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But shit, even a victor in battle could come away from it wounded.
There came the soft sound of bare feet approaching. When I looked up, Jess was standing in the doorway.
“What are you doing in here?” she said. Her hair was in a long braid today, and she was stroking the end in her fingers.
“Thinking too hard,” I said.
“Do you want to be alone?”
Usually, I would have said yes, even though it wasn’t true. I didn’twantto be. But I also didn’t want to confuse anyone with my scattered thoughts, worry them with my fears.
But Jess had been there. She’d seen me when I was weak, when I was out of control, when I was scared. She saw me already.
I spread my arm toward her. “I’d rather be with you.”
She came and sat beside me, tucking herself under my arm. After a few minutes of comfortable silence, she moved to sit on my lap instead. Her legs straddled mine, and she traced her finger along the lines of the snake tattooed near my collarbone.
“Why a snake?” she whispered.
Not all of my tattoos had meanings. Some were only there because I’d been bored and had nothing better to do. It was a stroke of luck that I’d never gotten an infection from the shady places and people I’d let tattoo me.
But the snake was important, since I’d actually put a little thought into it.
“Have you ever seen what happens when you cut a snake’s head off?” She made a face of disgust, wrinkling her nose. “You’re telling me your dad never chopped the head off a snake when it wandered into the yard?”
“Ew, no!” She laughed. “If there was a snake, we’d just, like...call animal control.”
It made me happy to hear that, strange as it was. Not everyone in the world operated like my parents did, and that was a relief.
“Well, when you cut a snake’s head off, it will keep snapping its jaws at you,” I explained. “It’ll twist and struggle on the ground. It’s just nerve endings firing off. Death throes. It’s not actually alive, even if it looks like it.”
She frowned, lifting her eyes from my chest to my face. “Do you feel like the snake? With its head cut off?”
“I used to. When I was living here before, I thought I’d die here. I thought that one day, my dad would take it too far. That he wouldn’t stop. It was like I already thought of myself as dead. Why was I trying? Continuing to struggle to make life worth it felt useless.”
I’d been hopeless. Even when I’d tried to act optimistic for my friends, it had all been fake. Every day felt too long, and every night felt too dark. But somehow, I didn’t die.
“Did you want to give up?” Her fingers brushed so gently over my skin, slow and soothing. They made me shiver, even as they warmed me up. She touched me like she had when I was bound in Vincent’s rope in the cabin: taking her time, moving reverently.
“Sometimes,” I said.
My answer made her wince. When I said I didn’t want to hurt anyone, this was part of what I meant, too. I kept my pain to myself because it hurt others to hear it.
When I was younger, when I’d thought about ending it all...sometimes, the only thing that made me hold on was knowing that Lucas would be lost without me. Or that Vincent would never forgive himself for not finding a way to stop me, or that Jason would be devastated. Maybe staying alive for the sake of other people wasn’t healthy, but it was better than the alternative. I found whatever I could to keep me going, no matter how small.
My family. My dogs. Sunrises and quiet mornings. The taste of coffee. The determination that I’d see Europe someday. The desire to go on a road trip across the States. I had a desperate, almost frantic belief that someday, things would be better.
Whatever it took to keep myself alive.
“Manson?” Jess’s voice was soft, timid with the question weighing it down.
“What is it, angel?”
“I love you.”
The earth stopped turning for a moment.
She cupped my face in her hands, moving herself closer. I wrapped my arms around her, trailing my fingers up her spine as she lifted my chin and looked into my eyes. “I love you, Manson Reed.”
