Too logical. His eyes kept darting around.
Have you heard of a thing called the police?
Couldn’t forget about them.
The man’s gaze snapped up, and I could’ve sworn he looked right at me. I dropped the curtain with a squeak, sitting back onthe bed. He couldn’t have seen me. There was no way. I was just in my head, imagining ghosts that weren’t there.
Slamming my eyes shut, I flopped back onto the pillow.
Sometimes, I hated the small voice in my head. She was so loud. So overpowering. She sounded soright, all the time. Who was I to tell her she was a liar?
Liar. That’s all she was. A liar who told me things that sounded true. Winder had told me not to trust anyone with a tongue who could lie. I wondered if that included my anxiety, too.
I didn’t like the rolling tidal wave of emotions rocking me back and forth, leaving me unsettled and unstable.
Deep down, I knew I was capable of more. I craved strength. Control.Power. I craved the sensations the nightmares gave me, so unlike the little voice in my head who told me pretty half-truths wrapped up in bows.
I laughed. Was I seriously missing a nightmare? Not just any nightmare, either, but one where I was a killer.
The niggling feeling my dream this morning gave me, that I was missing something, wouldn’t leave. To figure it out, I would have to give into the night terrors ruining my life.
Winder learned how to manipulate the situation around him to get what he wanted out of life. Surely I could do the same.
I chewed on the inside of my cheek. I hadn’t had the dream since being at Winder’s. But Winder wasn’t here, and I was absolutely exhausted. If I didn’t fight sleep, maybe I would have the dream again.
It was risky, especially if what Winder said was true, and I was missing massive chunks of my memory. There was something kind of delicious about being dangerous, though. Something I had never really considered before.
Maybe the opposite of being afraid wasn’t being brave.
Maybe it was becoming scarier than your fears.
Chapter
Thirteen
WINDER
My brother had always been the golden child. I was more of the black sheep. Even our looks defined us as such. I took after my absent father, with his dark hair and quiet mannerisms. My brother borrowed his cheerful nature and blond ringlets from our mother. The only things we shared were our blue eyes, but even those seemed different in our faces.
I was five when my brother was born. I remembered my parents bringing him home from the hospital. I begged for them to take him back. He looked so much like my mom and my step-dad even then. I think somewhere deep inside my five-year-old mind, I knew I had been replaced.
The comparisons didn’t stop there, either. People would stop my mother in the grocery store, calling my brother an angel. Cherubic. And he was. He really was. I’d hide behind her while he smiled, a small shadow behind his bright light.
I’d sneak into his bedroom at night, staring down at him sleeping so peacefully, wondering what they saw in him that I didn’t have. I couldn’t figure out what integral part I was missing.
As we grew, our chubby cheeks and bodies turned into chipped smiles and gangly limbs. The missing componentbecame obvious. Rather, it wasn’t what I didn’t have, but what I did have—my father’s blood pumping through my veins.
I heard my mother cursing him out on the phone, about the nonexistent child support. The way he would promise to take me for a weekend, and would never show. She resented him, and by proxy, she resentedme.
After all, I was fifty percent him. Fifty percent toxic blood filling my body. Fifty percent useless deadbeat building up my soul.
Eventually, I leaned into it. I found my place with people who appreciated the broken parts of me. People who didn’t shy away from the darkness that built my bones, or the shadows that dragged behind me. They had their own chains, and so they had no reason to judge mine.
It surprised everyone in the room except me when I took the fall for the bust. My loyalty might have been misplaced, but at the time, it felt like I was helping the only people who saw me for who I really was.
That was the funny thing about Blaire. I wasn’t sure she could remember anything about me, and she didn’t seem scared about anything she was learning. And if shecouldremember, she was a damn good liar. I had considered the possibility she was lying. It was one of the first things that popped into my mind.
But the way she looked at me didn’t seem like she was lying.
