I’ll just have to work to contain that, too, once I’m home. I’ve lived years without giving in to desire. This was a stumble I can recover from.
My feet carry me away from the alley before my brain has committed to the decision. Left foot, then right, establishing a rhythm to carry me to the bus stop two blocks away.
If I hurry, I can catch the last bus to Brickwell.
Each step puts distance between me and the alley, between me and Rowan, between me and the man I killed. Each step brings me closer to home, to Lena, and to the version of myself I need to be.
I don’t look back. Doing so would mean acknowledging the possibility of a connection I can’t let myself have.
7
My limbs weigh a thousand pounds each as my alarm clock drags me from sleep. The sheets stick to my skin, damp with night sweat, and my lower back throbs with a dull ache that radiates down my thighs.
I probe the tender spots on my hips, finding bruises in the shape of hands. The soreness at the base of my spine burns with each shift of my body, confirming how very much last night wasn’t a dream.
I sit up, wincing as my abused muscles protest. The faint light filtering through my blinds casts the room in a pale glow, out of sync with the darkness I usually wake in. I check my phone. Eight-seventeen. I should have been up hours ago.
For a moment, panic takes hold before Iremember I took the week off from work, and Lena won’t be returning to school until Monday.
My brain replays last night’s final moments. Coming home. Slipping through the door. Checking on Lena. Relief flooded me when the ugly Mark was gone from her nape without a trace. No fever. No chills. No vomiting from a broken bond. I killed Danny before it had time to change her neural pathways.
Lena’s laugh slips beneath my bedroom door, familiar as my own heartbeat, and it brings a smile to my lips. I can’t remember the last time I heard my baby sister laugh. Another laugh joins it, the deeper rumble sending a jolt of awareness through my body.
Rowan.
In my kitchen.
With my sister.
I roll out of bed in a flash, my bare feet silent on the thin carpet as I pull on sweatpants. No time for a shirt as I bolt out of my room and into the hallway. Light spills from the kitchen, and my mouth waters at the scent of coffee and bacon, both items we haven’t been able to afford in months.
I pause at the corner where the hall opens to the living room, steadying myself on the wall, my fingersspreading over the cheap paint and grounding me in its uneven texture.
Control. I need control.
“…so I didn’t realize at first,” Lena is saying. “I thought he’d finally accepted how ugly his jacket was.”
Rowan rumbles with amusement. “I doubt that.”
I remember the jacket she means. It was the last warm one I’ve owned.
“He started wearing this awful hoodie instead,” my traitor of a sister continues. “Every day. Middle of winter. I asked him if he was cold, and he told me no, as if denying it settled everything.”
There’s a pause filled by the quiet clink of ceramic.
“I saw one of the neighborhood kids wearing it one day,” she reveals. “I knew it was Ash’s because he used to be obsessed with skulls, and it had all these patches on the arm. I’m not sure if he sold it or if someone stole it.”
My fingers curl into my palm while Lena keeps talking, unaware she’s peeling me open.
“A few days later, the jacket was hanging on the back of my chair, all the skulls replaced with rainbows, and he pretended it was a different jacket.” She laughs again, this one quieter. “That’s the kind of guy he is.”
Rowan’s response comes too softly for me to catch, and Lena laughs again.
“Yeah, he decides something is his responsibility and never talks about it again,” she says. “He’s been like that forever. Even when he ran away, he never left me.”
My chest tightens with unwelcome memories of the home we grew up in.
I round the corner, schooling myself into neutrality, though my heart slams against my ribs with bruising force. The scene before me doesn’t belong to my life, like it’s stolen from someone else’s and forced into my safe space.
