Some terrified cocktail of panic and shock covered Eden’s as she stood there. I wiped a hand down my face, smearing red into my stubble, through my hair.
“Don’t look at me.” My voice cracked. I couldn’t meet her eyes now, couldn’t bear what I might find there. “Don’t look. Just— just go into the kitchen.”
But she didn’t go. She had stopped crying and was taking slow steps towards me, her bare feet leaving bloody footprints on the floor.
“I’m not afraid of you,” she whispered.
I looked up.
Shewas. She was shaking, trembling from the aftermath of what she had witnessed. Her hands reached for mine anyway, those same hands he had tried to pin down.
I let her take my hand because I owed her that. She dragged me to the bathroom, and I followed like the floor might give out beneath me if I resisted. She turned on the shower, leaving it on the hottest setting. I didn’t know what she was doing, what she had planned. She dropped to her knees in front of me and started untying my boots. When she looked up at me – eyes still puffy with tears – and smiled, I could have kissed her against the floor right there. I couldn’t admit that, not to her, but this was a position I would like to have her in again… when I hadn’t just killed someone in her bedroom.
When my shoes and socks were removed, she took me by the hand again and pulled me into the shower. I hesitated, watching as the spray of the showerhead soaked her from the head down. Where our hands met, dirt and blood poured from her skin, but the rest of her was so clean and pure.
I stepped in with her, fully clothed, just like she was. Water poured over us both, too hot and weighing our clothes down, but I was going to stay as long as she wanted me to.
She looked at me again, water beading off of her eyelashes and running down her lips.
“It’s okay,” she said, as though I needed reassurance. Like there wasn’t a dead man on the other side of the wall, bleeding on her floor. Like she hadn’t just been attacked and nearly killed just moments before I had gotten here. It made me wonder if any of it had happened at all, or if she was just crazy.
I nodded once and repeated the affirmation back to her. “It’s okay.”
Her arms wrapped around me like an instinct, and I wanted to sink into it like drowning. She pressed her cheek to my chest, right over my heart. She cried, and I knew that she wasn’t okay. I didn’t put my arms around her as she hugged me, but I didn’t pull away from her either. I stood there with her beyond when the water cooled.
No, she wasn’t okay but this was the smallest proof that even when I tried to vanish into violence, she would follow me into the dark, and hold me there.
Chapter twenty-one
Eden
“Erasure”
Everyonehashadtoclean a little blood out of their carpet, a little stubborn stain off the tile… but I’d never seen anything like this before. The apartment felt haunted, and I wondered if I’d ever be able to feel the same in this room again.
I had changed into pajamas, the only matching set I could find, but nothing felt good against my skin. Even the soft cotton pants and oversized shirt offered me no comfort. My hands were still shaking, my ears still ringing with the sound of Halo’s fists hitting Parrish’s face: the crack of bone, the wet rhythm of violence.
And now there was a stranger in my kitchen, humming to himself as he put on gloves.
“Kade,” Halo had said, almost too quietly, as if summoning either a demon or a saint — I wasn’t sure which. “He’ll handle everything.”
Kade didn’t look like someone whohandled everything.He looked like either a very tired skateboarder or an off-duty barista. He was all curly hair under a beanie, earbuds in, mismatched socks peeking out above his high-top shoes, thescent of mint gum and cleaning solution trailing behind him like a weird little cloud.
He gave me a friendly nod when I came out of my room.
“Hey,” he said, too cheerfully. “You must be Eden. Sorry for the mess. You want like… a piece of candy or something? I’ve got peppermint. Butterscotch, if you’re more of an old-soul candy type.”
“Do you… normally bring candy to crime scenes?”
He shrugged. “You’d be surprised how often people need sweets after something like this.”
I didn’t know what to say to that. I settled down on the arm of the couch and watched as he got to work in my bedroom. He pulled out a bottle of industrial cleaner and started a playlist that did not match the tone of the room. I couldn’t make out exactly what it was, but it was very upbeat.
“What exactlyisyour job?” I asked as he knelt beside the streaks of blood.
“I’m a certified problem eraser,” he said, flashing a charmingly crooked grin, “specializing in biohazard remediation, trauma cleanup, and disposing of the occasional… inconvenience. Very delicate work.”
He said it like he was explaining a cookie recipe.
