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Blue shrugs, her eyes holding mine as she steps away from the wall toward me. She doesn’t close in on me, though. The distance between us is making her act more confident again, but I know if I suddenly close the distance, she would crumble in front of me.
I’m dangerous to be around with the way I’m feeling right now. Nightmares are crawling up from the depths until they’re all I can see.
A woman.
Blue thinks it’s just a woman.
Too bad she doesn’t know thatwomanis so interwoven with violence that there is no tearing them apart.
Of course, Red is fucking with my life, but so is everything else. I can’t even speak to my brother anymore without it becoming an argument or a war. I have nobody who’s just mine in this world. And that isolates me in place, leaving me alone with memories that refuse to stop haunting me and a phone that won’t stop ringing.
I haven’t answered any of my father’s calls.
And I haven’t listened to the voicemails he keeps leaving.
But that’s because I already know what the bastard wants.
A pathetic chuckle escapes my lips.
“So that’s what you think it is, huh? A woman? And here I thought you were intelligent enough to read me. Apparently, I’m wasting my time.”
“And mine,” she answers without missing a beat. “But here we are. So we might as well work through this.”
My glare should warn her away, yet she sneaks closer, those damn wings spreading out behind her like she’s escaped from the dark recesses of my memory to antagonize me into violence. Both angel and demon, her expression mocks me.
“What’s the point? You’ve got nothing better than a stereotypical guess that it’s a woman who keeps driving me here. You don’t know me for shit.”
Time must have slowed down somehow because it feels like forever for Blue to blink her eyes, glance down at her feet then back up to me to lock her gaze with mine.
“Then let’s talk about the scars, Champ. The ones on your face and the hidden ones inside that nobody sees.”
My hands fist at my sides.
More memories roll in, and I close my eyes from the force of them. Glimpses coming into focus and fading away as the next takes its place. They’re like still frames of the most fucked-up experiences a person can endure.
My brother’s fist.
The door to a room.
Blood staining the floor and my skin.
A melody of screams and laughter plays like a soundtrack, all of it combining into a toxic stew that only Red could pull me away from when we were in high school.
Her hair flashes in my mind next.
The scent of her shampoo.
What it felt like as it brushed my cheek.
The calm place she’d become.
The home she’ll never be again.
Fury fills me and surrounds me.
It’s a goddamned storm that follows me wherever I go.
I open my eyes, and there stands Blue in the center of that storm, her knowing expression pulling me in.
