She bolts away and disappears into the rain.
I fall back into my seat and slam the door. My hands are shaking when I grip the steering wheel. I’m pissed, and I don’t know if it’s the coke or that I scared her off.
This must be how a hunter feels when he alerts the prey he’s been stalking, and she slips out of his grasp.
What’s Haven gotten herself into?
What the hell haveIgotten myself into?
I’m supposed to be lying low in Agony Hollow, not getting involved with mentally unstable girls and sexually repressed boys.
My life was a dumpster fire before I moved here. It’s taken three years to reach some semblance of normalcy, and now I’m ready to throw it all away?
I need control, not chaos.
Driving away instead of trying to find out where Haven ran off to is physically painful. Something she’ll pay dearly for.
But I make myself do it anyway.
It’s not the most unpleasant thing I’ve been forced to do in my life.
And it won’t be the last.
Chapter 51
Haven
Fuck, it’s cold out here.
Damn dark, too.
I’d be an idiot to stay out here much longer.
It makes sense to be afraid of the dark when you don’t know what’s hiding in the shadows. But when you’ve lived with monsters most of your life, darkness isn’t that scary anymore.
But loneliness?
It’s not a monster. It’s a poisonous fog that creeps in under the door, through the crack in the window, down the chimney.
Odorless. Colorless.
You breathe it in, day after day, and it seeps into your body without you even realizing it. When it takes hold, you don’t even notice at first. Until it messes with your mind. Convinces you that you’re disconnected from the world. Alienated.
Out here, surrounded by nothing but dripping trees and wet darkness, I feel it more than ever.
Even at the party tonight, with giggling sorority girls all around, I felt it. When I couldn’t join in the conversationbecause I had no clue what they were talking about. Couldn’t share, because I hadn’t experienced the same things they had.
I don’t know if there’s a way to purge the poison. I tried going to the train station in Ashwood Crossing during rush hour, standing in the middle of the hustle and bustle, surrounded by commuters.
Sometimes it worked, especially if someone looked at me. Hell, it made my day if someone said, “Hi,” and I got to greet them back.
But on the days I couldn’t bring myself to make eye contact, no one would say a word. And I’d leave emptier than before.
I need to get back to civilization.
Need to find life.
Movement.
