It was my power. I teleported into Rap’s office. The closest spot I’d feel safe. Rap is in front of me, she opened the door and is looking out to gauge what the ruckus is about.
“Rap,” I say in a strangled voice. She turns and her brows shoot up in surprise when she sees me standing behind her. My clothes are ripped and I’m sure I appear as terrified as I feel.
Assessing the situation almost instantaneously, as she always does, Rap looks at me and says, “Wait five minutes then grab your shit and get out of here, Goldie. Use the back door. Take the next couple days off. In fact, wait for me to call you.”
With that, Rap slams the door behind her, and I’m left standing there in shock. I can hear her shouts over the din. The girls and the bouncers are kicking people out of the bar.
I don’t know when I start shaking, but my hands violently tremble as I grab my stuff from the locker room. I head out the back door and beeline it for my car. The drive home goes by torturously slow, and ugly thoughts begin to pop up.
Why don’t you just jerk the wheel and end all this. Everyone would be better off without you.
The voice inside my head belongs to Madison. It used to talk to me in a constant stream, but I haven’t heard it in years.
If I thought things were bad before, my innermost hell had been realized. Not only did I get sent home from work after causing an insane, violent disruption, but I’ve ruined the happiness of my closest friend.
I already know to my bones that Cinder will never forgive me.
Chapter37
It’s Just A Bad Day
GOLDIE
When I wake, I’m as brittle as a dried leaf and it hurts to look at myself so I don’t.
After getting home, I found the door was fixed, lock included. No trace of blood or the body pieces on my living room floor. Like it never happened.
Even though Eddie was out of the picture, it probably wasn’t smart to stay home alone. Someone could have followed me from work again.
Still, I dragged my ass up the stairs and crawled under the covers like the lowest creature known to mage, fae, and man. The truth is I don’t care. I don't care what happens to me. Maybe I even deserve it.
I’m not capable.
I’m not enough.
And I don’t deserve my friends.
Today there will be no makeup, no loud booty shaking music, no pink and pleather. Instead, I lay on the creaky springs occasionally rotating as inky, sucking darkness pulls me down, down, down until it’s all I breathe. Each breath is a burden. Life itself is a burden I’m not sure I can bear the weight of.
If being myself hurts people I love, maybe I had it right all those years ago. Maybe I should make myself smaller. Maybe it’s plain narcissism to love myself and my need to romance my life is what’s ballooning into a dangerous bubble everyone I love keeps getting caught in.
I can't pick up my phone or even bring myself watch one of my favorite reality shows. Instead, I lay there and stew. Stew in how I’m going to tell Cinder. How can I face her? How can I tell her what happened? It hurts me so terribly, which means it will likely spear through her.
Will she hold me responsible? It’s magic gone haywire, seducing people against their will. But that didn’t matter in middle school, not to Madison, not to the other girls. Did I already mess up by not telling Cinder immediately?
Do I keep it from her because it’s magic and it doesn’t count, and if I get Ted around, will it take the fervor off Lysander’s desire?
With every option I review, I know I’ve already lost. Cinder has always been cagey about relationships, about being touched, about letting me in. She had such a rough, traumatizing upbringing and if she finds I betrayed her, even by accident, she’ll shut me out. Maybe not outright, she won’t scream and yell at me. She might not even talk shit about me to other people, but those are possible too. But even if she quickly broke things off, retreating from me, talking with Snow behind closed doors about how I couldn’t help but be center of attention. . . I smother myself with a pillow, letting out a long painful groan.
I feel like I’m dying. Like I’ll never be happy again.
It’s been a long time since depression had sunk its evil claws into my flesh, dragging me down, blotting out any speck of light or joy. But I remember this feeling. It doesn’t maim, it drowns, without mercy or reprieve.
There is a knock down at the front door. I ignore it, but it keeps coming until I force myself to get to my feet and walk down the groaning steps with stiff legs. Opening the front door feels like so much pressure, I fear I’ll be flattened by it.
“What happened?” Ted asks when he takes me in. I’m sure my makeup-free face is drawn and pale. I can literally feel the bags hanging under my eyes, pulling them down like an undertow. The heather gray pants and shirt have holes in them, but they are soft. Nothing about me is put together.
All I can do is shake my head. I can’t bring myself to say words. When I even try, they shrivel and blacken at the base of my throat.
