What went down with Avery and Hedda, the administrative nightmare Hedda has caused, not to forget the extended hold protection, the search for Avery, and all the covering I had to do to protect her from being prosecuted immediately.
I lied.
I lied for her.
I lied because she stopped.
I lied so she has a way back.
Because some completely stupid part of me thinks she can be saved.
I take a deep breath in, drop my bag onto the floor, and walk through the corridor to my kitchen.
I see it from the corner of my eye, and draw my gun without hesitation and point it into the dark living room to my left, only illuminated by the street lights outside.
She turns on the lamp next to the armchair she sits in.
She leans back, a bottle of whiskey in her hand.
“What are you doing in here?” I ask her, not lowering the gun, because something is not right with her.
She looks at me with pursed lips and disgust in her expression.
“You,” she breathes out and shakes her head. She is fighting with something.
“You!”
“Me what?” I ask her.
“I wanted to do the heist of the millennium tonight,” she says in a derogatory tone and gets up. “Wanted to steal the thing I have been after for years. To get back at you and everything. Because I need to feel something. Something other than pain and guilt and all the other horrid things you make me feel.”
She walks up and down in front of me, wildly gesturing and glaring at me.
“Then why didn’t you do it?”
“I was alright until I met you,” she says, not answering my question, still pacing up and down my living room. “I had the most amazing life. Built from scratch into what I know I am. The most notable thief. Known for my skill, living a life beyond what others hold possible. And then, you happened. You come into my life and call me names and kiss me in one breath, make me feel things and do things I don’t want to do,” she says in such a threatening tone that the hair on my neck stands up.
“And now…now, I am a thief who can’t steal and a liar who has broken the most honorable promise.”
“Why are you here?” I ask her confrontationally.
She stops in her tracks and stares at me.
“Because—“
She shakes her head slowly as she stares at me, the whiskey bottle dangling down on her side.
The bottle falls to the floor and shatters on the wood.
One moment.
One infinite second.
Before she walks up through the cracking pieces of glass.
Pushes my hands with the gun in them down.
Grabs my face.
