Chapter Forty-One
Scarlett
Eight Years Ago
… Two years.
Two whole years without my Emory.
Two years since the crash.
Two years of agonizing, grueling pain.
You know a week before she died, we got matching tattoos. Phoenixes. Rise from the ashes and all that.
I never meant for her to take it literally. To turn into literal ash.
I never meant for life to take her away.
What happened?
Whathappenedwhathappenedwhathappened…
If it were her fault, maybe I’d find some steadiness inside. Some place to put my grief.
You know, it’s so fucked up. It’s so fucked up.
After I found out Jared was the one behind the wheel – oxy and codeine vacationing in his bloodstream – I wandered around junkyards until I found what I was looking for.
An old Yamaha bike. Rusted beyond belief, but after a rough tune up, she rode like a dream.
You wouldn’t think, right. That riding a motorcycle would be the first thing I do.
I didn’t want to talk to anyone – just the air.
I wanted to scream at the wind. Beg for any part of her back.
I found a rush instead.
The same adrenaline Ryden said he felt singing, I felt soaring.
I dumped all the cheap alcohol I had in the basement apartment.
I vowed never to have more than one glass.
Ryden’s life went from zero to one hundred, and so did mine after Pierce Stanley signed him to Avenue Records.
I knew I’d have to have “social drinks” or whatever the golds said.
One and done. One and done.
None for my Emory. Not anymore.
Ryden was the opposite.
Never wanted to drive. Never bought a car.
Always the passenger.
And he…
He started drinking.
It didn’t help that Avenue Records encouraged it. “Being favourable comes with the industry,” Pierce had said. Didn’t realize that meant boozing up to obtain success.
When her tombstone was set in place a week and a half later, I took a knife to my wrist. Yeah, right where that phoenix branding was, I sat by her grave, bleeding onto the soil, hoping I could restore her back to life.
I thought she’d appreciate how fucked up I was over her. How fucked Ryden’s hobbies had become.
I also thought she’d appreciate that we…
We made it.
But the cost was high, wasn’t it? Was it even worth it?
We made it.
… without her.
***
I still have nightmares everyday.
I had to get out.
I had to move away from Slater Street.
Living in that basement apartment held random memories in every corner. Her checkered ashtray, pieces of pearl jewelry beads tucked away beneath the fraying couch cushions… it stole hours of my life each day.
A life that should have been hers.
She would’ve been twenty this year.
Instead, I was celebrating her second death anniversary.
I already called up her foster parents, sent my best.
My best.
What was my best?
I still had to steal people’s luggages from the airport, had to sell strangers’ belongings in order for Ryden and I to move up to New York.
He was so busy with the parties and the promoting, [God, Avenue Records really possessed him] that I had to scout for different B&Bs. I had to work at the pawn shop in the East Village just so I could bribe the inn owner, Hank, into letting us stay another month.
I spent sunrise at her grave.
After all, her burial grounds were just eighty-eight minutes away from New York, between Baltimore and Brookyln.
She was the line I drew in the sand, between my old life and the new. I wouldn’t venture past her grave ever again.
I was empty. Drained.
And it only got worse.
… It only ever gets worse.
***
I was sitting across the dining table at Baker and Bear’s after getting a phone call from the hospital back home. Flack had overdosed, died overnight in his sleep. Sinead checked into rehab. Didn’t ask for me.
I wouldn’t have asked for her.
There was a… pinch, in my heart, a small pinch.
This dull ache that I couldn’t place because everything was covered in scars.
I felt like my entire existence was mummified, wrapped in barbed wire, destined for the coffin.
Flack was… well, Flack was someone to me. Sinead, too.
I was someone to them.
Just, no one important.
Scarsscarsscars.
Scar, Ryden’s nickname for me apart from Dove, it became fitting. I grew into it like the cuts across my knuckles from punching the bag. Boxing and biking. My preferred pursuits.
“You know,” Hank gazed at me with this disgusting, beady look in his eye. “You’re a real crotch-rocket. Buoyant young thing, sprightly.”
“Please,” I prayed silently, “please not now, Hank.”
“I don’t want a thing from you, just a nice chat with a nice young thing.”
I didn’t respond. I was too numb, the well inside me overflowing with thick tar, cementing me in place.
Shaking, I clicked Ryden’s contact. He answered on the third ring. “Dove?”
I choked back a sob. “Ryden, can you… can you come home?” I could hear drumbeats and cymbals in the background. He was at the studio.
“You talked to Hank? He’s letting us stay another month?”
I glanced at the perv picking dirt out of his nails, belly wide, mouth agape.
“Just come home.” I ended the call. He would know I needed him.
“Who’s comin’ home?” Hank asked demanded.
“Ryden,” I replied, reaching into my bag, pulling out Sinead’s old blueberry tablets. “Ryden’s going to be here any minute.”
His laugh burst with smoke. “I know that ain’t right, girl. I know that boy’s a rich boy. I know he’s busy while you’re doing splat.”
Hank moved around the table, etched closer to me, placed a hand on my leg with a predatory gaze in his eyes. Before he could say anything, I shot up from my seat, moving to the bar cart he kept behind the magazine rack.
“Drink, Hank?” My nails dug into my palm, the other hand strangling the pills. “You’ve got vodka and rum.”
“I know what I’ve got, I know what I’ve got,” he waved a hand. “Bring me whatever you’re having.”
I’m not old enough to drink, I wanted to say. I’m not old enough to be man-handled by a disgusting fuck like you.
Men like him don’t care.
Men like him should be behind bars.
Men like him should’ve replaced Emory’s seat in the car.
“Nice ass, girl,” I heard him say from behind me. Every ounce of anger I had channelled into crushing up those pills, hopefully knocking him out until Ryden got home and we could get our shit and leave this hellhole.
My phone vibrated in my pocket but I had a part to play.
I smiled wide as I brought over two drinks. One with water, one with vodka and something stronger.
“Here,” we clinked glasses. “A special drink for a special man.”
“Well I’ll be, I like the sound of that,” he hacked up snot. “Say, what was your name again? Don’t want to forget the face of an angel after one too many of these.”
My smile held so much poison. So much pain. “Scarlett Emory-Blake, Hank. My name’s Scarlett Emory-Blake.”
***
Men don’t think women have the wolf inside them.
Men believe us to be frail, fragile, incompetent.
There’s a wolf and a sheep inside everyone.
But not me.
I’ve got a wolf and a lion.
Two alphas, rattling the bars of my cage, ready – always ready – to roam the battlefield.
***
Ryden barrelled through the door an hour after I tucked pig Hank into his lounge chair by the magazine rack, water in hand of course. The vodka pill concoction was long down the drain.
“What happened? Are you okay? I got here as fast as I could.” He pulled me in for a hug, a scent of…
“Is that tequila?” I asked, radiating off him.
“I just had a few drinks at the studio with Pierce and Emmanuel, nothing major.”
“Nothing major,” I snorted, tossing the last of my three shirts into the duffel bag from Goodwill. “Are you even sober right now?”
“I am, I fucking am –”
“Don’t yell at me today,” I held up a finger, pinching the bridge of my nose. “Hank… he…” Keepsteadykeepsteady. “He…”
“He…” Ryden stepped forward, knuckles white. “He what, Dove?”
I didn’t have time to respond before Ryden fisted the doorknob of our studio, wrenching it open. I ran, throwing my entire bodyweight against the frame, slipping right between his arms.
“NO!” I yelled, slapping his chest. “I…”
“NO?” His eyes were bloodshot, searching mine. “Why NO, Scarlett?”
My voice was small. “I took care of it.”
He didn’t move, arms caging the lion and wolf behind the bars. “Did you kill him?”
“No, I didn’t fucking kill him are you nuts?”
“I would’ve.”
“I know.”
“I still will.”
“I know that, too.”
He didn’t say anything for a beat, only leaning forward, pressing his torso against my chest, grabbing my face with both hands. “Are you okay?”
I choked on a sob. Don’t let him see. Don’t let him see.
“It’s her death anniversary,” I whispered.
He sucked in a breath. “I didn’t forget.”
“Flack’s dead.”
Ryden recoiled. “What?”
I moved away, zipping up the duffel, wiping up a loose tear. “I got a call from the hospital. He overdosed. And Sinead’s in rehab.”
“Scarlett…”
“Don’t ask me if I’m fine, because I’m not. We all know I’m not. But it’s life. Life’s shit and they were shit and everything’s FUCKED!” The rage inside me bubbled to the surface, the lion and the wolf banging! Banging! Banging!
Ryden swept me into his arms, cradling my head under the weight of his palm. I could breathe. I could think. I could feel.
But only with him by my side.
“What do you need from me?” he asked. “I’ll do anything.”
I could only manage two words before I let the beasts inside me rest, and the dam to my heart broke free. “Hold me.”