"Stay back," I hiss over my shoulder.
She ignores me. Her expression is unsettling, her black eyes blank.
"Leo. I'm serious. Back the fuck up."
"No," Rachel calls, and we both twist to face her.
Tremors rock her body, rolling down through her arm to make the gun shake. Perhaps she isn't sure which of us she'll shoot first, or maybe she's just shitting bricks because let's be honest—you don't walk into a public building, throw a gun around, and get away with it—and God knows, she was always such a goody two shoes.
I used to talk her down from ratting on me by stroking her belly. Kissing her neck. A fuck lot of good that would do me now, but even then, she's a gauzy ghost of the girl she used to be, narrow and shivering. Blood rushes in my ears, an undercurrent I can't sail away from.
I hold my hands up. Flat palms. My shirt sticks to the valley of my spine, viscous with nervous sweat. "You asked for me."
She may as well be staring right through me. "I—I guess I did."
Leo tries to walk forward, but my arm reaches out of its own accord and wraps around her waist, pulling her in.
"Rach, I'm sorry," she whispers. I doubt the girl hears her over the alarm echoing around the high ceiling.
"Rachel, I swear to God, you hurt her and I'll make you suffer."
"You already made me suffer," Rachel spits. Again, the gun wobbles; she brings it up, aligns it with her narrowed eyes.
"Can we talk?" Leo presses. "We can go somewhere, anywhere..."
"I've been begging for that for so long, though." Rachel's voice cracks. She shakes her head. "Too late. No. Way too late."
"You know I can clear this up," I go on. "If you don't hurt anybody, all of this can go away."
Rachel snorts, and I swear Leo vibrates with a similar sound.
"You want to give me the gun?" I hold my hand out and edge forward, slowly nudging Leo aside.
Rachel's still shaking her head. Her shoulders. Her hand. The girl's like a record that keeps skipping, and the whole lobby aches with it, this tight atmosphere that swings from the muzzle of her gun.
"Give me the gun." I put on my softest persuasive tone, the one I use with Ash. "Come on, princess. I won't bite."
Rachel's jaw trembles so hard that her skin ripples white with it.
A beat. She drops the bag, kicks it toward us. It skids to a halt at Leo's feet, a flurry of papers spilling out across the polished floor.
"I still love you," Rachel yelps over the alarm. "No matter what you did, don't forget that."
The next few seconds happen in flashes.
Her arm jerks.
The gun goes off.
The shot echoes around and around, a painstaking pause between the clatter and the boom.
Shrieking, everywhere. The sour stench of a shot. Leo crumpling against me; my arm sagging in shock.
Rachel on the floor next to a smoking gun, her legs tangled awkwardly, and a receptionist painted in oily red spatter, screaming at the top of her lungs.
I can't catch my breath. It won't come, won't go down, and I swallow and swallow but it's all dry. I shake Leo like a can of her fucking pop, desperate to see her eyes roll open.
She clutches at me and lets off a horrible, defeated wail. "Me," she weeps. "She was talking to me."
SIX YEARS AGO
Mom's house
Aged 26
"Oh, look at that." Mom glances up as I let myself into the living room. She's pacing the tiled floor, Ash in her arms, his burping cloth tossed over her shoulder. "Your brother has decided to grace us with his presence."
I roll my eyes. "Nice to see you too."
"He's very busy these days," she mutters to Ash, still pacing. "Such a man of the world. Look at him—thinks he's a big swinging dick, doesn't he?" She freezes, tipping Ash to the side as if a freaking toddler could appraise me for this very specification. "Not everyone inherits a big fuck-off chunk of life insurance, I guess."
Ash blows a bubble at me, his big brown eyes widening with curiosity.
I drape my suit jacket over the purple velour couch and glance around the new apartment. Mom's been here a few months now and the place is very luxe, very modern chic; pretty sure she came into some life insurance of her own. There's so much...beige.
"I did that for him, you know," she goes on, pacing again. She navigates stuffed toys and building blocks with ease. "I made sure he came into a little cash. All it took was a plastic bag and a—"
"Mom!" I don't mean to shout, but she brings it out in me. It's why I avoid her. "He's a kid, for fuck's sake. Don't say that shit to him."
Ash recoils into her arms and buries his squidgy face in her peach cashmere sweater. Something inside me blisters and grows taut, preparing to snap at the next sharp word.
It's best I change the subject. "Did you see I'm bidding to buy from Murdoch?"
"Whoop de fucking do, Aeron."
"Right." I gulp. Mom is never impressed by my achievements; I should stop coming here like a puppy desperate for approval. No, desperation isn't the right word; it's a slow burn in my veins, a heat that makes my limbs feel boneless and heavy at the same time.
"You know what I did see? That ginger whore you're dragging around these days." She lets off a bitter laugh, stroking Ash's cheek as if petting a kitten. "How long before I have to pay off her folks, huh?"
"I paid you back every penny," I say through my teeth.
"I guess that makes it better." She laughs harder.
Yeah. Because the whole Fordham scenario has always been hilarious. Nothing about losing my canvas—my only outlet—was ever funny.
Mom plants a kiss on Ash's head. "You're not gonna to be such a pansy, are ya, sweetie? You're gonna be a contender."
Ash stares at me from beneath his mussed-up shock of hair. I know how soft that hair is; some nights, he falls asleep on my shoulder and I rest my chin on his head just to make sure he's still breathing. Something about that kid makes me feel peaceful. He's not like me and Mom. He's untampered with, unchanged, and the more he looks at me, the more he seems to say, what did this crazy bitch do with my daddy?
I don't know, I want to tell him. But I've got a pretty fucking good idea because she did the exact same thing to mine.
"You know what your brother is, Ashley? A disappointment." She rests her strange, spaced-out Mom eyes on me. "A failure. I mean, I tried with him. I really did. But there's something not right about that kid."
Anger crawls along my skin. "I could say the same about you, Mom."
"His problem is, he doesn't know how to hide. Keeps climbing out of his shell like something's fucking chasing him—"
"Mom. I am asking you to stop."
"And he doesn't know what he cost me. All those lessons, I worked so hard...and hey, pretty boy, you had potential, didn't you? But not as much as little Ash here."
"You shouldn't mess with him," I grind out. My temper scrapes broken nails down my spine; it wants to come out and play.
"Shouldn't, shouldn't, shouldn't...what about the things I want, Aeron?" She sighs theatrically. "Look at you, getting all worked up. You were always too quick to fly off the handle."
The handle's pretty fucking slippery, let me tell you.
"Well?" She bats her eyelashes at me, like I'm one of her unfortunate black widow boy toys. "You have nothing to say for yourself?"
My vision blurs. Furniture slides back and forth; I feel drunk and shivery.
"Yeah." My voice cracks. "You need to put Ash down."
#14
Empathy (noun): when feeling someone else's emotions is safer than feeling your own
Twenty six people saw Rachel Fordham shoot herself in my lobby. The police don't have to question us for long.
I held my broken Leo while she told them that Rachel was her ex-girlfriend; that they'd argued since she left Rachel for me. The security camera footage will fit her story, and the cops took that, too. I held on to my temper and my jealousy and my very American curse words while Leo detailed the intricacies of their relationship, though every nerve in my body was on the war path, every muscle twitching to hit something, cut something, savage it all because what the fuck, grasshoppers?