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“You were abusing them.”
“Okay, and what are you? A walking after school special? What do you care?”
“It so happens, I watched someone I cared about very much spiral into an unreachable state because of them.”
Wasn’t expecting that. I expected something selfish, which would be fitting for him. Like, he couldn’t stand to watch me take them. Or the bag added too much clutter to his room. “Who was it?”
“My mother.”
“You said cared. As in, she’s no longer alive?”
“No. She committed suicide a few years ago.”
“I’m sorry.” The wolf has a human side, after all. Almost too human. Painfully human. “That still doesn’t explain why you’d go through all of the trouble. Why not just kick me out?”
“I won’t be kicking you out. Not any time soon. There have been some inquiries. You’re on their radar now.”
“Refresh my memory. A lot’s happened in the last week. Exactly who is after me again? And why?”
“I haven’t entirely figured that out. I’ve been busy, as well, in the last week.”
“Laundering money must really take the wind out of your sails.”
“Yes. Between that and cleaning up vomit and shit, I’m pretty much whooped.”
Another flare of embarrassment heats my cheeks. “I didn’t ask you to do any of this. I would’ve been just fine with my pills.”
“Until you ran out of them. Then, who knows what desperate stunts you might’ve attempted.”
“What, are you afraid I’m going to run to Jo’s and spill all your secrets? There’s nothing here. Where am I going to go?”
“That’s the shit of addiction. You don’t really know until you’re desperate enough.”
Looking away from him is all I can do to shield myself from the truth in his words. I’ve done many desperate things for my pills. Scary things. “I still crave them. That’s not going to go away, you know. And when the nightmares kick in? I’m going to be a fucking mess.”
“I’m willing to risk it.”
“Yeah, well. I guess we’ll see. Do you know how many people I’ve scared off in my life? Too many to count.”
Pushing up from his chair, he plants his fists at either side of me and leans in. “I don’t scare easily, moiselle.”
28
Céleste
Beams of radiant heat draw a slick layer of sweat across my skin. Gaze fixed on Moses’s two evil eyes protruding up from the water’s surface, I shove a slice of orange into my mouth and lick the sticky juice from my fingers.
The annoying buzz of a mosquito tickles my ear. One hard smack leaves my palm wet, and I flinch at the chasing sting across my neck. Everything is ten times more annoying when you’re sober. The heat and humidity are so miserable, I feel like I’m breathing in steam. What I wouldn’t give to dip even a toe into the water to cool off, but I have no doubt Moses would make an unsatisfying little snack out of it.
I could easily cool off inside the boat, I suppose, but a whole damn week in this place, without any contact with the outside world, has driven me to the point of absolute boredom. Boredom leads to cravings, and unfortunately, in addition to Thierry hiding away all the over the counter stuff, he’s also locked up the alcohol. And junk food. So here I’m left, eating a fucking orange.
In the last two days, in particular, I’ve wanted to climb out of my skin. And I’ve damn near eaten my weight in fruit. Although, I’ll admit, the restlessness has kept me distracted from the hallucinations, I know what waits. It’s only a matter of time before the white skull and horns slide back into my periphery.
The quiet has been the worst part of it, and unfortunately, it’s in the quiet that my mind begins to wander back to four nights ago--when he held me in his arms, keeping me warm. I try not to think how safe I felt in that moment. How easy and right, in spite of the mortification of knowing he saw me at my absolute worst.
Since then, Thierry seems to have been scarcer, though.
Which hasn’t really done much for my psyche in all of this. The isolation and loneliness of this place is a symptom in itself, always clawing at me. We haven’t spoken much at all in passing, and he’s gone before I get up, arrives back home after I’ve gone to bed. During the day, I nose through all of his things, mostly looking for the knife Russ gave me, but I haven’t stumbled upon it yet. What I’ll assume is his office is kept locked, and Thierry must have some kind of deadbolt on it, because I haven’t been able to pick the damn thing yet. If the feds ever cased this place, the only evidence they’d find linked to the guy is his friggin’ toothbrush, and even that gets wiped clean every night in the spaceship. Not a single picture, piece of mail, or even a notebook with doodles, exists on this entire boat.
