I see her limp.
I feel how little she fought at the end.
I feel her blood slipping warm over my hands while I told her to stay with me like that means anything. Like I have ever been able to keep anything that mattered.
Everything I touch ends up ruined.
Everything.
The pole slips from my hand and clatters to the floor.
I’m breathing like I ran a mile with a knife in my lung. Water from the broken sink is spreading over the tile from the bathroom, carrying blood in thin pink rivers around shards of glass and busted plastic.
My hands hurt.
Didn’t notice.
Don’t care.
I stare at both palms, head down, shoulders heaving, and stare at the blood dripping off my fingers.
Hers.
Mine.
Don’t know anymore. The door opens behind me.
“Maksim.”
Vaska. Of course he broke in.
I don’t answer.
He takes one look at the room and goes still. Broken mirror. Broken sink. Flooded floor. Bed shoved halfway into the wall. Monitor smashed. Glass everywhere.
“You need to stop.”
I laugh.
It sounds sick. Empty.
I turn my head just enough to look at him.
“Why?”
One word. Flat. Because I mean it.
Why stop?
Why breathe?
Why not tear the whole fucking city apart brick by brick if she’s dead anyway?
Vaska steps inside and shuts the door behind him. Careful. Controlled. Like, I’m one wrong word to exploding He isn’t wrong.
“We cannot have security in here.”
I stare at him for a second.
