Chapter Fourteen
?
Romantic drivel really isn’t my forte.
Azalea
Exhausted, I melt into my bed and glare at the message. It came sometime while Malcolm and I were hunched over ceramic birds, painting them black and white for each other in a starkly cutie pie romantic sort of way. I’d gag about it now, if I had the energy.
But I do not.
I do not.
And the last thing in the world I want to do is ask him out on another date tomorrow. If I keep this up, he’s really going to think I’ve come to like him or something stupid like that.
Which is…exactly what I need to have happen. Because if I can get him to believe it’s possible, maybe the cops will, too.
Heaving a sigh, I get my regular phone and slump back into my downy bedding.
I need a reason to keep him out after sunset downtown. Are the shops even open that late? Are we going to need to walk up and down the streets, like fools in love, and talk about everything in the world?
Genuinely, I’m not sure I’m cut out for that.
It’d be easier if I ate out. Then at least we could burn an hour or more at a restaurant for dinner…but…
Yeah.
I don’t do that.
I refuse to do that.
I might actually be a terrible girlfriend and an even worse accomplice.
Me: Hello.
I crumple a bit further into the plush of my blankets.
“Really?” I mutter. “That’s the best you could come up with?
” I’m terrible at communication, too. And I think that’s most apparent when I want or need to communicate but just…
can’t figure out the right words to say.
I don’t know how to carry a conversation.
I don’t know how to interact properly with people at all.
Defeated and tired, I wonder if my social shortcomings will help or hurt me in all of this madness.
On the one hand, maybe the authorities will realize I’m not responding normally to my “boyfriend’s” death because I’m socially incapable of responding normally to anything.
On the other, maybe I’ll seem guilty no matter what I do.
Maybe I should take my savings, cut my losses, and leave this city while I might still have the chance.
What good is justice in the end, anyway?
It just wears you out, doesn’t it?
But, then again, all my rules and beliefs always have.
That doesn’t mean my brain has ever stopped punishing me for trying to ignore them.
Crow: Evening, little dove. Miss me already?
Ew.
A prickle of exhausting distaste for Malcolm Swallow simmers to life in my stomach.
Crow: I can be over in minutes. Just say the word.
Double ew. I don’t want him anywhere near my home. Ever.
Sunset tomorrow is seven forty-five. It’ll need to be at least around eight, probably, for the cover of darkness to cloak whatever Junction has planned. How do I make this happen? What can I say to make this happen?
Am I…overthinking it?
Me: Tomorrow night, would you like to watch the sun set with me downtown?
My heart hammers away in my chest as I stare at the message.
It paints a needlessly fluffy picture, and I’m not sure how—when I can barely talk to the man under normal circumstances—I expect to naturally stall him around 4th and Griffin while romantic notions of wanting to watch a sunset with him cloy in the air.
It makes me sick just thinking about it.
As if I’d ever want to do something so innocent and gentle with a monster like him who treats people like toys and practices cruelty like it’s a game.
The world will be a better place without him.
Unbidden, the devotion in his smile this afternoon appears in my mind, haunting me with the way he melted after I told him my favorite color. For a precious instant, the Earth stopped spinning. And I nearly believed he was actually in love. I nearly believed he was…human.
Worst of all, I almost wanted to believe something was real between us.
Which is terrifying to admit.
But, for a fragile moment, I felt okay. In an unfamiliar place. Surrounded by paint that could seep into my gloves and stain my fingertips.
For a fragile moment, I wanted to believe that the most hateful man I know loved me enough to dance with me on the edge of a precipice, pushing me to the brink of the cliff and promising that I wouldn’t fall even as dirt cascaded from beneath my feet.
I wanted to believe that someone like me could be loved.
I hate him.
I hate him for everything he’s done up until now.
And I hate him ever more for the way he’s manipulating my emotions in this twisted choreography on a stage I never asked to join.
I hate that I can’t trust him.
But, most of all, I hate that I think… I think I wish I could.
Crow: I’d like nothing more.
?
Wow. That’s. A sun setting. For sure.
Closing my hands together, I try to remember all the things I learned last night. After I confirmed with Junction that this plan was a go, I spent the rest of my evening studying my dating sims. Guys in love. Girls falling. What it looks like. What they say. What they do.
Would this be easier if I didn’t hate Malcolm?
Or would it be just as uncomfortable?
I have no idea.
Even my strongest female leads seem to emanate insecurity whenever it concerns the guy they’re falling for. Maybe feeling unstable around a potential lover is normal.
Maybe, for once in my life, I’m pulling off normal correctly.
And maybe I’m still just as anxious and hate it just as much as abnormal. All I know is that I keep twisting my little crystal heart between my fingers and suffocating in this silence I don’t know how to break.
On this side of downtown, all around us the shops have closed up, kitschy stores going cold and dark to make room for the nightlife to awaken behind us, farther up the street.
Lights from the high-rise buildings withhold stars from the darkening sky above, but where we’re standing, the path ahead leads to an open view as the sun tucks itself away for the night.
Drawing my attention off the pink and orange clouds, I dare to steal a glimpse of Malcolm in an effort to gauge whether or not he also feels the supreme awkwardness.
I find him staring. At me.
Like we’re in a dating sim.
And already I know…that I’ve ruined everything.
I was supposed to keep staring at the sky, exhale it’s beautiful, isn’t it? and then look at him when he replied, yes, it is, even though he hasn’t looked at the sky once this whole night.
That’s how this scene always goes.
It’s painfully cliche.
Painfully. Cliche.
But at least I know the script for it intimately.
And, yet, I messed it up anyway.
Go me.
Honestly, what else is new?
Don’t I mess up everything?
Malcolm laughs, smashing through my degrading thoughts before they can get too deep.
I grimace, or perhaps I have been grimacing. It’s hard to tell what my face is doing when I’m not paying attention to it. “What?” I mutter.
Pressing his knuckles to his mouth, he murmurs, “You tell me. What’s with that face?”
I force relax the muscles in my forehead, and cheeks, and chin. “What face?”
Shaking his head, he pulls on a leather glove and pokes me in the forehead. “The face causing these wrinkles.”
I swear I got rid of the wrinkles. I scrub the back of my hand across my forehead and put a foot of distance between us. “There’s no face.”
“There was definitely a face.”
“If there was a face, it didn’t mean anything.”
“Oh, really? But I’m just so sure it actually did mean something.”
Heat bubbles and rises, scalding my flesh. “Well, if it did mean something, it was certainly nothing important.”
“If it’s nothing important, then surely you wouldn’t mind sharing with the class.”
I huff.
He tilts his great big self down so his eyes can bore through me.
My eyes roll off him. “I was just thinking how cliche this is.”
“How cliche the date that you asked me on is?” he prods.
I straighten. “I don’t know how much I’ll like or dislike something until I’ve done it.
And I’ve decided that I don’t really like this.
It’s…boring. And…” Uncomfortable. With an air of wistfulness that makes my stomach churn.
I don’t know how to break the quiet, but it feels like I’m supposed to, and all at once I’m back in school.
Sitting alone in a crowded classroom. Begging for someone to come up to me and say something interesting.
I’ve forgotten entirely how to socialize with people.
And, given how being close to people initiates panic, I’ve just…leaned into it as I’ve gotten older.
Who cares if I can’t have meaningful conversations anyway, right? Talking results in breath which results in germs, and no one wants to deal with my anxiety-ridden disposition anyway. Especially not when any of the worries ever seem grounded in anything resembling reality.
Chewing my cheek, I clutch my crystal heart.
“And?” Malcolm soothes, tone low and inviting. Practiced, really. It’s a practiced tone. A coercing one. A lull. A lure. I’m positive he uses it to get his way with…well, with everyone.
But it still works.
“And I don’t know who I think I’m trying to fool.
” I look at him. “I don’t understand what’s going on.
I’ve never liked you. Not even a little bit.
I’ve wanted to hurt you. But I don’t have the nerve to commit.
I’ve always been like this. Confused and confusing.
I’m either too much, and hurt myself, or I’m nothing.
Not even too little. Just plain nothing.
As nothing as a blank slate. A white page. Or…emptiness.”
“I don’t think you’re nothing.”
“And I don’t trust you, so what you think doesn’t matter much to me.
There’s no reason for you to really want anything to do with me at all.
I keep…coming back to that. I’m a lot. And yet I’m nothing.
There is no reason for you to actually want to deal with me when I bring nothing good to the table, which means this must be another one of your stupid games.
” And, here I am, the idiot falling for it. Yet again.
“Ouch. What a mean opinion you harbor about me.”
“What do you expect with the way you’ve treated me?” I mutter. “If I’m wrong about you, make me believe it. Convince me you’re not what I think.”
His fingertips graze the scarf he’s been wearing to cover the bruises I left on him, and he lowers his attention to the sidewalk. “I suppose I’ve felt a kinship with you. We taste the same.”
Every atom in me revolts at such an accusation, and—yet—I’m horrified by the potential.
He’s a monster who toys with his food. I’m one who feels nothing until it’s too late, and my prey winds up shredded between my teeth.
I am, after all, trying to kill him.
And only monsters are capable of such cold-blooded murder.
I guess I really am what I’ve always thought: bad. And wrong. And worthless.
While that understanding chills me, he continues, “You think you’re nothing, but to me, you’re everything. I don’t treat everyone the way I treat you, you know.”
“Because not everyone is your subordinate,” I croak into the dimming rays around us. “You know you can get away with it with me.”
The flickering streetlights cast an inhuman gleam across Malcolm’s profile. “I have loads of subordinates. I don’t care to ‘get away with it’ with any of them. You’re special.”
“Your favorite toy,” I hiss.
“My favorite, dove.” He looks at me. Smiles.
It’s soft and gentle. Not monstrous at all.
“You’re my favorite. And if you’re all or nothing, I want the all.
No matter how it shows up. No matter what it looks like or how it hurts.
I want too much of you.” He cups his hand to the back of his neck, and his smile tilts, almost shy.
“I don’t think I’m as good at manipulation as you think I am.
Because if I were, I’d know how to fill you with joy until you burst.”
I face him, squarely, teeth gritted. “Don’t you dare try and convince me now that you want me happy. After everything you’ve done, all the stunts you’ve pulled, all the things you’ve said. You’re messed up. You want to control me.”
He reaches, lifting a lock of my hair to his filthy lips. “I do. But that’s certainly not the only thing I want.”
Darkness swallows us when the streetlight above flickers off.
Malcolm doesn’t lift his attention off me, and my eyes slowly adjust—to pinpoint the figure of a large man in black holding a knife behind Malcolm.
My eyes widen, but I remain perfectly still as Malcolm’s gloved hand frames my cheek. “I love you,” he says. “Whatever you are—good or bad—be it with me.”
Whatever I am…is a woman who sees a man about to be murdered…and smiles.