Her eyes dipped, fixed on the floor. “It makes me feel powerful. I spent a while feeling powerless. Feeling out of control in my body, having it used against me. If I can take care of people, if I can feelgoodand make others feel good, it’s—” Her confidence vanished. “It’s silly, nevermind.”
“That doesn’t sound silly. It sounds… sad, honestly. Wise, maybe. Selfless. Compassionate. But you don’t need other people to feel powerful, angel.”
She laughed, quiet and thin. “You don’t know much about me, Devil. You don’t know what I need.”
Her words struck me like a slap to the face, and I stiffened automatically. “I know,” I agreed mildly. “I shouldn’t have—I don’t know the right words to say.” I laughed, self-deprecating. “It’s not a feeling I’m used to.”
I forced my arms to drop, but it hurt like hell when she stepped back, taking all the warmth in the world with her.
“Why do you care?” she asked, confusion a knot in her brow.
“Why do you care about people?” I volleyed.
She flicked a glance at me, something I hesitated to label exasperation. “Touché.” She took a step back. “I’ll tell Lynn you were looking for her.”
I said her name just as she slipped through the door to the sanctuary, and Jessia turned back, her expression so sad a physical ache pierced my chest.
“Come find me if you need someone, okay? For anything. I mean it. If you want to break shit, we can break shit. If you want to scream, we can scream. If you want to cry, we can cry. Whatever you need, I want to help.”Please,I barely stopped myself from saying.
“We?”
“Oh, yeah. I’m a sympathetic crier. I hope you’re ready for snot and sobs and wailing noises that attract foxes.”
She laughed, a whispering rasp of noise that my entire world narrowed to. “Alright. I’ll keep that in mind.”
When she disappeared into the sanctuary, I had the sense I’d actually said the right thing. Shame I’d spend the rest of the week obsessing over the wrong things I’d said.
3
JESSIA
Ibrushed tears off my cheeks as I strode down the hallway in the sanctuary, my chest bursting with pain and my stomach twisting, knotting, roiling. I’d snapped at Mercedes and I didn’t even know why. One moment I was fine, sitting on the couch in the main room with my knees to my chest, painkillers dulling all the sensations in my body until I could almost appreciate the show projected on the big screen. Then Mercedes sat down and hugged me, and I began to fray.
She was talking about the new therapist Prodigy had brought into the Knights, gently prodding me to make an appointment, and noise rushed like blood in my ears. My skin burned, itched, and I couldn’t stand it. Her soft words, her kindness, the worry in her voice. I didn’t want to speak about what happened. I wanted to bury it in the past and move on. So I snapped.
I couldn’t remember what I said. My mouth opened, my head full of drowning static, but whatever came out made tears line Mercedes’ eyes. Too harsh, too cruel, too personal. I tried to takeit back, but she just shook her head and choked out there was nothing to apologise for.
Cool air caught my hair and whipped it into my face now as I wiped tears away. I wanted to disappear. I wanted to vanish into someone else’s life. I wanted the last week to be erased. I wanted to apologise to my friend, but I didn’t trust myself right now. I just… wanted to feel safe again.
“This shouldn’t be open,” I said in a flat voice, unable to muster any emotion as I approached the side door someone had left open. Probably taking a short cut to the chapel across the grounds. The hairs rose on the back of my neck as I closed it. I couldn’t explain why I looked over my shoulder, feeling like I was being watched, but I couldn’t shake the feeling either.
I hurried to my room, eager to lock myself inside where I knew I was completely, a hundred percent safe.
“I’m safe anywhere in the compound,” I said under my breath, hurrying my steps. “It’s surrounded by a wall and a fence and guards. I’m completelyfine.”
I exhaled a hard breath when I’d closed my bedroom door behind myself, but the tightness in my chest wasn’t going anywhere. I didn’t mean to snap at Mercedes. She’d done nothing but be supportive. I shouldn’t have—
I froze two steps away from my bed. There was an envelope sitting on my bed, and even from here I could see the name written in a heavy, familiar handwriting.
Jenna.
I backed up so fast that my head hit the door but I didn’t feel the pain. My breathing sped, my lungs like the bellows of a furnace. I couldn’t feel my hands, my arms, my toes. Couldn’t feel anything even as my whole body started to shake.
I left the envelope where it was and threw the door open, stumbling into the hall and running back through the sanctuary into the clubhouse beyond it. I was so terrified, my instincts onsuch high alert, that I barely even thought about what I was doing, where I was going, until I smacked into someone that smelled of salt and sea and freedom. And safety.
4
DEVIL
