Ris rolled her eyes, ginning as she crossed the room, assuming it was the troll up the hall, one of Ainsley’s chief co-conspirators in the ill-fated rent strike, who was also planning on vacating the building at the end of his lease. Ainsley was at brand practice,but she knew he’d go immediately down the hall to find out what new developments he’d missed when he got home.
“I can only imagine what trouble the two of you are cooking up now,” she laughed, pulling the chain and swinging the door open.
She sucked in a breath, feeling as though someone had landed a punch straight to her gut.What’s wrong with you? Why wouldn’t you peek with the chain first?She stepped back, panic quivering up her spine, the realization coming a beat later that her movement into the apartment might be regarded as an invitation, stepping forward to crowd the doorway instead. Her hands were shaking, so she gripped the edge of the door harder to hide the tremor.
It was Tate.
“You’ve got a lot of fucking nerve coming here.”
Her voice was low, shaking with rage, as tightly she controlled as Ris was able to keep it. She told herself a hundred different times that if she ever saw Tate again, she would take a baseball bat to the side of his jaw, back over him with her car, hurt him and make it look like an accident. The only thing she had at her disposal now was the pepper spray she kept hanging on a hook right next to the door, for occasions exactly like this.
Tate winced, nodding his head. He looked terrible. He was bruised everywhere, a deep, ugly abrasion lived beneath his eye, and she could see that his lip had been split open recently, only just beginning to heal.Good. Someone else beat you to it, but it’s what he deserves.
“I don’t want to cause you any—”
“You don’t want to cause any what?” she interrupted him, her voice rising. “Any trouble? Any hurt? Any pain? Well, I got bad news for you, you’re too fucking late for all of the above.” Her hand curled into fist, and she hit the door instead of his jaw. “I can’tbelieveyou have the fucking audacity to show up here.To what? Ambush him? Pop out like a snake in a can? See how much you can wreck him with no notice?”
“You have ballet on Mondays,” Tate blurted out, before she could continue castigating him. “He goes to a therapy appointment on Tuesdays. He has band practice on Thursdays. Which is why I’m here. Not here to see him. I’m here to talk to you.”
Her whole body was trembling at the thought that he knew their schedules well enough to know exactly when Ainsley wouldn’t be home. “And you didn’t think of calling from the street like a normal fucking person?” she demanded,
“Oh, because you would have let me up, right? Would’ve put the kettle on?”
Her hand balled into a fist again. Not only did he have the fucking nerve to have followed them long enough to know their schedules, but now he was beingsnide?
He must’ve had the same thought, because his eyes had fluttered shut, and he dragged a hand down the side of his face that didn’t have the giant hole beneath his eye and around his neck. His neck was bruised all the way around, as if he’d been choked.Good. Too bad they didn’t finish the job.
“I’m not here to fight with you,” he went on in a much smaller voice. “I’m not here to disrupt. That’s why I came when I knew he’d not be here. I just need to know that he’s okay.”
Ris hated herself for the angry tears that overflowed from her eyes. “He isnow. But hewasn’t, Tate. He wasn’t for a long fucking time. Because ofyou. Do you know what that was like for him? It’s one thing to lose your best friend. People die every day. But there was no closure. No word about where you’d gone, if you were ever coming back. If you were going to functionally die for him, then you should have fucking done it. At least given him a body to bury. Why couldn’t you have just fucking died, Tate?”
She was shouting. Ris didn’t need to turn to know that behind her, Fitz had likely taken refuge in his crate and was cowering at the back of it.
“You made him feel like everything in his life was a lie. He lost his mooring because of you. He lost his sparkle,because of you. You don’t get to come back into his life now, now that he’s finally put himself back together. You want to know if he’s okay? Well, he is. Hefinallyis. We have a home. We have a life. He’s actually happy. And you arenotgoing to come in like a fucking wrecking ball and ruin that. So go back to whatever hole you crawled out of and lose this address. You don’t get to come back and wreck him twice.”
She was shaking like she’d been electrocuted, breathing hard once she’d finished. Tate said nothing for a long minute, tears spilling out of his fire-lit eyes, tracking down his lichen-green skin, nodding jerkily.
“I’m glad.” His voice was little more than a whisper. “That’s all I needed to know. I’m glad he’s put himself first for a change. I’ll not bother you again.”
He’d already taken a step back from the door when Ris slammed it shut, sliding the chain in place. She couldn’t stop shaking.
“Fuck!” Her voice was a reverberation around the room as she screamed, pacing back and forth, feeling like her blood had been replaced with gasoline. Swiping her hand out at the table, she cleared it of her color swatches and notebooks, sending them sliding across the kitchen floor.
A tiny whine behind her brought her back to herself, shame rushing in like a tidal wave, replacing the churning fury as she dropped to her knees before the open crate.
“I’m so sorry, Fitzy.” The sob burbled out of her, the maelstrom of rapid, crashing emotions dragging her down until her shoulders shook and her chest heaved. “I’m sorry.”
Fitz crept out of the crate slowly, pressing his head to her chest, his wet nose bumping her chin, licking at her tears.
Five fucking years. And now he was back, to wreck the tentative peace it had taken five years to build.No. He doesn’t have to be.She didn’t need to mention this to Ainsley. Didn’t need to say a word about Tate at all. It wasn’t as if he were a regular topic of conversation. His name came up here and there, stories that Ainsley no longer shied away from telling, but certainly not a happy, far-distant past that was warmly reminisced over. Why reopen a wound that had scarred over, even imperfectly? He would never need to know if she didn’t tell him.
She had a missed text message from Ainsley, she realized, squinting to see the phone screen through her tears.
Practice running late
I’ll grab Thai
Noodles or curry?
