Page 30 of Ruin

Saved hers.

It’s been five years. I don’t need to be thinking about this anymore.

I did what I had to do.

What was right for our family.

I protected us all.

Guilt tries to choke me, regardless.

The plastic packaging clenched between my teeth makes me want to heave. But I focus on my door. It’s all I can see. My breathing is harsh and I know I’m about to collapse. I can’t do that here. I need my safe space to be vulnerable. And strangely, thinking of Ava being down there, even though I’m like this. Panicking. Breathless. Unfocused. It doesn’t feel like an invasion of my space.

All I want to do is get back to her.

I’m almost at the door, a tub of protein powder dropping from the crook of my elbow, thunking loudly as it hits the marble floor. My gaze snaps down to it, watching it roll in the direction I don’t want it to go. Lungs tight, breath stalled in my throat, I feel like I’ve been caught. I am never loud. I am silent and skulky, sullen.

My ears buzz, the hushed conversation from the other room is silent and my heart thuds heavily in my chest. Anticipation, because I know she knows it’s me, she’ll call, and I will go. And we will play this dangerous game of cat and mouse because it’s the only one we know.

“Charl?” she husks and it short circuits my brain, her summons.

Compelled, my feet turn, arms still full, blood on my skin. I head back to the dining room. The space dark except for a low orange glow from a free-standing lamp in the far corner. My teeth release the bag of snacks, dropping it into the pile of stuff in my arms.

She sits in the centre of the bench seat on her usual side of the long wooden breakfast table. Waist length hair slicked back into a high ponytail on the very top of her head. White tendrils of it pulled forward over her shoulders, curtaining her breasts, fronts of her shoulders. Chin dipped, head cocked, I mirror her, my eyes flicked up onto large grey-green orbs.

Rubble is flush at her side, her number two, second only after me. Standing, his large meaty palms splayed over the solid wood of the table, paper calendars and electronic workbooks laid out before them. He leans over what they’re discussing, but his head is up, blue gaze on me. He dips his chin in greeting, my eyes blinking back in the only acknowledgement I’ll ever give. I like Rubble, but I don’treallylikeanyone, I’m not ever going to give him anything more than acknowledgement.

My palms are sweating, my bare chest coated in flakey, drying blood. My face is scratched up and my chest rises and falls much too quickly for her not to notice. But she doesn’t drop her gaze from mine, blinking those large eyes at me, a small smile on her plump lips.

I stare at her. Heart rate increasing beyond anything comfortable, and my lungs burn desperately for an inhalation of Eli’s finest weed, but that’s not about to happen, seeing as I have no joint tucked behind my ear, and neither does she. Something we both always have, a comfort blanket of sorts, but she’s a mother now, perhaps having a five-year-old makes her more sensible. I hadn’t noticed, though, until now.

“Have you stopped smoking?” I rasp, it’s automatic, the way the words slip freely from my tongue.

I feel the pinch of tension between my eyes, but I can’t think of anything else to do with myself, to calm myself. To stop this insane feeling of pain in my chest, something that is phantom. I know it isn’t real.

Panic.

I’m still staring at her, her at me, Rubble tensing just slightly at her side, his eyes dip to hers but she doesn’t look away from me.

Prickles raze across my flesh, goosebumps rapidly flying across my slick skin, perspiration cold, my flesh heats and my brain feels like it’s much too big for my skull. Then she blinks, dragging me back to the now, the way those eyes, too big for her face, roll onto Rubble, a slight nod of her head. Rubble exits the room, I feel him leave more than see him, my eyes always captivated by her, and then we’re alone.

“What you got all that for, Charl?” Kyla-Rose asks.

Her hands folding atop the table, over one another, covering some scattered papers. The left one scarred, trembling slightly from the nerve damage, she doesn’t hide it from me, we never hide anything from each other.

Until lately.

Me more than her. I haven’t wanted to talk to her, to be alone with her. But staring at her now, my mind drifting back onto blue-brown eyes, gaunt cheeks, bloody skin and bruised flesh.

Ava.

Baby Bird.

I suddenly forget why I have been avoiding my cousin at all.

Shrugging in answer to her question, I drop my gaze to the papers beneath her arms, lifting a brow, I glance back up.

“What’re those for, Lala?” I rasp thickly, uninterested but wanting to talk about anything but my secret, my hidden caged treasure in the basement.

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