“WHY?!” I scream, clawing at my face, sobs racking my body.
Carrie’s crying now, lip trembling, eyes full of rage and helpless love.
“You loved him longer than he ever deserved, Penn,” she says, voice low and shaking. “You thought you were the broken one. But you’re not. He is. You’re the strong one. You’re the goddamn storm.”
I pull myself up, trembling. Bottle broken. Heart shattered. I grab my bag and my fury.
“He’s going to see what he’s done,” I say, fire in my chest.
Carrie’s still on the phone. Still holding the line.
But I’m already gone.
I rip open the heavy wooden door of the bar,hisbar, the one he now wants to take from me like he’s taken everything else. The thick scent of woodsmoke and spilled beer wraps around me. Laughter and the murmur of half-drunken conversation dance in the air, and then the jukebox in the back corner changes tracks. Our song. The one he used to sing to me on those hollow, hopeless nights when I felt too empty to breathe. When I couldn’t feel him, but I could still hear him. Foy Vance –Feel for Me. It spills through the speakers like sorrow made sound.
“You ruined this song for me!” I scream, yanking my bag strap back up over my shoulder. My hair is wild, windblown, and I claw it out of my face so he can see my eyes see the fire in them while I scream. While I burn. He made me this. A ghost of the girl I was. A feral, broken thing who drifts through life with pain for skin and heartbreak for bones while he stands behind his fucking bar like a king in his castle. Laughing. Smiling. Holdingcourt with men and women alike, pouring drinks with those hands that once held me like I was sacred. Fuck him.
“Fuck you,” I spit, slamming my palms against the oak bar. The grain is carved with photos,ourphotos. Our life. Trapped beneath resin like some cruel time capsule: the beginning, the middle, and the bitter, splintered after. I sway. Alcohol swirls in my blood, dulling the edges of my thoughts but sharpening the ache in my chest.
“Penn,” he says, voice low and tight.
“Not here.” I scoff. “Not here? What do you mean,not here, Blake?”
He glances nervously around, but I don’t let up.
“What, you don’t want everyone to know what you did? Huh? Don’t want them to know the truth? That you’re a scumbag, a liar, a coward?”
I’m past the point of breaking. I’m already gone. Two fucking winds to crazy gone. And by god, it feels fuckinggoodthis chaos. This fire. This crazy. He held me captive in silence and sorrow for so long, pulling the strings, while I quietly shattered behind closed doors.
Once, I was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen. Now? I’m rage and ruin, and he looks at me like I’m something to pity. Something to erase. And that,that,makes me fucking livid.
“I ran through fire for you. And now my love for you is ash,” I whisper, breathless, a prayer and a curse. “The wind catches it every day, scattering the pieces like black confetti. You tossed me aside. Mocked my brokenness. And now,this me,the one before you, is the wreckage you built. And you’re telling me not here?” I tilt my head. “Where would you prefer, Blake? Her resting place?”
He flinches.
I press forward. “You want to move her. To make it easier onyou,because coming to the house you abandoned is too hard. I didn’t want her buried at home. I didn’t want to live in the shell of the family we never got to be. But your mother, you... you wanted her there. To anchor us.”
My voice cracks.
“Anchorwhat, Blake?”
I’m trembling now, my breath stuttering. “After she died, I bled an ocean through my eyes. My soul felt wafer-thin. My body numb. I didn’t think it was possible to grieve harder. But grief has layers. Grief comes back. Harder. Sharper. Meaner. It slices you open again and again and somehow hurtsmoreevery time.”
He stares at me, mouth open, eyes flickering with something I can’t name, too little, too late. I reach across the bar and steal the half-poured beer from his hand, downing it in one angry swallow. I feel the burn of every pair of eyes behind me, but I don’t stop. I slam the glass down on the wood, begging him with every movement to react. Tofeel. Toseeme. But he doesn’t. He just stands there, blinking like a stunned mullet, shaking his head slowly. Like he can will me away. Like I never mattered.
“You know what lies, all those lies you told, they don’t die, Blake. Those lies, they grow, and everything you and your fucking cow of a mother tried to hide will eventually spill over and grow, grow out of control, creeping into everything and suffocating it all. You and her, you both killed my beauty, but as that last petal falls from the white rose in her garden, I rose and now I’m here screaming like the woman scorned because you burnt something you should never have even touched.”
“Penn,” Carrie’s voice breathes behind me.
I don’t turn.
Her hand lands on my shoulder. I shrug it off. She wants to drag me out of here, spare me the memory of this mess. Save me from the morning after. But I don’twantto be saved. Not from this. We were in this together just hours ago, sipping tequila and swearing to play him at his own game. And here I am. Centre stage.
“You broke me,” I whisper, my voice cracking under the weight. “When I didn’t think I could break any more than I already had. Youthrewme away.”
I kick the bar. Hard. “You’re still breaking my heart, and you don’t even know or care. Our baby, our little Gracie, will be up there looking down at her daddy, making her mummy cry and for fucking WHAT!!.”I screamed, feeling the anger beat inside my eardrums. Hot, wild and overflowing.
Carrie tries to hold me again. I tear away.
