“Fuck you!” I growled, grabbing the filter and slamming it like a quarterback out the door to join the other discarded shit.
Then I just sat there like a dumbass, covered in oil and sweat, staring at the havoc I’d inflicted on the space.
After the rage died away like an unfed campfire, I stood up, swiped hands down the front and back of my cargos to loosen dirt and began the walk of shame outside to retrieve the shit I’d thrown.
I squinted against the jarring light, the brightness startling me from my dark thoughts. Nitro was kneeling next to Xander’s Harley. My eyebrows lifted at the sight of the knife embedded in the nearly new tire.
“You’re a goddamn mad man,” I breathed out, finding it hard to believe that Nitro would be so categorically stupid. Yes, he was probably the most reckless of our pack, but even so… this was some next level shit.
“Says the guy hurling power tools,” he said sarcastically.
“He’s going to kill you.” I made it a statement. One hundred percent fact.
“I’m betting on that,” he muttered, voice barely audible. Then he got up in a swift, fluid movement. “Murdering a car in there?” He changed the subject whiplash fast.
“Saving it wasn’t working out,” I shrugged, then crossed my arms, muscles bulging against the arms of the filthy white tee.
“Did you check between the camshaft housing and the heads? Porsches like to leak there, older 911s especially.” Nitro wasn’t a car guy, but he spoke with confidence. I gave him a funny look.
“How the fuck do you know that?”
“You taught me. Six years ago, when you had that Boxster.” His lips spread into a cocky grin, as if to pour salt in the wound. “Anyways, I’m going to go patiently wait for Xander to see his bike.”
Nitro walked away, sauntered really, tossing his knife into the air and catching it expertly.
Tail between my legs, I picked up my tools and the oil filter and went back into the garage.
I stared at the fallen car, at my oil-blackened hands, at the smears of blood across my knuckles and forearms. The answer had been so simple. Pop out the cam tower, scrub the seal surfaces, and slap on Loctite. All that rage, all that frustration, all that... whatever dark impulse had gripped me, over something so easily fixed. The worst part was that I knew how to fix it all along. Maybe it was me that was fucking broken, not the damn car.
Maybe that was the problem with all of us lately. Something ridiculously simple was broken, but we were too close to see it. Too busy fighting our individual battles to recognize the war we were all losing.
Too busy waiting on some hot shot company to find us an Omega.
Dropping to my knees, palms flat on the concrete, I peered beneath the car to see how bad I’d fucked it up. A mangled hose, oil pain tilted, hours of additional work.
But first, I needed to wash the oil off my skin. I needed to cleanse the darkness from my thoughts. I needed to remember that I liked my life, and I wanted to be alive. Fuck, I needed to find my way again, before whatever was wrong with me—whatever was wrong with my entire pack—caused irreparable damage.
And the ‘wrong’ was spreading. Sickness sinking deeper. It was well past the skin and meaty flesh. My organs were suffering. My skeleton was next.
I knew it would keep rooting through my body, until there was no turning back. Terminal decay.
13
LUCY
{One month ago}
Day four million and one at Brightfield, I thought as I added the tally mark to my diary. What I wrote inside its pages was different than the public blog. Online, I tried to keep things positive, even when I felt like dying. In this small tome? I wrote the darkest thoughts. The ones that would have Doc Emerson calling for a psychiatric consult.
“At Brightfield, the future is bright!”
“At Brightfield, we keep hope alive!”
“At Brightfield, positive thinking wins the day!”
The slogans had changed over my years here, but the sentiment always remained steady: Brightfield was a place that preferred thinking about the happiest things, as if that could make its terminal patients fly. Hell, maybe it could. We were all a bit like Peter Pan—little chance of growing old, trapped in a never land between living and dead.
I wonder if the lost boys thought about time. In a place where no one aged, would minutes matter?
