Page 122 of Beautiful Scars

“Now look at me,” he continues. Her eyes shift to him, grow colder. Hollower. “Same fucking person. Two sides of a coin. Two halves of a whole. They say blood is thicker than water, but that’s not true. That’s a mistake. It’s not blood in the womb, it’s fucking water. Don’t you ever forget that.”

He drops his cigarette and crushes it into the carpet.

“You might have been born with him,” Meisie says, her voice straighter than mine would be. “But you’re going to die alone.”

Cole narrows his eyes. “Rather alone than with a cock shoved down my throat. That’s all you’re—”

I cut him off with my fist, but he expects it.

Of course he does.

He’s been expecting that since he opened his mouth.

And for the first time in his life, he doesn’t back down.

And for the first time in my life, I don’t hold back.

And this isn’t a fight where we both stand a meter apart and take jabs at each other like civilized people.

But it was never going to be like that.

There are too many skeletons in each of our closets for them to fight each other clean.

It’s a tangle of limbs. A bite of the fucking ear.

A thumb in the eyeball. An elbow in the balls.

Grunts and swings and swings and grunts.

I wrap my arm around his neck, trying to swipe his legs out from under him.

He punches my stomach, again and again, like a fucking jackhammer. Finally he goes down.

Pulls me with him.

I roll on top of him and he reaches out, grabbing the leg of a side table and crashing it against me.

Meisie screams.

I think.

There’s only a constant ringing in my ears now.

I grab the dressing table’s stool and slam it into his face, blood pushing out of his nose as I throw it across the room.

He cries out, the blood getting in his eyes.

I’ve always hated blood in my eyes, too.

“Meisie, kitchen,” I shout. “Bottom drawer. Under the kettle. There’s a white box, bring me it.”

I don’t check to see if she’s going. She’s a good girl. Known that since the fucking day I met her.

Cole coughs. “You don’t understand, Kill. This isn’t about her.”

“I know.”

“Nah. Nah you don’t, mate. You don’t. This is about us.” He coughs again.