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Was it really even a choice?
"Okay," I said, giving them a tentative smile.
I got four smiles from them, open and welcoming.
And I knew right then, for the first time since I was a kid, I knew that I had found a home.Twenty-oneShooterSix days.
Fucking hell.
Work was supposed to help. But, then again, my work didn't exactly take too much concentration. Sitting around looking through a scope waiting for the target to get in range, yeah, it left a man a lot of time to think. The last thing I needed was time to think. But I had about four full days of it, sitting on top of that damn building in the scorching heat. So I thought. About her. Like I had any kind of fuckin' choice of thinking about anything else.
All I could see was her sitting off the side of that hospital bed, her face slashed open, her throat bruised, her eyes full of tears, blood all over her clothes, half of which being hers, half belonging to the son of a bitch I had killed just inches from her. I left her like that: raw, needy. I didn't hold her hand through the stitches. I didn't go to the food court and buy her ice cream for her throat that had to be sore.
I just fucking left.
I wanted to believe it was better that way. I wanted to think it was smart to make her think I was a careless asshole who could do all those things without a second thought. But there were second thoughts, and third, and five-thousandth. I could have stayed with her. I could have taken her back to my apartment to let her recoup. I could have held her through the nightmares I knew she would have, visions of a bullet exploding through Luis' skull flashing through her mind in unguarded moments. I could have helped her through. Then I could have gently nudged her back into her old life. I could have driven her back to Alabama myself.
I could have been a good fucking guy.
Instead, I crushed her.
I left her when she needed me the most.
That was how she was going to remember me.
And maybe that was better for her, for closure purposes, but it was doing nothing but chafing at me.
Then again, I deserved the discomfort. It was selfish of me to get involved with her in the first place. I knew the second I laid eyes on her that she was too good for me. But did I stay away and let her live her life? No. I pushed my way into her life and I forced her to let me in. I made her walls topple. I took her first time. And then I left her in a god damn hospital room in an unfamiliar town with no friends. It didn't take a genius to know that those walls I knocked down, she was sitting around and carefully reconstructing and reinforcing. No one else would get back in. She would never let herself feel that way again.
"Fuck," I growled, slamming my door to my car as I looked up at my apartment building.
Six days.
I wondered how many more days like that I had ahead of me.
If there was any kind of justice in the world, I would never stop having them.
If I hadn't been so focused on my sour mood, I might have seen the horseshoe hung above my door; a horseshoe that did not belong to me. But I didn't see it. I was too focused on just getting home and going through the motions.
Though when I opened the door and was greeted by a, "Hey Johnnie. Welcome home," by a disarmingly upbeat Amelia walking back from the kitchen with a steaming cup of tea in her hands, well, I started noticing things.
First, I noticed her. She was in a pair of white shorts and a slightly roomy deep purple tee. Her feet were bare and her hands were wrapped around a mug that didn't belong to me. It was practically the size of a soup bowl with a floral pattern. Definitely not mine. Her arms weren't wrapped and the cuts from a week ago were healed to little pink marks. Her stitches were out and the cut on her face was still red and angry, but healing. The bruises on her throat were gone. Her long dark hair was pulled up and piled in a messy bun at the top of her head. She walked casually over to my sectional, tucking her legs half under her body, angled to the side, watching the program she left up on the TV like she was completely at home.
At that thought, my eyes drifted away, noticing things. Like the knitted blanket over the back of my couch, the snow globe collection piled on the cabinet below my TV. A pair of her shoes were beside the front door next to a coat rack that definitely wasn't mine and a hanging rack for keys. In the kitchen, there was a teapot on my stove and a collection of glass canisters on the counter with little black labels: sugar, flour, tea.
Confused and not quite ready to say anything, I walked myself toward my bedroom, stopping dead in my doorway, seeing an assortment of throw pillows on the bed and a collection of perfume bottles on top of one of my dressers. I walked to the closet, pulling open the door and finding all my clothes pushed to one side (okay, half of one side) and all of Amelia's clothes hung neatly in their place; her shoes lined up on the floor beside mine. I turned, looking toward the bathroom where a light pink robe was hanging on the back of the door and an assortment of makeup and lotion and face wash was piled on the vanity.
I felt the smile pull at my lips despite my confusion. What the hell was going on?
I turned back and leaned into opening to the living room to see Amelia's face on me. She was trying for casual, but there was a tightness next to her eyes as she watched me.
