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Everything would be fine.
“Ooh,” she squeaked as she scooped up the last of the crystaland a shard sliced through the palm of her hand. A spot of blood bloomed and then oozed out, trickling slowly down toward her wrist.
Sighing, Avery brought the dustpan with her to the bathroom and emptied it into the wastebasket, then held her hand under the running faucet. This wasnothow she had envisioned her evening turning out. Maybe she should skip the bath, make a quick call to her boyfriend and arrange to talk to him in the morning, then go straight to bed.
It was tempting, but nothing was going to relax her like a steaming hot bubble bath. If she went to bed now, she probably wasn't going to be able to fall asleep. She’d just lie there running through her head what she was going to say to her boyfriend and then her mom.
Bath, it was.
Turning off the tap, she tossed some bath salts and bubble bath into the tub, then turned the hot water on full. Her hand seemed to have stopped bleeding, so she pulled out a band-aid from the first aid kit she kept under her bathroom sink and taped it over the small cut.
Already the steam filling the room was calming her. Avery felt herself relax bit by bit, her worries and anxieties fading away. Slipping out of her clothes, she dumped them in the hamper, then twisted her hair up into a bun on the top of her head to keep it out of the water. She wasn't in the mood to wash her long, dark hair, and if it got wet, it would be a fizzy mess tomorrow.
Avery added a little bit of cold water to the bath, then climbed in. As soon as she sunk down into the bubbly heat, her muscles loosened up, and her mind cleared. This was pure heaven. Baths were like magic. They possessed the power to wipe everything away and help her come at things from a new, calmer, clearer perspective.
She’d find a way to make everything work. Who knows,maybe her mom would even be proud of her for wanting to take responsibility for her own life and make her own way.
Closing her eyes, she sank down deeper until the water came right up to her chin. Her eyes drifted closed. She was so tired, and the stress of finding out her mom had been rummaging through her house had just pushed her over the edge. A quick nap sounded pretty good right about now.
She was just drifting off when something sharp pricked her shoulder.
Startled, she sloshed water all over the side of the bath as she bolted upright.
Had a spider just bitten her?
Avery had a major phobia of the disgusting eight-legged creatures.
Her body started to tingle, her limbs quickly going numb. Her eyesight began to fade, and there was a rushing sound in her ears.
Then the world was swallowed up by darkness.
*****
9:58 P.M.
This was probably a terrible idea.
Chloe knew that and yet her feet kept walking forward.
She didn't even know if Fin was on the same page as her.
Strike that—she didn't even know what pageshewas on.
All she knew was that something was drawing her back toward Fin like some long piece of invisible string. All day she hadn’t been able to get him out of her mind. By the time she and Tom had called it a night and gone their separate ways, her partner had been getting annoyed with her constant zoning out.
She was going to have to get that under control.
Whatever this confusing thing was that she felt for Fin, shehad to keep her mind on her job. If The Breaker stuck to his regular pattern, then he would be taking another girl to replace Taylor soon. Or he would be coming back for Taylor. Either way, the man was dangerous and needed to be stopped, and she couldn’t do that if she kept getting distracted by her ex-boyfriend.
Maybe it would help if she could figure out what exactly it was that she wanted.
Did she want to just make peace with Fin, get some closure, and move on?
Did she want to make peace and become friends?
Did she want to make peace and get back together with him?
Chloe truly wasn't sure what she wanted—she just knew that the more she tried to forget about Fin, the more she thought about him. And that had to mean something.
