Chapter Forty-Five
The notebook couldn’t have weighed more than a pound, yet the weight of it in my palms had a way of making the bones in my hands ache.
Needles prick at my fingertips, a dull pain throbbing through the length and wrapping around my wrists.
I heave a sigh, let it clap to the weathered pier beside me, shifting my weight as I reach for the blunt I’d shoved into the front pocket of my jeans earlier in the day.
Biting it, I light it, then I hit it, pinching it away from my lips, reclining my head and resting it on the splintered pole behind me.
The smoke is trapped in my lungs, and I don’t let it go until I find the balls to reach for the book again.
My heart is slamming inside my chest, fighting for oxygen while blood rushes to my head.
“Give her something to believe in, or let her go.” Harlen’s words cycle on repeat.
I return the blunt between my lips and reach forward, turning the first page.
Severed Veins is scribbled at the top in capital letters, a sharp scratching of lines beneath it, pierced through the lined paper.
I hadn’t written since the day in the tunnel, four weeks after Jade’s death. Each time I tried, I bailed, choosing to bury myself in blow instead. And the thought of returning to it today has a nervous sweat collecting in my palms.
Music had been my whole life; before I lost Jade.
It was an escape, a place to bleed, a reason to breathe.
I fucking loved writing. Singing until I could taste blood at the back of my throat. But words, they’re what I loved most. The unspoken, finally finding their tone.
I always hoped that even if no one ever heard my voice, perhaps one day they’d at least see my words, and that they would prevail.
But I wasn’t even doing that.
I wasn’t singing and I sure as hell wasn’t writing.
And I knew my sister would be fucking pissed about that.
I press my eyes closed, thinking of the words she’d carved into my desk.
Let’s fucking bleed.
I had to cut vein now.
I had no choice.
A cold sweat licks across the back of my neck and I can feel the tension in my vocal cords, taste the grief, when, for the first time in almost three years, I let myself whisper over the words I’d written.
You were never a number
A bright spirit of wonder
A soul that should have grown older
An angel I should have kept closer
Take me back
To the gun in my throat
Can I go back
And not fucking choke
Weak and spineless
Hand me the rope
Bullet or blade
It’s time for me to go
It’s time for me to go
And meet my sister’s ghost
It all comes back so quickly, but as I’m singing, then humming, running the melody on a loop, I know something is missing.
A truth between the verse I’d written, and the chorus I’d bled.
I take another hit of the blunt, leave it pinched between my lips. Then, I tap the pen to the paper, listening for a whisper.
I scribble down the words blade and trade, then I chew off a cuticle at my thumb, spitting it into the lake, circling both words for what feels like hours, until it all falls into place.
Closing my eyes, I allow the bleed out to reveal itself as a whisper beneath my breath…
Push the blade, open the gate, take her place, sever the vein
The air is cooler now. I had been on the pier for what felt like hours. Wind rustles through the tops of the trees, their ancient limbs groaning from the same ache I had tried to bury.
I paused writing after I penned the pre-chorus; staring at my blood on the paper.
I had thought about Jade and how much she wanted me to do something with my music.
“Drag us through your rubble, tough guy.”
The memory of her words had brought me a sliver of comfort, acting as a salve for the wound. But then I thought of Laiken, and the fresh body that was found at her trailer park this morning and it tore open again.
An owl hoots from somewhere; twigs and pine needles are a burnt-orange carpet beneath my feet.
It’s dark when I reach the stairs leading up to the deck. The downlights have been turned off, the only light coming from the moon, guiding my path to the top. I make the climb, then amble toward the closed glass doors, wondering for a short moment where Laiken is.
“What do you do down there?”
Her soft voice touches the back of my neck, nibbling down my spine.
I turn and slowly scan behind me, searching for her until I see the glow of the cherry at her lips.
Laiken’s sitting at the far corner of the deck, her legs crossed, head tilted back, pushing into the timber paneling of the house.
She doesn’t look at me as she exhales a gray cloud of smoke above her.
Harlen is quiet beside her. He kills his smoke, whispers something, then gets to his feet. He squeezes her shoulder, tells us both, “I’ll leave you two to talk.”
He passes me, but not without squeezing mine too.
I drop my notebook on to the glass table, topping it with the pen and freeing my hands. They tremble when I curl them over the top of the outdoor chair, bending over slightly, elbows to my ears, hearing the door close behind me.
Laiken’s words echo when she speaks them again. “What do you do down there?”
I could shoot back that she should stay out of my business, the same way she had to me. But tonight, I don’t have the energy for it, not enough blood left in me to bleed.
So, I tell her the truth.
“I was writing.”
My eyes are on her, however, hers remain fixed ahead.
She takes another pull from the cigarette, then extends her arm, offering it over.
I look out at the sky lingering over the lake, noticing the dusting of gold stars as they glimmer and shiver.
I move toward her, my hands turning slightly clammy. I rub them down the front of my jeans as I close the space, taking the smoldering offering, drawing on the pull, then passing it back. I step away when she taps the deck next to her.
“Sit with me?”
It’s a question, maybe even a plea because I hear her words wobble.
I chew on the inside of my cheek, knowing that I should step away, but my feet have already made the decision to betray me.
I take the seat, though leaving some space between us, drawing up my legs.
Hanging my wrists over my knees, I pop my thumb knuckles and recline my head.
I keep my eyes straight ahead, watching the trees in the distance, though at the corner of my eye, I can see her pushing the cigarette between her rosy lips.
“Lyrics?” she asks.
I nod.
“She would be happy you are writing; you have no idea how badly she wanted that for you. Always spoke about you becoming a rock star one day. The four of us, going to New York, like the pact we made.” Laiken laughs, then chances a glance toward me.
I try swallowing past the lump her words jam into my throat when her rueful eyes sweep down me. She bites her bottom lip, eyes seeking mine, and Laiken doesn’t speak again until I give them to her. “I don’t think you’ve ever quite let yourself realize just how talented you are, Chase Keller.”
I rake my hair from my face, pinching the cigarette from her fingers, taking a drag.
I hold the smoke in my lungs for a moment before rasping on my exhale, “Could say the same about you.” I blow the last breath out of my nose, chin to chest, eyes up, directly on her.
She shakes her head, her white-blonde hair moving with it, quick to divert her gaze.
“That night, in the car, when we, you know…sang together,” She pauses and turns to look at me, her eyes touching my lips, face blank. “That was a mistake.”
Her words hang in the air like a thick fog.
I scoff, then tsk my tongue at the back of my teeth. “You haven’t changed a bit.”
She flicks her gaze from my mouth to my eyes. “What’s that supposed to—”
“Mean?” I finish for her, raising my brow slightly. “It means you’ve always been a piece of work.”
Silence falls between us, a rumble of thunder crackling in the dark sky above.
“You know what…fuck this,” she bites, stubbing the cigarette out, trying to get to her feet, but I latch onto her elbow.
“Sit your ass down, Laik.” My voice comes out firm.
She flicks me off her, but she listens, returning to the place she’d just departed, with a heavy breath and another sparked cigarette.
I take it from her, put it between my lips and speak around it, “Mistakes and I, we are well acquainted. So, I can assure you…that…wasn’t a mistake.”
Laiken pulls her knees to her chest, resting her chin on top, not looking at me.
“Yeah, well, we are going to have to agree to disagree on that one, big brother,” she says, crossing her arms and rubbing the chill from her triceps.
I shake my head, and pinch the bridge of my nose. “You can’t call me that anymore, Laik.”
My jaw tightens, then clicks.
I think back to how she’d often called me that when she was sixteen. Back then, it was mildly appropriate. Now, not so much.
When she doesn’t reply, I split my gaze back toward her, meeting her mossy green eyes.
She sucks on her bottom lip, asks so quietly I can barely hear her, “Why?”
I keep my eyes to her mouth, contemplating how much I want to say when she curls over and reaches out. Laiken’s fingers brush across mine when she takes the cigarette.
I suppress a shiver as they slip away.
She places it between her lips, then draws her legs closer to her chest, resting her cheek to the top of her knees.
Her fingers tremble when she pulls the cigarette from her mouth, exhaling toward me.
“Why?” she asks again and this time she blinks, then blinks again and when I take my time to decide where to take this, she closes her eyes. “Never mind.”
Sucking back a breath, a chill runs across the nape of my neck. I palm it away and rasp, “Because you and I both know I was never your big brother.”
Laiken pops open her eyes slowly; heavy and rheumy. And at that sight, my heart beats hard in my chest. I feel each pang vibrate in the nerves of my teeth.
She lifts her head, resting her elbows to her knees, her hands clenching the tops of her shoulders.
She looks away, then shifts the subject. “That guy, Chase, the one from this morning, the one that—”