on her face blank…dead.
“Tell me, fucking say it!” I shout.
She flinches at the volume of my voice, though she doesn’t look afraid.
Laiken reaches toward the dash casually, her fingers wrapping around my box of cigarettes. She taps one out and bites it between her teeth, taking a light to the end.
The bones in my fingers are beginning to tire. A maelstrom of feelings that I’d softened with too many lines of snow burns in my chest—the biggest of all, guilt.
She doesn’t look at me when she says so quietly I barely hear her, “You fucked me up, Chase Keller, and you didn’t even have to touch me to do it.”
I turn away, suck on my bottom lip, drop my chin.
Her words strip me to the core.
Laiken pushes herself deeper into my passenger seat, drawing both legs to her chest, returning the fabric of her hoodie around her knuckles. She settles her chin to the top of her knees; her shell wreathed in smoke from the burning cigarette still smoldering between her fingers.
I reach for it, take it, push it between my lips and let the nicotine fill my lungs.
She doesn’t look at me, in fact, she turns away, resting her cheek to her knees, gazing out the window.
I speak on a cloud of smoke, “I’m not a good person.” I take another pull, dart the roach out the window, slamming the stick into gear.
And that was the goddamn truth.
I failed my sister.
Couldn’t protect Laiken.
Killed my mother.
Murdered my father.
I am a fucking monster.
Circling the wheel in the palm of my hand and looking over my shoulder for oncoming traffic, I exhale when I tell her, nosing onto the road. “You just wanted to believe I was.”