Page 84 of Cruel Debts
I flippedthrough more pages of the same, until about halfway through, a particular page stuck out, not because of what was written on it, but what wasn't.
Words. There were none.
But there was a single, solid reddish-brown splotch in the center of the page, and what looked like tear marks around it.
Suicide attempt.
Had to be. The red splotch looked like a hesitation cut in action. The tears, evidence of the anguish that came from a failed attempt or lack of follow-through.
Once upon a time, I knew that feeling well. Thankfully, I found help. Or a coping mechanism, at least.
This felt too personal. I had no business whatsoever reading the pages of personal anguish Hawke's mother went through as she struggled to raise a young man who wouldn't turn out like his father.
I closed the book with a sigh and took a step forward to put it back where I found it?—
"What are you doing with my mother's diary?"
Time stood still. I knew nothing good would come from poking my nose in this shit. And here I was, with my pants around my proverbial ankles, with the evidence of my transgression in my hands as Hawke stared at me from the doorway with a scowl heavier than a metric ton on his face.
"I can explain," I started, but he wasn't having it. In a flash, he was at my side, yanking the book out of my hands without consideration for being gentle. I couldn't fault him for it.
Something like that was sacred. And to have someone you didn't like in your space, touching things that they didn't have any business touching?—
"Get out."
"Hawke, I was just trying to clean up to thank you for?—"
"Get the fuck out of my room, Trinity."
"I swear I didn't mean to find it, and I just?—"
He whirled on me, the diary in his hand, wagging it at me like it was a rolled-up newspaper and I was a bad puppy who'd piddled on the carpet. "You didn't mean to find it, huh? You justwhat,Trinity? You just couldn't help yourself? You couldn't just put it back and leave well enough alone? You wanted to see if it was mine? You needed to break down one more wall I put up for a reason and stick your nose where it didn't belong? What?"
I took a step back, not afraid, but regretful that I'd stepped in here uninvited. "Hawke, I'm sorry?—"
"Oh, you'resorry?Sorry for what? That you invaded my space without asking? That you overstepped yourself and pissed me off? Or sorry you gotcaught?"
"That's unfair," I mumbled, but he had a point. I was all those things. If I had been just a little quicker, we could have avoided this whole situation. I could have put it away and pretended I'd never seen it. And he wouldn't be mad anymore. He'd never know what I saw or what I didn't.
Now he did. Or he suspected.
"I didn't read a lot?—"
"Just the parts that matter?" He flipped the pages open, tears beading in his eyes as he forced the pages open and shoved them at me. "Did you read this one, where she talked about how the bruises my dad left resembled the clouds she and I looked at while we were at the park?" He flipped some more, stopping on a page with only a few words on it. "Or the one where she couldn't write because hebroke her handand she had to switch to her other hand to document it for herself? To remember what he'd done." He flipped further, and I sobbed alongside him as his voice broke when he turned the book around to show me the bloodstained page. "Do you wanna know what happened here, Trinity? Or has your curiosity been satisfied?"
He shoved the book against my chest, and I grabbed it as his hands fell away, abandoning it to me.
I froze in place, confused and a little scared. "Hawke?"
"If it's so important for you to be in my business, why don't you just take it and read my whole life story from my mother's point of view?"
He refused to look at me. I couldn't blame him. After all, this was a boundary I should have never been anywhere near. And not only had I crossed it, but I stomped all over it in the process.
I set the book on the end of his bed and then left as quietly as I came, carefully closing his door behind me. I couldn't hear a single sound as I took a step away from the door and waited.
Until something that sounded suspiciously like an old book hit the other side of it, accompanied by a rage-filled, broken howl.
THIRTY-SIX
