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That was what my ex would have done.
But she simply took my hand in hers, and when she spoke, her voice was like a melody.
"I get it. Nothing takes away from what we just shared. And I'm not going to press you into talking about stuff you're not ready for. But when you are ready, Reed, I'll be here."
Guilt ravaged my heart. I opened and closed my mouth with the weight of everything I wanted to and could not tell her.
Are you in credit card debt?
Someone hired me to mess with you.
Did you kill Harold, Junie? Tell me. I can help you.
Let me fucking help you.
"Let's get you home," I said instead, giving her a small smile. "Will you have dinner with me on the way?"
"Only if we get ice cream after."
* * *
I saton my favorite couch in the living room, nursing a glass of whiskey in my hand. I had the only keepsake from my family in front of me—a worn down piece of my heart in the form of an album.
The deep brown leather was creased and cracked in places. Even with so many years on it, this album was still the most beautiful thing in my life except my daughter, the two monkeys who worked with me, and well, June.
I took another sip of the whiskey, feeling it burn in the back of my throat. I flipped the album open and contented myself with just touching the thicky, heavy creamy ivory pages. They left a satisfactory rustling sound in the air as I turned them.
The album ended very abruptly. There I was, on the brink of graduating, all smiles and with that cocky persona of someone who had no idea what curveballs life was gonna pelt him with.
Like many other parents, mine had moved to New York with the promise of a better, more ambitious future.
They were both working in the North Tower of the World Trade Center when the attacks happened. I was attending school in a nearby neighborhood. At the time, I was two years away from my eighteenth birthday.
When the planes hit, my school was put on lockdown. I remembered a white confusion rushing through the halls, students and people running around with panic on their faces, an inconceivable dread creeping up my skin. It was like knowing something terrible had happened but not being able to name it.
The only clarity I ever got came in the form of a social worker who took me to a nearby shelter with as few words as possible. I could see she was sorry, she wanted to help, she wanted to heal me—but her face was ravaged. In retrospect, God knew who she had lost that day.
Over the next month, I was passed between family members like a ragdoll no child wanted. All of it led to one route, Greenbriar Children's Center, Oakmont.
I struggled. Hard. I knew my time at the center would end soon enough, and I used what few precious hours I had preparing myself for a life of revenge.
But abandonment followed me around like a lonely ghost, only leaving me for one sliver of time the day I met Cole and saw my reflection in him. Another boy, haunted and lost, struggling to stay afloat.
In truth, abandonment had been the only constant I'd ever known. All roads led to it, and it stood in front of me, solid and unyielding, telling me it would never leave me alone.
I could fight it. On some nights, when sleep was as elusive as the promise of happiness, I did. I reasoned and told myself that Juniper wasn't wrong, and I'd find a way to get her out of the ditch she'd dug for herself. That Leia would forgive me. That I'd still get a chance to annihilate Omar and avenge Cole.
On other nights, everything was hopeless and my life's sheer purpose felt like a chamber of smoke.
"Reed?"
I closed the album with athunkand set it aside. Paladin had strolled into the room. From the look on his face, he was about to tell me something I wouldn't like.
"What is it?"
"Are you in the mood to talk?"
"I'm in the mood to kill, so same thing. Go on."
