Bastian’s baby is coming to life inside me, and meanwhile, the man himself is lying cold in a morgue with a tag on his toe.
I wish I could go to sleep for a very, very long time.
When I reach our building, I climb the stairs to the third floor. Our apartment door is at the end of the hall. I can smell the cumin-scented air seeping through the crack underneath.
But when I reach it, something in me simply stops working.
My hand hovers over the doorknob. It refuses to turn it.
That old, familiar taste hits my tongue again: bubblegum, the flavor of fear. It’s so strong that I could almost swear I’d just finished a popsicle. It’s a disgusting taste, and I want it gone so bad that I could almost scream. I collapse against the door, knees drawn up, Excalibur falling to the floor beside me.
And for the first time since I ran from Bastian in the rain seven weeks ago…
… I cry.
Tears soak my collar, hot and relentless. I claw at the clinic pamphlets in my bag, because suddenly, I hate them, I hate them, I fuckinghatethem! They’re so goddamn useless. Pointless, really. A cosmic joke. I can’t read the damn things, or see the sonogram images I’m supposed to coo over, or even check if the vitamins they prescribed are rattling in the right bottle. I ball up the pamphlets and hurl them down the hall. They land somewhere not that far from me with a sad little crinkle, just like the tissue paper in the clinic.
My hand drifts to my stomach. “I’m sorry,” I whimper down toward the unfortunate life in my womb. “I’m so fucking sorry you got stuck with me.”
The crying isn’t pretty. It’s not the kind you see in movies, where a single tear rolls down a porcelain cheek and a tall man with excellent bone structure is there to catch it with their thumb.
This is ugly girl crying. Wounded animal crying. These tears come from a nasty, secret place below my ribs, where all the things I’ve been refusing to feel have been fermenting in the dark.
My shoulders shake. Snot runs from my nose and I don’t bother wiping it. What’s the point? There’s no one here to see me, and even if there were, I wouldn’t care, because I can’t see them. I’m past caring. Past pretending I have my shit together or that any of this is manageable or that I’m doing anything other than drowning in three feet of water while everyone else walks by without getting their ankles wet.
I think about my mom. She used to cry like this when I was little, before she learned to do it quietly in the bathroom with the shower running. I’d press my ear to the door and listen to the sound of her breaking, and I’d promise myself I’d never be like her.
Well, joke’s on me, because here I am anyway. Pregnant with the child of a man who cuts fingers off corpses. A man Iloved.
God, I’m such an idiot.
I press both hands against my stomach now, harder than before, like I’m trying to push the truth back inside where I don’t have to deal with it. But it won’t go. It’s there, as real as the floor beneath me and the cane in my hand.
The sobs taper off eventually. In their wake, I’m left hollowed out and shivering. My throat feels flayed. The hallway floor has left a grid of dents on the backs of my thighs, and my nose is a ruined, boogery mess. If Yasmin saw me, she’d call me pitiful, then help me to my feet and clean me up.
I could call her. She’d come running with saltines and reassurances. But the thought of her pity—or worse, herhope—makes my stomach churn. She’ll want to fix this. She’ll cradle my hand and spin this disaster into something manageable, solvable.
But some things can’t be managed.
I struggle to my feet. My fingers find the doorknob again. It’s every bit as cold as before, but I still make myself twist it slowly, open it, and step into the cumin-scented cave I now call home.
I shut and lock the door behind me, drop my purse to the side, kick off my shoes. I work my way slowly to the den and find thecouch. Then I drape myself across it. I close my eyes—force of habit, hard to break—and let the darkness swallow me whole.
But sleep isn’t dark. Sleep is full of dreams. Sleep is full of blue eyes turning black and tattooed hands reaching toward me.
Closer.
And closer.
Andcloser.
9
ELIANA
bench rest /benCH rest/: noun
1: resting dough between shaping steps to relax the gluten before continuing.
