As much fun as Summer and I are having, however, Mattie only stops in for the bare minimum ten minutes it takes for her to pull on the dark gray gown I talked the wedding planner into (because honestly, this thing is closer to a funeral than a wedding), get poked with a few pins, and leave.
“Wow. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree around here, does it?” Summer asks after Mattie slips away.
“That’s actually not like her at all.” The woman pinning my blousy sleeves to the exact right spot on my arms slides her eyes at me, like I’m secretly a Bridezilla for not making the girl feel welcome.
Summer only raises a brow, as I warned her about the recording devices when I told her she might be invited to my wedding, all those months ago. She’s been careful with her words, and I’m glad my warning stuck.
Blinking up at the ceiling, not wanting her to read how freaked out I am, I simply say, “We had a bad night. Really bad. And Mattie walked in on it. I think I scared her.”
“You?” Summer laughs, something hearty and real.
“I can be scary,” I say, knowing I sound like a whiny toddler telling the sitter that I don’t need a nap anymore.
“Right.”
The thing is, I can be. I’ve killed someone. I’ve beaten someone unconscious. Hell, I’ve sliced up a man simply for doing his job. But I can’t tell Summer any of that. Not here. Not now.
Maybe not ever.
Who wants to be friends with a killer? With the girl who forced her best friend to do illegal surgery on her boyfriend, risking both her future and his life?
Why would anyone ever want to be in the same room as the person I’m turning into?
I must have been quiet for too long, staring at the door Mattie slipped from and not blaming her an ounce, because Summer clears her throat.
“Listen. You know a bit about my past, right?”
I blink back to the moment, glancing over at the woman I thought was made of ice when I met her, now lounging with one leg over the arm of a chair, pulling a scrunchy off her wrist and wrapping her blonde hair into a messy pile on top of her head. “Jansen told me a few things,” I say.
Her mouth turns down into a pretty pout. “Yeah. Let’s just say it got worse after that. Then it got better. And now, here I am, the woman before you. We all do what we’ve got to do to survive, you know?”
The woman pinning my dress finally lets me off the block, and I duck behind a screen to strip off the heavy lace. “But is that all there is? Just survival?” The question is one I’m not sure I want an honest answer to.
“For people like us, I’d say survival is plenty better than the alternative.”
A hint of tears flickers in the corner of my eyes, like that one panic attack unlocked the door on the vault where I keep all my messy emotions, and now they’re bleeding out right when I need to get my head in the game. “True. But is it foolish to want more?”
Summer’s quiet for a while as I pull on the soft sweater and jeans I picked out this morning. When I come around the screen, she’s staring out at the snow, looking once again like she should be made of ice, despite being as casual as I’ve ever seen her.
“Summer?”
She swallows. “It’s not foolish to hope. But it’s heartrending when that hope shatters.” She turns, her eyes serious. “You only get the one heart. And only you can keep it in one piece.”
I mull over her words for the next few weeks.
I don’t know if they’re right.
But if they are?
I’m totally fucked.
Because my heart is already in four pieces, bleeding from the edges of my gilded cage.
Chapter 45
Jansen
Iknow I’ve been bored for too many weeks when I’m excited to sit in the van.
