Red Right Hand (17 page)

I don't know why I slid it through my belt.

The handle dug into my stomach.

I was still sitting on the cold, wet grass, rocking back and forth, when Daniel pushed open the door and stepped outside.

I heard him come out. I didn't turn, but I knew it was him. It felt like him.

I listened as he walked through the grass behind me. He stepped around to where I could see him and stood in front of me.

I didn't look up. I didn't do anything but rock and hold myself.

Slowly, carefully, he lowered himself to the ground beside me. He'd put his shirt back on.

That was good.

He needed his shirt.

Sitting cross-legged, he stuck his hands in the pocket of his hoodie.

Seconds passed like hours, him looking at me, me looking at the toes of my shoes.

He made a small noise in his throat, testing the silence to see if it could be penetrated. When he spoke, his voice was soft, easy, as if he were talking to a skittish animal. Maybe that's exactly what he was doing.

“Hey, Charlie. How you doin'?”

I didn't answer.

He bit his lip, trying to think of what to say next. It took him a minute to find it.

“It's okay, what happened. You only did what you had to do. You don't have to feel guilty about it.”

“I don't.” My voice sounded like I felt: hollow, tinny, and disconnected.

He didn't say anything for a long moment.

“I'd understand if you were upset about it.”

I looked away.

You just don't get it.

My eyes felt hot. “I'm not upset about that.” I wasn't. Killing Mason sat at the other end of a long, narrow tube. I could see it; it would come up on me one day, and that would be a whole new round of therapy, but that wasn't what made me feel as though my skin had separated from my muscles, as though a thick layer of batting hung between me and the world. That wasn't what made me crumble on the inside, breaking into tiny pieces that tumbled and fell into a cold, bottomless void.

“Are you upset because of me? Because of what happened earlier?”

I rolled my eyes.

Great. Here we go.

“Just leave it alone, Daniel.”

His brow creased. “No. You're upset, and I want to help.”

“You're not helping.”

Oh God, just stop.

“If this is about earlier, I'm sorry, really sorry.”

Please stop.

He didn't.

“I didn't mean to move so fast. I just … I just think I'm falling for you.” He shook his head, bangs swinging back and forth. “No. I love you Charlie.” His words were firm, definitive, declarative. A statement. “I'm in love with you.”

Tears spilled down my cheeks.

Not this, not now, not after. Can't you see?

I whispered, “You're not in love with me.”

He rolled up to his knees, moving closer, still not touching me. “I am. I love you, Charlie. You don't have to feel the same way—it's okay if you don't.”

In that moment, somewhere deep inside me, I realized that I did. I did love Daniel. But he was wrong, so wrong. He couldn't love someone like me. Not someone as damaged as me.

My head went ugly, dark thoughts rushing into the black hole that had opened up inside me. Was this some cruel joke? Something he'd been waiting to do since high school? Some sick way to make fun of what had happened to me?

“Screw you. This isn't funny.”

Shock crossed his face. “What are you talking about?”

I turned. My mouth felt sharp and feral. “This isn't funny. You know what I've been through. You know why I can't be loved.” I jumped to my feet, screaming from my gut. “I'm
damaged goods.
You can't love me. Nobody can love me.”

He stood with his hands out, palms up in supplication. “What are you talking about?”

Tears ran hot and salty. The side of my mouth hitched up, making my voice sound strange. “You know
exactly
what I'm talking about. Tyler Woods's party in ninth grade.
I'm
the party favor.
I'm
the girl too stupid to watch herself, the girl who wound up passed around like a two-bit whore. I'm used up and screwed up and no good to anyone anymore.”

Confusion swept across his face. “Wait.” He blinked, trying to process. “Wait…”

I couldn't stop. Not after tonight. Not after earlier with Daniel. Not after Mason. It all spilled out: a wound lanced, a dam burst, a bottle of hurt shattered. My finger jabbed the air toward him. “Don't act like you didn't know! Don't you dare! You chased after me all this time because of it. ‘Surely the gangbang girl is easy meat. Surely she puts out. She's an easy mark. She wanted it. She asked for it. She
deserved
it.'”

It spilled out. All the things whispered about me, all the things said behind people's hands, muttered in hushed tones somehow always just loud enough to carry to my ears. Words that cut open wounds that never really healed.

I thought I dealt with all this shit years ago.

More words spilled from me. “You thought it. You
knew
it. The jacked-up Cancer God priest knew it. Everybody knows it!”

I screamed, the pain ripping out in a raw, animal sound of anguish.

Daniel grabbed me by the arms.

“Charlie!”

I screamed in his face, bleeding out the pain, unable to stop.

He shook me. It wasn't hard, just sharp enough to jar me back to reality. We stood there, his hands on my arms, looking at each other. Tears ran down his face, tracing the edge of his jawline, hanging in shaky, silvery droplets before falling.

“I
never
thought those things. I didn't know. I swear to you, Charlie, I didn't know.”

“Liar.”
Pain made my voice ugly, snarling out like a slap.

“I swear.”

“
Everybody
back home knew.”

He blew out a breath, sharp and hard. “I knew it happened to somebody. It was on the news—but I was fourteen, I didn't watch the news. I had no idea that was you. I promise.”

I looked in his eyes. They stared back at me green and bright.

And completely honest.

Dammit.

I believed him.

He
hadn't
known.

The knowledge broke something inside me. A knot of distrust I'd held since the second I'd started talking to him. I'd held back, always waiting for him to do
something,
to hurt me in some way. Maybe he never would.

Maybe the time had come to stop living a half life of doubt and suspicion.

Could I know love?

I stepped into his arms.

Carefully, he put them around my shoulders as I pressed my face against his chest and cried out the pain. He held me and made soft shushing noises of reassurance. A small surge of wild panic started, and I pushed it away. I could trust Daniel.

I could love Daniel.

We stood like that until all the poison had leaked out of me. Until I came up empty and dry. Until all the pain and hurt and betrayal had been spent. I wasn't fixed—the scars were still there and always would be—but now maybe I wouldn't have to bear them alone.

The cold began to set in through our clothes. Pulling away, I wiped the tears from my face. Daniel had a look in his eyes.

“What is it?” I asked.

He shook his head.

“Tell me. No need for secrets now.”

He sighed. “I was just thinking about what happened between us. I feel like a complete asshole.” He looked away. “I understand now why you reacted like you did. I'm sorry for doing anything to bring back that pain, for making you feel that way again.”

I touched his face, turning it so he had to look at me. “Our … misunderstanding,” I said, searching for the right words to explain, “it made me feel scared and helpless. Angry. It hurt because I thought you knew and just didn't care what I'd been through.”

He opened his mouth to speak. I put my fingers over his lips and shook my head. “It's my turn, let me finish.”

He nodded.

I continued. “What happened was horrible, the worst thing I can imagine. Not just the physical stuff, but the pain in here.” I touched my heart. “And the pain in here.” I touched my head. “It destroyed who I was for a long time, and it still messes with my head. It probably always will.” My hand moved to his chest. “But what you did was just a mistake, and
nothing
like what happened then. That night, those … animals … left me feeling as if I had been turned inside out.”

I stopped.

If I kept talking, I would cry again. I didn't want that. I wanted to be done crying for the night. Daniel gently pulled me close again.

His voice was soft in my ear. “I am so sorry you had to go through that.”

“I am too.” I burrowed close, into the safety of his arms. “I just wish those assholes could feel like they made me feel. Especially Tyler—he's one who started it that night, the one who pulled me into that room. He should know what it's like to be ripped apart, to have everything he is turned inside out.”

The moment the words left my mouth, I regretted them.

The torc around my neck tightened, constricting in a hard line, bruising the skin of my throat as magick welled up inside me. The warm rain fell against my skin, under my clothes.

What …

Ashtoreth's gift struck, and the rain scraped me raw as it jerked us both through time and space. It was different this time. I was pulled, stretched, and dragged into a howling dark void. Vast planets that hated us spun and twirled as we passed, turning their terrible faces to destroy us in their own inexorable rotation. Two moons were locked in orbit, each plotting the other's demise.

Things gibbered by, skritching and tearing at us, constructed with a strange geometry that made the blood in my body run cold. My eyes slammed shut, but it didn't help. The horrors still seared through them as if my lids had been made transparent in the face of unimaginable iniquity. Things never human swept by. A malevolent entity of only colour, incomprehensible to our tiny human minds, swirled toward us as we narrowly missed the edge of it, barely skimming past, and I knew, I
knew
that if we had even brushed against that, that, that
colour
we would have been obliterated, snuffed from existence.

Madness acid-washed my mind, welling up, trying to drown my soul. I was very nearly lost when we crashed back into our reality, nowhere near where we had been before.

 

29

N
OISE PRESSED ALL
around me, constricting me. I was on my hands and knees, the world gone black, my eyes squeezed tightly shut as if they'd been nailed together. I didn't want to open them. Nothing good would be there when I opened them.

What the hell was that?

My brain scrambled, turning in circles, trying to reorient itself—make sense of what happened.

Think. One thing at a time.

What do you feel?

Something rough under my hands, not gritty, not hard, just firm and … textured. And warm. Sticky.

What do you smell?

I breathed, pulling the air into my mouth, tasting it on the back of my tongue. The smell of a playground—metal monkey bars, to be exact. Iron left out and heated in the sun.

What do you hear?

I clamped down, concentrated, pushing out of my head the echo of the howl in the void. There were noises, all around me. They started separating, pulling apart as I concentrated. A rhythmic sound welled up, a noise that came and went, sweeping in and out like a tide. A wet sound, harsh and raw.

Someone's throwing up.

I could hear shouting.

How many voices?

Three voices. I recognized one as Daniel's. The other two were male: one rough and raspy, the other shrill, undercut with a brittle edge of panic. They jumbled, running over each other. “What the fuck!” “Who are you?” “What the hell just happened to Tyler?”

Good. You did good.

Now what do you see?

I opened my eyes. I knelt on red carpet.

Red,
shiny
carpet.

Red, shiny,
wet
carpet.

The carpet was saturated.

With blood.

I recoiled in horror, scrambling backward. My eyes jerked around the room, trying to take it all in, trying to see everything at once.

I was in a room. A bedroom.

Familiarity pushed against my brain. The walls were the same color, the dresser the same dark-stained wood, the shelf crowded with trophies bunched together like a fake gold and imitation silver mob—just like they had all those years ago. Some details were different, but I
recognized
this room.

This was the room where my life had ended.

Daniel stood a few feet away, hands knotted around a tie worn by a tall man hunched over, pulled down to Daniel's level. The tall man's hair had been clipped short to hide the fact that it had started thinning, his angular face clean shaven instead of wearing a scraggly goatee as he had before. Ten years had carved lines around them, but I recognized the man's rodent eyes.

The last time I had seen them, one had winked as he strolled past me, leaving the courtroom with an acquittal and a clear record.

The time before that, they'd been dark and sharp with merciless cruelty as he used my hair to hold me to the bed.

Brad Curson.

My eyes jerked away, finding two men on the other side of the room; one was standing, the other sitting in a puddle of sick.

Dark jeans over heavy black boots covered the squat, bowed legs of the man who stood. A black T-shirt, stretched over his expansive stomach, bore the cover art to an album by a band I didn't recognize. His hard dark hair came from a box, lighter over his ears where it tried to cover gray, gelled up and back in a pompadour. He had an air of desperation, as if he were trying to hold on to something he had already lost. His face looked different, a bust someone had coated in lumps of clay to resculpt, covered but still recognizable.