“He’s gone, Love,” Josh tries but it will not work, I can see it in her gleaming eyes fixated on her father; she needs it.
“Let her,” I request, I don’t request things often, but this is definitely one of the times I’ll make an exception. Love needs this. Whatever this is, it means something to her.
Everyone passes by her and hugs her, she hugs back, but I can see disgust in her eyes. Not for others, for herself. And I won’t allow that, later.
I oblige everyone to leave and half close the door behind me. I stay by the door all night, Josh keeps messaging me if I want to change watching shifts, but there’s no way I’m leaving her alone. There’s no way I’ll leave her now.
“Love?” Josh calls, from 7 to 8 am I also tried yet she never responded or seemed to acknowledge my presence. And it is a freaking horrifying feeling. Seeing someone you love disappear in front of your eyes. I keep remembering that’s how she must feel. So I stay patient. But patient doesn’t mean calm.
1… 2…
1… 2… 3…
1 bed… 2 bodies… 3 graves… no this is not helping. Grounding techniques don’t work for me. But it’s probably because I’m defective. I’ve always been. Cherry is the only human being who didn’t perceive it, and even seemed to love it. Love me.
I turn away from Love and Josh for one second, trying to shake the feeling that this accident murdered three people, not one. Josh seems just as dead, and he’s usually as dead as a walking skeleton. Sammy commented that once, and it suits Josh perfectly. But now I don’t like the definition. Because now? It really means he’s a dead man walking, and Love needs him. So before he approaches Love, I take him to a corner after asking Rian to look for Love or better at Love for a few seconds.
Josh doesn’t even ask me what the fuck I want and those would be the words he’d chosen or more specifically “What the fuck do you want, Ricik?” why am I nostalgic? Because Josh is also Love, he’s a part of Love.
“You need to step up, man,” I say and Josh stays numb, looking at me but seeing through me. I think about punching him yet I don’t want to worsen the situation so I grab a bottle of water and pour it over his head.
“What the fuck, Ricik?” better. Much better, Kane.
“You can't disappear now, Josh. You can mourn his loss, by yourself. But Love needs you. Your father needs you to keep his life’s work running. Everyone is counting on you and you can’t break. Not now, when everything is calm again, I promise you I’ll take care of everything and give you as much of a break as you need, Kane. Just don’t fail her now. Or them. I got your back-”
“That sounded like the most awfully made love declaration,” this time I punch him, I don’t resist the urge, but I do retain the strength.
“Fuck off, and get Love back,” I command and Josh starts walking towards the door.
“Better,” he says turning back and cleaning the blood from his mouth, seems like I wasn’t that gentle, too bad.
I ponder going towards the door but Love seemed like she needed some space, so I stood by the window near the door and see Josh failing to get her to let go of her father’s hand.
I don’t control myself, control wasn’t even in my dictionary before her. I move inside the infirmary and gesture for Josh to leave.
“Cherry,” I try and she doesn’t look at me, move or blink. She only breathes while looking at her father and holding his hand, just like she’s been doing for the past ten hours. Barely blinking. “Cherry,” at this point I’mbegging for her to come back, she didn’t kill her father, Liot did, she did everything she could to save him, unfortunately Karl failed her. And failing her means way more than failing me. But right now I need to protect him until Liot is out of the board. “Come here,” I request and see she won’t budge. “You didn’t kill him, Liot did. If anyone else did it, it was Karl, not you”
“Don’t kill him,” is all that comes out of Love’s mouth, her left hand still holding her father’s.
“Don’t kill who? Karl or Vance?” Love flinches when I say Vance.
“Karl. My father is dead,” Love admits more to herself than me. I let out a small breath of relief for hearing her talk, but as she lets go of her father. She kisses his cheek whispering something in his ear and turns around emotionless.
Her bright face is gone. The faint smile she always has not for herself but for others is gone. The sparkle in her eyes that usually shows her positive, healing energy, is almost dimmed down to nothingness.
“Can we go?” she asks putting her rose gold hair behind her ears and holding my hand. I don’t feel a connection; she’s not here. She’s lost. And I can’t shake her awake. That doesn’t apply to her. If she was one of my guards I’d frighten her beyond repair, so that they’d fear me more than death, and disconnect from every and any loss. I never want Love to fear me, or anyone.
“Of course,” I answer but I don’t feel present either. I’m trying to figure out what to do when Rian mouths something to me. “Don’t leave her alone” is what I get and I nod. He nods back. That sums up our agreementnot to kill each other. Nods here and there and the only thing that really keeps us from being at each other’s throats… the girl whose hand I hold with all the sentiment I can transmit. What the fuck am I going to do? I never had to manage someone else’s emotions.
When my father committed suicide I went back to killing the next day, unaffected. The man made me this way. He sculpted me into a furtherly emotionless robot with zero respect for human life and its value. I still feel that way. And I hate myself for that. For letting him win. I was defective from the beginning. Mom said I almost killed my brother once, I can’t remember it, yet it doesn’t surprise me. She asked my father to get rid of me. And I felt nothing. I should’ve felt hurt, wronged, but what I felt like was to shed more blood from any bastard’s face my father instructed me to.
We can say I was born, raised and grown from chaos. And I chose to embrace it rather than die because of it.
“Can I have a second alone?” Love asks when we enter home. The home where everything happened. This is not where I want her to be right now. I scoop her in my arms and carry her to the house on the other side of the street, the house meant to be mine and the other guys’ when all of this ended. But I’m afraid, she’ll end it if I bring her to the place where it all happened. “Where are we going?” Love questions and I smile when she doesn’t fight me, or her tiredness and leans her head against my chest.
“You’ll see in a minute,” I continue, carrying her up the stairs and to my room. “Make yourself at home,” I say sitting her on the bed, and searching through the few clothes I have here, something she can wear to sleep. At-shirt that will look like a dress on her will do the job. “Here, you can change if you want,” I say feeling like a fucking disaster at humaning.
I turn around for one exact minute before turning back around, she’s already sitting against the wall at the top of the bed.
