It’s only when his chair screeches that I raise my chin, and I watch him head for the door, forher,without me.
I hang my head between my shoulders and see Skinner clean the residue of the coke we’d just shared off the table with his finger, rubbing it into his gums.
“It change you too?” I ask.
Skinner places his tattooed elbows on the table, and fists his hands together. I feel his gaze press against my temple, the same place I’d pressed the barrel to my father’s head.
He knew what I was talking about, what I was asking, the effects of what I’d done, because he doesn’t speak until he has my full attention.
His voice is cold when he tells me, “Only because I let it.”
A long moment of silence follows.
I wet my lips. “Don’t wanna hurt her.”
“Then don’t,” he tells me.
I scoff, scrape the chair back the same way Harlen had, rising to my feet. I curl my shaking hands around the backrest, press my shoulders to my ears.
“That’s bullshit. You and I both know it.”
“Do I?” he asks, nonchalantly.
I shake my head. “I didn’t want to hurt Mom, but I was still the one that put a bullet in her head.”
Before he can reply, I throw the chair across the room, listen to it splinter and crack,snap, behind me as I follow after Harlen.
My breathing is rapid and choppy, and I think the weight sitting on my ribs might just crush me.
“Please, Chase…” I start to beg but stop when I hear the sound of steel crashing.
I look toward the edge of the barred gate expecting it to move, but it doesn’t, it remains in place.
That is when I hear him, rocks scraping beneath shuffling feet.
Chase is moving toward me, Harlen at his side, and he looks the same, even though he won’t let me see his eyes.
I take one calculated step back, allow my hands to slip from the bars,finally, I thought,fucking finally.
A moment later, I hated myself for thinking it was going to be that easy.
Chase doesn’t open the gate, and his face doesn’t leave the ground at his feet.
I wanted to cry, and then I wanted to scream.
“What do you want, Laiken?” he asks, his voice void of emotion, the tenor of all that was Chase Keller gone.
I scoff, and fold my arms across my chest when my body starts to shake. A detriment to my anger.Had he not been paying attention at all?
“Are you seri…” I accidentally swallow my words.
“Serious,” he finishes for me, and I want to throw hands. “Yeah, yeah, I fucking am.”
I drop my chin to my chest and bite into my bottom lip when it wobbles. “You never came back, Chase,” I whisper so quietly I barely hear myself.
But the exhale that leaves him tells me he did, and I’m about to speak again when he rasps on a warning, “Leave, Laik.”
How dare he.
