"You can't hide from me,Krystan."
"I don't hide." I bared my teeth at him.Back away or I'll tear out your throat little boy.
But it wasn't a little boy in front of me. Travis had turned into a man atsomepointand it shocked me tomycore.
His brows furrowed as he took a few steps closer. “Of courseyou hide. Youslash at anyone who comes near,so no one will notice you are in your own cage of fears."
An electric current zapped my heart as his wordslanded. No, no I didn't want to hear this, feel this. He wastrying to exposemy weak underbelly,and I wouldhave tokill him for it. "I'm hiding? At least, I'm not running away like a wuss.Ohwah my parents don't pay attention to me. That gives me the right to not try at anything."
Instead of throwing cold water over him, it looked as though I'd thrown gasoline on a fire.Closing the space between us, his eyes heldthe samerageas when he’d been stabbing through that bovine monster. A trill of fear went through me.Guess my mojo wasn’t totally gone.
"I have been with you through all kinds of horrors, I have stuck by your side even when you were spitting venom.I'mnotthecowardhere, you are. Whatever you’re hiding that you think justifies this shitty behavior isn't fooling anyone. Yeah,so,I wasprobablya mistake. What the fuck happened to you,Krystan,to make you so goddamn acidic?"
Like hitting the trigger on a mouse trap, my brain skipped back to thehousewith the murdered familyyesterday.Then back to when I was sitting in the police station, my feet so far away from the scuffed tile floor, not knowing what would happen to me. Spotting my gran across the room, sitting with a cop. Her face went green as she doubled over and cried outas ifin pain. “Oh god,no. It can’t be true. It can’t.”
I stopped myself beforeskippingbackward any further, but I could no longerdeny the sickeningmemories that were surfacing like a bad case of acne. I couldn’t change what happened, and I couldn’t change what I was, but I couldfind monsters and kill them. Rip them to shreds because then I would never be the monster.
My mouth wouldn't move. I wanted to scream. He didn't know what my life was. He didn't know whyIwas so royally fucked up. How could he?
“I’m pregnant.”
It just flew out of my mouth like goddamn cartoon bird. If I could have pulled out my slingshot and shot it down right there, I would have.
His face blanchedand he took a couple steps back. “What?”
That’s right. Ready to duck and run like you always do?
I ignored the pain lancing through my heart.
“You want to know what my problem is? I’m pregnant and I’ve been so busy running around trying to help otherpeoplethatI haven’tbeen ableto go take care of myproblem.” I sneered at him, buta deep sicknessclenchedin my guts as if my body or the fetus itself was trying to stop me.
Visibly swallowing, he said, “You’re getting rid of it? Were you even going to talkto...”
“You?” I finished for himwith a scoff. “What, you think you’re the father?Cause you’re the only one I’ve slept with? You think it’s yours?”
Travis thought we fought monsters. He didn’t realize, Iwasthe monster. I fucking hated it, but I had come to terms with what I was. My dad never realized he was the monster and my mother paid the price. I would never let anyone get close enough to do what he did. That meant no kids, no marriage, no white picket fence.
Travis made me want those things and it hurt more than I could have ever dreamed. Seeing him interact with Noah and Sophie, pretending like we were a little family, made my heart ache so bad I wanted to rip it out of my chest. Instead, I had to stop whatever this was between us by ripping out his instead.
Travis’s facefirst crumpled up like a piece of paper then his expression flattened, not in the incensed way when I poked his buttons. No, Travis looked dangerous, at the end of a rope and I’d put him there.I didn’t know this Travis or what he would do, but I had to make sure to sink the knife in enough that he would never even think of me without some amount of revulsion.
Technically I didn’t lie, he just assumed.
Despite my reassurance to myself I was doing the right thing, the sick feeling in my gut doubled and my throat had practically closed off. It was like my body was trying shut everything down to keep me from lying, but I muscled my way through. My gran was right, he deserved better. I was a psychopath in a relationship with a bat and that’s how it needed to stay.
I continued, nailing the final nail in the coffin. “Did you think you were the only one I’d slept with? Please,in the past two monthsI’vehave more sexual partners in a weekend than you’ve had in your life.”
Lie lie lie.
His face went utterly flat.“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Why? Because you’ve wormed your way into every part of my life, and I worried you might try to worm into this too.”
The shot landed. Darkness crossed his face, and I knew whatever what we had between us just died.A grisly, gruesome, bloody death.
Thesudden prickling andburning behind my eyeswasjustfrom the stress of being in a fight. I tried to tell myself this didn’t matter, he didn’t matter.But it felt like I had taken a sword and run it through my own heart making it almost impossible to breathe.
I turned to the side so I wouldn’t have to look him for one second longer. "Hey Travis, how about you do us both a favor and don't show up for work tomorrow. In fact, why don't you crash someone else's pad or better yet,go get a life."
