“Right,” she murmurs.
Right it is, I think, guiding her in that direction, but when I would continue on, she tugs me into the women’s bathroom. Once we’re inside, I confirm we’re in a one-stall number with a lockable door. I lock it while she pees, no shyness in her with me, and that’s not just about our history as a couple. She’s trained to make necessities a part of her survival, as did I, both of us with her father, who God rest his soul, I still can’t help but think, might be attached to this mess. In which case, my opinion of where I’d like his soul to be resting might change.
Wordlessly, Ana washes up, scrubbing her face and hands, checking for wayward blood, washing the death off of her. She says nothing, quiet as a church mouse, but I’m in tune with Ana like no other human on this Earth, and her emotions bang at me like a pot and a metal spoon right by my head.
By the time I’ve relieved myself as well, Ana is still scrubbing her hands. I slide in next to her, soaping up, aware that I’m the one who cleaned the blood off of her back on the street. There is going to be blood on me too that she doesn’t need to see.
She dries her face and hands and I do the same before I step in front of her and catch her hips. “You okay?”
“I’m always okay,” she counters, with a defiant lift of her chin that says “I’m Kurt’s daughter. How dare you ask me that question,” but there is a storm in her eyes, turbulence, and pain that reaches beyond this day and this moment. The past rages between us as a part of the present, a mix of love, hate, and confusion that is stirred with a shot of blood and death.
In other words, translation: no, she is not okay and the more I’m with her, I don’t think she has been in a long time. “Right,” I say. “Well, at least now we can be ‘always okay’ together.”
“And yet, that didn’t prove true at all, now did it?”
“We broke up. I’m back. I’m not going anywhere, Ana.”
“And yet, you did.”
Memories and emotions pounce on me, a wildcat threatening to tear me open, all over again. “A decision I made when I went to the funeral and you—”
“I know,” she says quickly. “I know what I did at the funeral.”
Memories of me standing behind a tree, and then stepping out of that coverage to allow her to see me, are not kind. Her gaze had lifted and she’d stared at me from a distance, and then she turned and walked away, her hate for everything to do with me crystal clear.
“It was a no-win situation for me,” I remind her. “I was the one who—”
“Killed your brother?” she challenges.
“Yes, Ana,” I say tightly. “I killed Kasey and if you don’t know why now, you never will.”
“I know why. I knew then, too, but grief isn’t logical. And neither is guilt.”
I killed Kasey.
She shot me.
Neither of us understood the whole story about when, why, and how.
No matter what, we have each spent two years feeling betrayed, and hurt. Also, no matter what, I killed her damn brother. You don’t come back from that shit. A big part of me knows that despite her claims otherwise, some part of her, even unintentionally, still thinks the worst of me.
This leads me to a shit place right now—her perception of me and the present situation, which is simply put, a double-edged sword laced with love and hate, certain to be the weapon of our demise.
“Is guilt why you tried to contact me, Ana?”
“Guilt is why it took so long.”
My jaw clenches. “It’s not that simple, is it?”
“I don’t remember either one of us gravitating toward anything simple.”
My cellphone vibrates with a text, and I snake my phone from my pocket to glance at the message from Blake: I have access to the downtown cameras. I’m sending you a map to follow to get out of your present location and lead you to the car I have waiting for you. Once you can safely do so, call me and keep me in your ear. I’ll direct you through any changes in that map based on activity. The map appears in the message box and I glance at Ana. “Time to get the hell out of here.”
Chapter Three
Ana
Luke reaches for the bathroom door and I catch his arm, just the act of touching him, having him right here with me again, unnerving in how natural it feels. It drives home my certainty that I lied to myself and everyone else when I acted as if I was fine without him.
I was not fine. I was never going to be fine.