I’dkill her.
“It’s only a matter of time before I kill you too, Laiken. Save yourself while you can.”
It was one of the two things I was most afraid of, and Harlen knew it. Putting a bullet in her head was the first. But the second was that I would leave her the way her mother did. That she would have to see me like that.
Harlen clears his throat. “It was the right thing, what you did, three years ago…” he tells me, then turns in his seat until he’s looking directly at me. “Maybe not the way you did it, but for letting her go.” He pauses, snaps the pick, and throws it out the open window. “You were on the road to fucked up, still are…so, whatever the fuck you do next, don’t make all that for nothing.”
His words settle around us.
I suck on my front teeth, not responding, throwing my palm against the wheel again.
What the fuck have I done?
Harlen exhales roughly, and I’m tugging my hands through my hair, when he speaks again, “Put your pain intodifferentlines, man. Start writing again. Bleed it onto the paper, drip it through your lyrics, smear it across the fucking music, where it belongs, where Jade and Laiken would want it to go. It’s been three years too fucking long. Or…”
He doesn’t finish his sentence. We both knew what the alternative was.
Or don’t even think about walking back into her life.
I don’t look at him, I look at my thumb, bring it to my mouth and tear at a loose piece of skin.
Too late.
His dark blue eyes drill into my temple with warning, and I swallow, shifting uncomfortably in my seat because I'd never seen Harlen more serious.
“You remember how her mother died, yeah? You need me to remind you?” Harlen whispers my fear.
I close my eyes.
He said it so sharply, and I almost wanted to reach out and pat him on the back, because my best friends got stones, and I fucking respected that—even though he had recreationally dabbled in the same shit I did.
He wasn’t shaming me though. He was reminding me, because he cared about the both of us.
I keep my eyes closed. I don’t reply. Don’t move. I remain completely still.
Because I heard his warning loud and clear. Felt it myself before he’d even voiced it, in the moment I held Laiken inside Devil’s Diner covered in another man's blood.
I swallow, hear it click.
If I wasn’t taking Laiken back to her nan’s tonight, I was making a choice,one I had to stick to,one I had to get out of my nose.
I wouldn’t say I’d become dependent on it, but some weeks I’d needed it more than others. It ebbed and flowed. Some days I was a full-blown addict, others I was just a sad, pathetic drunk.
Personally, I thought alcohol was my problem, but alcohol didn’t kill Sara Campbell.
“She’s lost too many people, Chase…and she already…lost you.”
My chin is to my chest, and I pop my thumb knuckle. “I know.”
Harlen reaches toward me and grabs my shoulder, shaking it. My heart feels like it’s beating in my eardrums.
I swallow the brick jammed in my throat, turning to look at him when he says, “Give her something to believe in, or let her go.”
“You know I can’t do that,” I rasp.
His reply is instant, “What part?”
I bite into my bottom lip, then stare out at the road when the song flicks over to “What I’ve Done” by Linkin Park.
