Page 97 of Go Luck Yourself
Coal talked to her?
Coal talked to her.
He said he’d be the front line of defense against our parents for me. But he—
He talked to our mother.
It’s both a weight and the lifting of a weight in one, opposing forces dragging me in two.
All the months,yearsshe’s spent guilting me into getting him to talk to her, and when he finally does, she doesn’t say a goddamn thing about it to me?
I want to pace, want to run, want tomove.But my body stays motionless, internally vibrating, every organ and muscle shuddering. I put my phone against my forehead and breathe. Try to breathe, at least, but the air gets trapped in the back of my throat until I cough, yanking in breaths that go nowhere. I breathe in, in, in, I can’t breathe out—
Loch eases me back onto that bench. “Bend forward,” he orders. “Elbows on your knees. Breathe—out,too, Christ—wait here.”
He leaves, and by the time he rushes back, I’ve managed one breath, maybe; the alley is spinning, that painting in front of me, all purples, reds, the green of the grass too—purple, red, green—
Loch sits and catches me as I topple towards him. “Kris! Shite—”
He rights me and something cold,freezing,lands on the back of my neck.
A second passes, and whatever it is starts to feel the good kind of cold, shocking the panic from my nerves.
A breath goes in. All the way. And all the way back out.
Another.
“There ya go.” Loch holds that cold thing on my neck with one hand, has his other locked around my forearm, thumb rubbing soothingly against my coat. “Kris—what happened? Is everyone all right? Do you need to go back to Christmas?”
“No. No. I’m—”
“Christ, boyo, do na say you’re fine.”
A laugh squirms out of me. It’s humorless.
In lieu of having to explain, and probably because I’m still weakened and unstable, I find myself showing him my mom’s text thread.
His eyes glide over the screen, and his expression transforms, emotion spreading down his face so I can track each muscle change that pushes him from concerned to furious.
“Your mam speaks to you like this?” he growls.
I snort.
His eyes whip to me like I might be hysterical. I probably am.
“She must know your uncle,” I say before I can think not to. I wince. “I didn’t mean—”
“Shut up, Kris.” He adjusts the thing on my neck, his fury not banking, not exactly, but becoming something I can’t put a name on. “What a matched set we are, eh?”
I gawk at him.
How dare he say that to me? We’re not a set at all. Yeah, we have shit in common, buthe’sthe one who put a stop to it, and now he’s sitting here looking at me like he wants to go to war on my behalf?
Holy shit.That’swhat that look is.
Loch pulls the thing off the back of my neck—a bag of ice. “You feeling better now?”
Hardly.
