Chapter 6 #3
Small remnants of a once shared history intrude my mind, one where I’m perched on his lap, sneaking a drag of his cigarette after diffusing an outburst sparked by an unannounced visit in the dead of night.
He always hated my spontaneity. I’d always thought it was because he worried about me.
That he just cared about how I’d deal with the fallout once I dragged myself back home the next morning, but I now understand the fuel behind his agitated scolding was driven by something far more calculating…
Menacing.
I was just too foolish to realize it then. That or I’d been too cornered by the despair and faraway dreams to examine the cracks in the one thing that was keeping me afloat.
Probably the latter, but I didn’t want to admit it to myself. Not even now. Especially not now.
Blowing out a billow of smoke, he pivots around to face her again, but he doesn’t grace her with a reply just yet. He lets the silence fester first, stretching it until the soundlessness begins to crackle in my ears, a warning before the storm.
Once he lowers his arm, he speaks with a controlled tone, but I can still make out the censure creeping into it. “Maybe I made a mistake coming out here.”
“What?” Blair responds with a horribly disguised grimace, face scrunching and nose twitching as she desperately holds back a sob.
“I risk so much for you. Stayed out this late for you.”
“Dax, please—”
His tongue is sharp, flicking out with vengeance. “Don’t.”
Watching her eyes brim with unshed tears, I can almost see my former self reflected back at me. Completely spineless and pathetic. A knot visibly forms in her throat as she forces down a hesitant swallow, the protest dying before she has the chance to breathe life to it.
Jaw hard, nose flaring, Dax releases a careless shake before taking another drag of his damned cigarette. “You remind me so much of my ex when you get this way.”
My spirit withers, mouth souring again.
Still entrenched in my sorrow, I’d hardly noticed when Manson slipped out of view. Leaning against the soot-darkened mantel, his gaze holds mine hostage until Blair’s choked sob breaks it apart. “Oh, God!”
“What now?”
“T-that candle behind you,” she struggles to say. “It moved.” Stumbling backward, her chest heaves as her gaze remains fixed on the stubby, wax-dripped candle perched beside Manson.
Dax groans, dragging a hand down his face before glancing over his shoulder toward the mantle. Finding nothing out of place, he lets out a derisive scoff and grinds the cigarette into a chipped ceramic ashtray beside the candle. “I should’ve never brought you here.”
She flinches, but she quickly follows, batting away the moisture pooling behind her eyes. “I’m not crazy.”
“Never said you were,” he blows out irritatedly, threading his fingers through his gel-stiffened hair, frustration yanking them forward. “You’re not used to being out in places like this after dark.”
“What are you saying?”
“I’m saying, it was a bad call.” He pivots toward her. “You’re clearly spooked—”
Their words muffle in my ears as he presses the distance between them, fingers brushing a strand of hair from her face. Something twists low in my stomach as my gaze snaps back to Manson and finds him nudging the cigarette tray closer to the peeling wallpaper. My throat cinches, impossibly narrow.
“What are you doing?” I ask him.
Pausing, he looks at me again. A wicked grin tugs at one corner of his mouth. “Helping you.” His tone is deceptively light. My body chills as I watch the smoking butt of the cigarette curl higher, its ember pulsing faintly in the dark, dangerously close to the peeled wallpaper.
Swallowing the grit in my throat, I open my mouth. “B-but you’ll set the place on fire doing that.”
A dark glint flashes in his eyes. Dread wells in my gut, foaming and frothing into something monstrous. “Isn’t this what you wanted?”
The pressure returns to my chest, refusing to ebb until my knees threaten to buckle. I try to speak, but my voice emerges as a stifled crack, inaudible. He’s…he’s…
No.
He can’t be implying what I think he is. No, he can’t be.
The realization eats away at me, leaving behind a hollow shell of the person I was just seconds ago. Feeling faint, I shoot up a hand to clutch the front of my shirt, fisting the damp fabric as my arms tremble and my fingers dig tighter. I have to say something.
I need to say something.
But the dark pools of his eyes, swimming with ghosts of his own, steal all the words away. Right then, I hear Dax and Blair’s receding footsteps. The sound should bring me relief. But all it does is set panic loose behind my eyes, fogging my vision as I hold fast to their departure.
I can’t be left behind again. I don’t want to be.
I’m not ready. I’m not—
The moment stretches taut between us before his attention glides downward, catching on the hand twisted in the front of my shirt. Only then do I feel it.
The silver band around my finger.
It’s tighter than I’d realized, the ornate silverwork biting into my skin. I resist the urge to tear it off and force myself to remain upright, my feet digging deeper into the floor with every passing second. Frozen, unable to move even if I wanted to.
The grim set of his mouth deepens, his spine pulling into a rigid stance. My stomach bottoms out.
A second slips by.
Then another.
When he finally speaks, his voice is stripped of its usual restraint, the question cleaving through the buzzing battering my ears. “Where did you find that ring?