Page 52 of Beautiful Scars

Her eyes are on me, but I look out of the window. Shops shutting up for the night. People stumbling out of clubs in a cloud of vape smoke. Buses making an arse of pulling into narrow stops. The odd police riot van.

“So are we going back to my place? Yours? West Virginia? Atlantic City? Train bound for fucking nowhere?”

I look over at her now, and find her looking out of the window just as I was. She’s wearing jeans and a white cotton long-sleeved t-shirt, and it feels all sorts of fucking wrong. Like seeing your teacher at the shops on a Saturday morning.

“There’s a lesson in that last song,” she says, as if she’s been deep in thought about it. “What is it… The Gambler? About knowing what to throw away and knowing what to keep.”

I laugh but it’s humorless. The woman disgusts me. “You’d know all about what to throw away, wouldn’t you?”

“And, clearly, you don’t know enough.”

She looks back out the window, expecting me to bite.

Fuck, I’m going to bite.

“What is that supposed to mean?”

She turns back around to face me. “You can’t be that stupid? Surely not, Kill. I can call you Kill, right? That brother of yours calls you Kill.”

I stare at her.

She smirks. “Oh God, you really are that stupid.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?”

The car slows to stop at a set of lights and she glances out the front window before settling her eyes back on me. “I’m talking about Cole. He’s a liability.”

I laugh at her, right in her face, and crack my hand down on my knee for added effect. “Jesus. Divide and conquer? Is that what this is? Oldest trick in the book, sweetheart. Do you think you’re the first person to try this?”

She smiles. “Not at all. Merely the smartest one.”

I shake my head and go back to looking out the window. “Don’t waste your time. People have been trying to split us up and turn us against each other since before we could walk.”

“Oh, I know all about that,” she says. “The file I got from Child and Family Services on you two was thicker than the bible.”

My teeth clench. “But still not thick enough to get us the fuck out of there, am I right?”

She shrugs. “I wasn’t in charge then. I’d like to think it would be different now.”

I snort. “I’m sure you would, you being mother of the year and all.”

“And what, exactly, do you know about parenting?” Her eyebrow quirks.

“I’d like to think, at the very least, I’d know not to abandon my own child.”

She laughs as if I’ve just cracked a joke. “What is one child in comparison to a whole country?”

“It’s not a country. You’re not the fucking queen. It’s a job. An agenda. A temporary bit of power before you retire to write opinion articles for some shitty newspaper.”

She swallows. “This goes beyond that.”

“Are we done here? Is there an actual point to this?”

“We’re done as soon as you understand that the only reason you’re not behind bars right now is because I allow it.”

I laugh at her. “Then put me away. It’ll be, what? A whole month before someone replaces me? They can pick up right where I left off. I’ll be sure to CC them in the photos of Meisie I send to the papers.”

She stares at me for a second and then looks away.