A fresh wave of pain crashes through me. My face is suddenly wet.You stupid motherfucking fool.
“She’ll bury it,” Izzy says after a moment. “Just like she always does. She’ll make it into a joke. Turn it into a story. You’ll be a funny footnote in a monologue she tells at brunch.”
I shake my head, furious with myself. How could I do this? “I don’t want to be a fuckin’ footnote.”
Izzy studies me for a long, heavy beat. Then, softer: “Then do something about it.”
Behind us, someone calls her name—familiar, from another life. We both glance up. The tall, handsome man version of Izzy, who I haven’t seen since high school, walks toward us, holding a baby on his hip, a woman beside him.
Izzy waves them off for a second and turns back to me. Her voice is lower now, but no less intense.
“You want her?” she asks.
I nod. “I need her.”
“Then fight like hell. Chase her. Apologize so hard she runs out of ways to argue with you. Remind her that she’s not alone. That she doesn’t always have to be the one taking on the world.”
I’m already on my feet.
“She’ll try to push you away,” she warns. “She’s scared now. Scared in the way only people who’ve had to carry everything by themselves can be.”
“I won’t let her push me out.”
Izzy looks at me for a long time before her face softens.
“She thinks she doesn’t need anyone,” she says. “But she needs you.”
I nod again. “Her home is with me.”
Izzy holds my gaze. Her eyes glisten for a second before she blinks it away and says, “Then go bring her home.”
THIRTY-ONE
Annie
By the timeI hang up the phone with Izzy, entire wars have been waged, empires have fallen, someone has been stabbed twenty-three times, and I have risen from the ashes and the carnage.
Old Annie? She made a brief appearance—sat at the bar, scoped out someone with decent bone structure and a black credit card, planned to fuck around just enough to get blackout and a free ride home. But she was vanquished somewhere between the lobby and the Amtrak kiosk.
By Sister Annie.
Now, Sister Annie tried to reclaim control, starting slowly, forcing me to lose the dude from the bar, buy my own damn train ticket and sit my ass on the train without getting up except to use the bathroom. She wanted me to slither back into my hole and be devastatingly crushed that I couldn’t even make it the full year of her that I promised myself. Short by a few days and a big dick. She wanted me to go back to Rock Bottom, in my parents’ basement, where I could safely remain leashed and caged.
But after sitting on that train, watching Miami slide backwards and behind me?
Only one bitch made it out alive.
Just me.
Annie Li, Chaos Bringer. Screaming and triumphant and feral. I rose from the motherfucking ashes.
Because I wasfuckingright.
I did the right fucking thing. I trusted myself. I did it allmyself—the sum of all my experiences led to that moment right there.
I saved my sister’s ass. This time, though, the self-sacrifice was right. I was my sister’s keeper in an appropriate way.
I kicked Tom in the nuts.
