But when the silence finally breaks, it's him, not me, who speaks.
“I told you, King,” he says, his voice low. “No offense? But you’re a fucking mess right now. I know you’re like, processing shit or whatever, and I get that, truly I do, but?—”
I clench my fists. Now, suddenly, he’s sympathetic? When just a few days ago, he was carping on me, onGwenna,about how he’d love to justfuck the pain away like you two are?—
“You need to apologize,” I hear myself say. Practically bark.
Kai gives me a look between a sneer and a scowl. “What?”
“Not to me,” I snap. “To Gwenna.”
His face falls.
And when he speaks, his voice is tiny.
“What?”
“You do,” I repeat, firmly. "For what you said the other day on Easter, implying that—” I clear my throat. “It’s not like that.She’snot like that. And you know it.”
A slow look of horror creeps over Kai's face. “Christ. I didn't mean it like?—”
“I don't care what you meant,” I cut him off, “but I know what I heard, and you should have been alotmore thoughtful before speaking up like that.”
This isn’t relevant. On some level I know that. I don’t even know that she was insulted by it, for that matter. More likely she just wrote it off as Kai’s usual unserious flippancy.
But if he doesn’t care how his thoughtlessness hurts the four of us, maybe he’ll care if it hurtsher.
Or maybe, when all else fails me, I just want to be self-righteous.
Kai says nothing, just catches his lip piercing in his teeth and worries it back and forth, the way he knows I hate because it looks like he's going to pull his lip clean off his face one day.
I shouldn't say what I say next. I know I shouldn't, but I say it anyway.
“If you're jealous,” I say, “then that's your problem, not hers. Not something you take out on her. If anyone, on me.”
Kai narrows his eyes. “Jealous?” he says softly. “I'm not. I would never--we have an agreement here, Kingston,” he says, again sounding incredulous.
“I understand that,” I say, “but that doesn't mean she'sobligatedto do anything with any?—”
“No, no, no,God.No,” Kai says, waving his hands in the air. “Wehave an agreement.” He points back and forth between our chests. “As in, you and I, and Lanz and Callahan. To stick together. Tonotbe jealous. You think I don't take that seriously, King?” His voice has gone thin again. "To you, especially?"
I don't know what to say to that.
And I don't have to. Because from upstairs, there's a loud thud, like someone falling. Then a crash, and a cry of pain.
SEVEN
LANZ
I was just tryingto make a cup of goddamn tea.
I don't evenliketea. I thought it would be relaxing, or soothing, or… energizing or something, I don't know what, but I was halfway down the stairs when the pain started, and by the time I made it to the kitchen I was gasping for air every third breath. I managed to fill up the tea kettle and get it on the stove as the now familiar, ragged, fiery jolts ripped across the front of my ribcage, and then…
And then I was on the ground, the kettle a few feet away, water everywhere. Wasn't hot enough, thank God. Didn't burn me or anything.The burner's still on, I think, dimly, even though my vision's kind of hazy.Somebody should get that.
My eyes flutter closed.
She touched my face.
