Her movement startles me. My face is hot, so hot. Wet too, the moisture tightening my cheeks, but I’m the one who can’t move. I watch her as she walks over to the table of electronics. She picks up the sledge. It’s massive, especially compared to her slight frame, but she’s strong in every way.
She grasps the handle, one hand at the top and the other further down for leverage. She hefts it over her shoulder and brings it down right into the middle of a printer. It jumps as it shatters. The whole table judders, everything on it trembling.
I’m trembling. My muscles quake. It’s as though I’ve been cut open, flayed down past skin and muscle, straight to the bone. I’m bleeding out in hot spurts, a river of my lifeblood spilling, spilling, spilling.
I’ve never wanted to kill anyone, and the things I heard in prison about those who had were absolutely sickening. Violence was just as bad. I can almost hear my mom right now, see her stern face, telling me that hitting someone was never the way. Even in my own defense, I was to fight back only when absolutely necessary, when all else had failed.
The urge to do real violence, to fight for Loreena, to find this man who hurt her and terrorized her every day after through her memories, sings through me like an ancient battle cry. I wantblood so badly that I can almost taste it. I can almost see the bruises and cuts forming on my knuckles as I use my fists to pummel that piece of shit into nothing more than pulp.
I promised her, and if there’s anything I believe in, it’s my word. I promised my mom too, that I’d do something good. Change the world. Fight for what’s right. Would killing this fucker be breaking my promise to both of them, or just Loreena, because I told her I wouldn’t find this asshole. She knew just how badly I’d want to. She knew that her telling me would incite something inside of me I didn’t even know I was capable of.
It’s amazing that ten years in one of the most violent institutions there is couldn’t make me intothatman, but with her torrent of words… I’m transformed. She told me once I had a white knight tendency, and I didn’t get it then, but I’d like to be her knight. Though the things I’d do to seek vengeance for her are anything but noble. I’d swim in rivers of blood and make that bastard pay for what he did to her.
I’m torn back from the brink and slammed right back into my body as Loreena brings the hammer down again with a cry, into the middle of a computer tower. It splinters apart, pieces of plastic flinging in every direction.
“I know that’s what they all say, but I believed him.” Her voice is still strong, but it trembles with anguish, pain, and rage. “After everything he’d done, after he’d pressed the tip of that blade right against my eye, I believed it. He said he’d find out where I lived and come back and finish the job. I dropped to the ground and he walked away. Just… walked. He didn’t even run. Just… sauntered off. I remember watching his boots. They were heavy. Maybe even steel-toed. His jeans were frayed at the back. He wasn’t even a big man. Average size. Nothing special at all. If I’d seen him in a crowd of people at the start of the night, or evenat the party, I wouldn’t have thought anything at all. The only weird thing was that he was wearing gloves. It was summer, but he had a black hoodie on and gloves.”
She swings again, knocking that same tower right off the table. It flies a good ten feet and hits the wall to the right. She brings the hammer down on a second tower. Pieces go airborne, shrapnel in the room. Something hot grazes my cheek. I don’t react. I stand and watch her wring her past out of herself, purging out every last drop.
“He knew what he was doing. He’d picked the time, the place. He waited forhours. And he was sure not to leave a trace of his DNA anywhere. Would it have mattered if he did? A hair or blood from his knuckles? Would I have been brave enough to identify him or to testify in court, and if I was, did I trust the justice system to protect me? I know he was saying all the shit that people always say. Threats in order to ensure silence. I honestly didn’t want to stay quiet, but there was no evidence, and then the real panic started, and like I said, by the time I actually wanted to go to the police with a description, so much time had passed, that I knew that even if they believed me, it wouldn’t have stood up in court.”
She finally turns, the hammer gripped in her hands. Her eyes are haunted, but they’re glowing too. She’s breathing so hard that her heart must be beating out of her chest. The tension is so tight in here that it’s almost a palpable thing. If I lifted my hand, I could reach out and touch her memories, the terror, the horror, the pain. The room seems to distort, the sound going all wonky, but then it comes back into focus. Her eyes track my face, a hot caress. Something changes in them. Her expression collapses and she rushes forward, dropping the hammer and hurtling into me.
One arm breaks her fall, her palm flattening out against my chest with her other hand shoots to my face. “Maverick,” she whimpers. “What happened? You’re bleeding.”
I raise a hand numbly, surprised when my fingers come away bloody.
“Did I- Jesus, something must have hit you. A shard of glass or plastic.”
I remember the sting and the burn when those plastic pieces went flying. I’m still not properly back in my body. I’m still out there, my mind churning over the years, racing, edgy and aching and brutal.
My heart thumps so loud that it’s thunder in my ears.
Crack-crack. Crack-crack. Crack-crack.
I’m so disgustingly alive, wishing someone else dead.
“Maverick.” She strokes my cheek, her voice broken, not for herself, but for me.
I’m finally able to come back to myself, enough to see the burning worry teeming out of her. My next breath is ash in my mouth, coating my throat. I swallow it down into my burning gut. I choke itallback.
Loreena watches it all, her bright blue eyes missing nothing, the sky brought in here, brought right into this bleak room with the wood walls and fluorescent lighting. In the next instant, she’s huggingme. Wrapping herself tight aroundmybody, reassuringme.
I haven’t broken a thing in this room.
I’m the one who’s broken.
I’m the one who is unraveled.
“It’s going to be okay,” she whispers, her voice wrapping around me like a blanket, her hair a river of silky softness when I turn my face and bury it there. She’s honey and goodness, vanilla and flowers. “I really think it will be, even if it takes a while.” She stands on her tiptoes and guides my face down to hers. She inhales deeply and then her tongue traces the cut on my cheek.
I can’t do anything, can’t speak, can’t move, but I can bleed for her, inside and out.
The air seems to thrum between us, a shiver that rebounds off the walls and comes back at me, hitting straight down to my toes. My mouth is dry when she pulls back. She hasn’t let go of my neck. Her hand is still there, her face so close. All I have to do is lean forward and press my lips to hers.
The tang of blood is still there, but it’s like an afterthought compared to how sweet she is. Her lips part beneath mine. I kiss her slowly, taking my time while the fire inside of me turns into a roaring inferno. It’s not the place to want to consume her or be consumed. Not the right time. Anyone could open that door and come in here. This is private right now, but I’d like to keep it that way.
My hand traces up her neck, finding her pulse. I let it race beneath my splayed palm as I break the kiss. Mine is beating just as frantically. She drags her tongue along her swollen lower lip as though she’s trying to collect the last vestiges of me.
