She slips her arms around my waist and presses her cheek to my chest, hugging me so tightly I can finally breathe. There’s no question mark about where she is because she’s in front of me with my lips firmly on her crown, her heart beating against mine, her limbs trembling as her body begins to crave the drugs.
“Do you have something for the pain?” she whispers.
“No,” I lie. I’m not going to give my wife ketamine, watch her navigate a K-hole, then throw up on herself. “You’re not taking that shit again.”
Her arms loosen around me, but I push my weight forward, trapping her against the door. “Don’t argue with me. I’ve lost three fucking years of you. If you think I’m losing more while you inject yourself into an early grave, you’re fucking deluded.”
“It’s medicine.”
“For?” I challenge.
“My leg,” she says slowly, pushing her leg out when the sweats cover the scars.
“Look at me.” I wait for her to lift her chin. “Do you know what comes with addiction? The ability to perfect a lie. You werealready good at it before, but I won’t believe anything you say until you’re clean.”
“I am not dirty.” Her eyes harden, making them appear more sunken in as she digs her fingers into my ribs.
“Okay, poor choice of wording,” I admit. “Until you’re sober. When there aren’t any chemicals clouding your mind and you learn how to stop your veins burning.”
She stills then laughs bitterly. There’s no sweet tone I love as she pushes against my chest. “Fuck you, Kane. Or Asher. Or Ghost.” She pushes again, hard enough for me to stumble back. “Whatever the fuck your name is. You don’t know shit about me when you haven’t fucking been here for the last three years. So when I say it’s medicine, it fucking is.”
“You know shit about me? Do you know what those years did to me? No. Do you know what the fuck I’ve had to do to keepyousafe? And what the fuck have you done?”
“Nothing!” She pushes harder against me. “I have never done anything to you. My parents? Yes, I pissed them off by not being their perfect prostitute. Asher? Who fucking knows when he was wired wrong. Helene? Killed her sadistic grandson. Rowan? Nothing. Simply existing meant everyone could hurt me. You do not get to fucking play this comparison game with me. Not after everything I’ve lost.”
“Delilah. Shut the fuck up.”
“I told you so,”Asher singsongs.“If you tell her about Kid, she’ll only use it against you.”
She opens her mouth, ready to spew whatever comment her anger has formed. Slamming my hand over her lips, I lean into her. “Shut. Up. We’re not doing this again. We’re not going to argue about everything then feel like shit when we’ve already had too much taken from us. So shut up before you say something you can’t take back.”
There’s a loud knock on the door as my failed murder attempt says, “Kane. Open the door.”
Delilah smugly waits, knowing she has the protection of her sisters. If she just stopped for a second, she’d realize it proves I’m right. Little baby Leroux has her sisters ready to defend her. Who the fuck do I have?
“You have me,”Asher pipes up.
Shut the fuck up.
“Ruby’s strict about everyone sitting together when we eat,” Scarlet says, forcing me to let go of Delilah’s face. “I’d get out before Seraphim gets hungry.”
She’s acting normal. Maybe she hit her head when she slammed on the brakes. Fuck, I hope so.
“This is why we need reflections,”Asher says as I step back.
But my wife has bitterness clinging to her as she cruelly whispers, “You weren’t worth the pain of loving you.” She pulls the door open, walking her smug ass ahead as looks at me over her shoulder.
The last time she had the comfort of her sisters, she was a child. I was still obsessed with her, but they thought it was cute. They’d tease me about following her everywhere, anything that they could. Now, I meekly follow behind them as guilt weighs me down. I don’t even allow my steps to make a sound on our route into the kitchen with her fucking words echoing in my head, replacing Asher’s taunting.
You weren’t worth the pain of loving you.
A little boy sits on the middle of the table with the teenager as they fight with cutlery, pretending they’re swords. Without turning from the stove, Ruby says, “Put them down before you hurt yourselves.”
I assume the little boy is hers considering she was pregnant the last time I saw her. He looks old enough. It makes everything more real. When it was just me and Sasha, I didn’t feel timemoving. We were stuck doing the same shit, collecting more numbers, making stupid bets about what we’d do when he hit milestones. While I was counting milestone kills, Ruby was watching her son achieve his.
The girl has Scarlet’s personality, no filter or care about offending people as she openly stares at my empty sleeve while Scarlet stands beside the table. I know she hasn’t forgotten when she looks at me with that hard stare she’d give me as a child when Asher would fuck something up and I’d try to lie for him. “Kane. Sit down. We’ll catch up.”
Fuck!
