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She cuddles closer to me and the tears rain down, silent but scorching against my chest. She’s halfway laying on top of me, sharing her warmth and her pain with me.
"That's it." I let her go for a few more minutes before I decide it's time to make it stop, or try at least. "Let me have it. I'm a sponge, and I'm going to suck away all the tears.” I make slurping noises and it draws a giggle from her.
"How do you do that?"
"Absorb the tears? Like this." I make the slurping sounds again and rub my fingers over her back in weird patterns.
Nell squirms, laughing and trying to escape. "No. No I mean, how do you take a moment so sad and know what to do to make it better, to make me smile?"
"Years of practice, Nellie. I've had a long time to learn the way your mind works."
"I don't crythatoften," she says defensively.
"I suppose that depends on who you're comparing yourself to," I tease. She’s right. She doesn’t cry all that often, but I’ve still seen it enough to know the best way to deal with it. I know that making her laugh is the quickest way to make the pain stop feeling so terrible for her.
She groans. "Don't call me a crybaby."
"I did not say that. You feel all your emotions deeply. It's probably pretty healthy compared to the way I am. We know how that's going." I feel nothing. It’s the only way I know how to survive. I’ve been ignoring the grief for so long it’s compounded into something bigger than me that would kill me. It’s gargantuan now, and I could drown in it.
She sighs against my chest. The tears have dried and her breaths are evening out again. "You're very empathetic. It probably makes it harder to deal with your own shit because you're busy dealing with everyone else's. I'd be willing to bet you spent so much time catering to Layla and whoever was around you that you never had time to notice yourself."
That's a fair assessment. Mostly. "I don't know what it is about you Reed girls, but I'm mean as hell to everyonebutyou. You've never seen me and Pres get into it. We'll fight to the death over a cup of coffee."
"But you're fine after, because you don't cross the line."
I laugh quietly against the top of her skull. "I like having a place to live. That doesn't work out for me if I push him too hard."
"You have a place to live. A place that you own and refuse to go to."
Please stop talking about the house.I close my eyes and fight against the rage swirling through my head. “I don’t want that goddamn house,” I force through clenched teeth. “I hate it. Stop fucking bringing it up.” I slide out from under her and stalk into the bathroom, where I push the ceiling tile up and over. I’ll hate myself tomorrow for this, but I grab all my drug shit- straw, card, scale- and toss it into her little garbage can she spent all morning carrying around my room.
Nell watches every move from the bed, sitting up with her arms hugging her knees to her chest. I take the trash can to the closet and start dumping boxes into it. It’s not all paraphernalia but none of it is stuff I need anymore. She sees it the same time I do- the plastic pouch sliding out of a box in slow motion and going into the trash. Every part of my body tenses, my teeth creaking under the pressure.
Ineedit. That tiny little package is holding the magic powder I need to release my body from these shackles of pain and to slow the descent into madness. It’s so simple. All I have to do is pick it up and everything will go away.
I can’t. I can’t fucking do that, and I can’t walk away, and I can’t move. I don’t want to do this anymore. I want to be sober.No I don’t.“Nell,” I groan, still holding the box in one hand and trash in the other. I could get to it and get that shit in my nose before she even knew it. She’s so tiny she wouldn’t be able to stop me. My relief isright in front of me, and then Nell blocks my sight.
“Knox.” Her hand touches my arm, slides down over my wrist until she can get the box from my hand and drop it behind her. She grips my wrist tightly in the other hand and pries my fingers from the can. “Knox, look at me. You’re stronger than this.”
I am.
My lips crash against hers harshly. I need the distraction. She’s the only other thing I’ve found that makes everything else hurt less, that takes away the hunger and the emptiness and the-all gone. I grip her jaw and force my tongue into her mouth, and she whimpers against me.
Nell coaxes me to move backwards, and I do. Her right hand over my left, she pulls my arm to the side and I sigh, breaking the kiss and sitting on the bed. She did it. She got me back to the bed, back to the chains that keep me safe. Life is easier when I don’t have to be the one in charge of not fucking it up. It’s easier when the option to fuck up has been taken from me and someone else gets to decide what I do and when I do it. Maybe I should stay like this until I die.
Chapter Fourteen
Nell
When Knox kisses me, the weirdest thing happens. I forget all the awful shit that’s ever happened. I forget that my sister’s dead, that he’s an addict, that David exists… Everything condenses down into this one thing, this one kiss, and the rest of the world just ceases to exist. This time I managed to stay focused enough to get him chained back up to the bed before losing myself entirely. That’s something I’m proud of.
The way that I’m kissing him now, like he holds the secrets to the universe inside his mouth, is maybe not quite so worthy of pride. He just makes me feel soalive! Knox is hot. I’ve spent too much of my life denying that this guy is literally perfect in every way. He’s tall, handsome, tattooed, and he pays attention for the right reasons.
Yes, I know, I shouldn’t feel this way. My sister loved this man from the moment she met him until the day she died. She’s probably going to come back and haunt me for this, but sometimes it feels worth that threat. The way he holds me and understands me- no woman could resist that. I’m fallinghardfor him like I jumped off the top of the top of the Empire State Building and I’m going a hundred miles an hour towards the sidewalk head-first.
I’m fucked.
But every single thing Knox does draws me further in. The way he begs me to release him, giving me these sad looks that I want to cuddle out of him. When he yells in frustration at me not letting him go, somehow it convinces me even more of how strong he is. I can’t see his faults anymore, and I know that I’m in for trouble because I am hopelessly in love with a drug addict that is refusing to grieve the loss of his wife- who, by the way, was my fucking sister. Shit!
