“It’s okay,” I whisper, though I don’t know if I mean him or myself.
I check the chamber again. Unload. Load. Unload.
My fingers fumble the first few times. Shake. Miss. Overcorrect. I hate that. I hate weakness, especially my own. I set my jaw and do it again. And again. Slide. Check. Seat. Release.
Again, until my fingers ache on the fifth.
By the seventh time, my breathingevens a little.
By the eighth, my hands are steadier.
By the twelfth, I can almost pretend this is muscle memory instead of terror training itself to behave.
Then I stand.
The motel room is too small for this kind of violence, even pretend violence, which makes it perfect. I plant my feet shoulder-width apart and raise the gun toward the far wall. Toward where I think one of the cameras probably is.
Maybe the smoke detector. Maybe the lamp. Maybe some tiny black eye tucked somewhere stupid and smug.
“Bang,” I say softly.
My voice sounds strange. I do it again.
“Bang, bang, asshole.”
The words come rougher this time. Meaner. I lift the gun and sight along it like I’m aiming at a face I know too well and not well enough. A rosary tattoo. Dead eyes. The man who detonated my life and left me crawling through the wreckage of it.
“Bang.”
I lower the gun. Breathe. Raise it again.
“If you’re watching,” I murmur to the hidden room, to Ever, to Nash, to Shiloh, to whoever drew the short straw and got me today, “take notes.”
My hand doesn’t shake that time.
I spend the next hour in loops.
Strip. Clean. Reload. Dry fire on an imaginary body. Set the gun down. Pick it back up. Sit with it in my lap and stare at nothing. Stand again. Aim again. Let the memory come. Push through it.
Each repetition sands a little of the fear off the edges. Not all of it. Maybe not even most of it. But enough.
Enough that by the time my phone buzzes with Sonny’s text telling me she’s outside, I can tuck the gun back into the bag without feeling like I’m handling a live wire.
I glance once around the room before I leave. At the bed. At Homer, already curled into a patch of sun again. At the places I imagine eyes are hidden.
“Don’t miss me too much,” I tell them all.
Then I lock the door behind me and head downstairs.
Sonny is in a little white coupe that looks almost offensively cheerful in this parking lot. When she spots me, she leans over and shoves the passenger door open.
I slide in.
She takes one look at my face and says, “Okay, wow. We’re not even pretending this is casual.”
“I don’t think I’ve been casual a day in my life.”
“That is painfully true.” She reaches over and squeezes my hand once before pulling back. “You want to start with the superficial version or the horrifyingversion?”
