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“The Grotesque?—”
“Nope. Wrong. Yours.Youtried to kill me.”
“To protect you!”
“Claim me, you mean. Keep me from the others.”
“I’ve apologized?—”
“Oh, wow. Yeah, the word sorry erases everything. Just boom. A rag wiping all that shit away so everything’s bright and shiny between us again.”
“I’ve said I’ll make it right.”
“Heard that before.”
“What else do you want from me?” Frustration bleeds through his tone.
“I want you to live in reality, not some fantasy land. I want you to take responsibility and realize that you’re not just some badass?—”
“You deal with her. I can’t,” Chase mutters under his breath, and I realize with a shock that the Empty Man is once again handing over the reins to the body and mind he’s possessing.
Oh, that boils me. That sears my insides and makes me want to lash out with a fist and slap that Terror. “You stay right fucking there, Empty Man. You don’t get to run off because my words are too true for you to handle?—”
“Aliana?” The tone of voice shifts from the breathy, sibilant sounds that characterize Empty to the familiar, grating tone of Chase.
“How can you stand him?” I snarl.
“Not much choice,” he reminds me, and my lips twist.
I reach out to my side, and my hand smooths over some roots protruding from the curved walls as I slide forward. “Fucking monsters.”
“I hear that's what you've been doing,” he responds bitterly.
All the reasons Chase has always annoyed me resurface.
“Oh, come off it. You’d do whatever it took to survive too.” The defensive words fly from my lips before I can stop them.
Regret hits a second later, but it's too late, and it doesn’t last. I’m eternally grateful Tesq and Creep aren’t here to listen to my impulsive lie, but I’m also utterly irritated with Chase. It’s always been like sandpaper between the two of us, abrasive and painful.
“That’s all it is, huh?” His skepticism pokes right at my vulnerabilities.
“I don’t need to explain myself to you. You fucked nearly every goddamned woman in the resistance,” I snarl, my cheeks heating, getting way too worked up over nothing. I don’t care what Chase has done. Yet still my mouth keeps moving. “You plucked pussies the way people pick flowers. Big ole fucking bouquets of them.”
“How would you even know that? You spent so much time ignoring me, how would you know how many people I slept with?”
“Ignoring you was better than murdering you.”
“You wanted to kill me?”
“Oh please. As if the feeling wasn’t mutual.”
His long, drawn-out silence is as powerful as a shove, and I stumble. My hand flies over to the side of the arched wall, scraping against bits of gravel. The fact that I nearly fall in utter darkness, blind to what’s beneath me, has my heart beating unnaturally quickly. At least, I think it’s from the fall.
It has to be.
My fucking life has had too many revelations lately. Too many changes. I can’t process any more. Our hatred has to be mutual.
A hand shoots out, and Chase grips my upper arm to help stop me from tumbling onto my face. His solid grip helps me straighten, though as soon as I do, I pull away. A thank-you sits on the tip of my tongue, but I swallow it down. Chase and I don’t thank each other. We snipe.
