Page 53 of Worse Than Wicked
Colt slouches down in the water, all cool, his tatted up arms lying along the edges of the tub on either side of him. “No one deserves that,” he says, leveling me with those smoky blue eyes, the kind you could wander into and get lost there, never find your way out before it choked you to death.
“I don’t need this shit,” I mutter, turning away.
“Then why’d you come?”
When I don’t answer, he stretches his hand above the water, fingers not quite extending fully because of the burned skin between them, a tight webbing between his knuckles. “You did this. I hate what happened to you, I do. But it doesn’t justify the damage you caused.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Are you going to apologize to Lo too?”
“Yes, damn it,” I say. “I’m sorry for all of it, Colt. I didn’t mean to hurt anyone.”
“We both know that’s not true.”
“I’m sorry,” I say again. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I want to make it better, to be better, but I don’t know how.”
“You can start by being honest with yourself first, and then everyone else.”
“I’m trying.”
“How?”
“I don’t know, okay? Honesty doesn’t fix anything. Like you said, it doesn’t undo all the damage I’ve done. How do I do that?”
“You can’t.”
“So I have to be punished forever?”
He levels me with a cool look, but there’s still a little of that pity, even when his words offer no mercy. “If living with the knowledge of what you’ve done is punishment, then yeah, I guess you do.”
I climb out of the tub and pick up my jeans, yanking them on without toweling off and then swiping my glasses. “Why are you such an asshole? You act like you want to help, but you won’t tell me anything when I ask.”
“What are you asking?”
“How can I make up for everything I did? To you, and your sister, and Lo, and everyone? How can I be forgiven?”
“That’s something you’ll have to figure out for yourself.”
“That’s what I’m trying to do,” I grit out, glaring at him. “That’s why I’m asking you. Why can’t you understand that?”
He sighs and stands too. His nipple piercings glint, and all his tattoos stand out stark in the pale morning light, graceful lines curling around his body in patterns Maverick inked onto his skin, a hundred paths I’ll never get to take. “If you need help, I can recommend a place,” he says. “I can’t do that for you. I’m sorry. I’ve got enough of my own shit to work through.”
“What place?” I ask, scratching at the prickling skin of my arms, the itch clamoring inside me. “Do they have Alice?”
“No,” he says, giving me a funny look. “It’s Cedar Crest, Duke. They have a treatment program. It’s nice. It helped me a lot. I think it could help you too.”
“Fuck you,” I say stumbling backwards, the heat going to my head. “I’m not going to rehab. I’m not a junkie like you.”
“Everybody needs help sometimes,” he says. “It’s okay to ask for it when you need it.”
“But when I ask for what I need from you, you tell me it’s my problem, figure it out.”
“I didn’t say to figure it out alone,” he says. “I said it’s not my problem. I can’t take that on, Duke.”
“So, what if I get better? What if I’m not a problem anymore? Then am I good enough?”
“It’s not about being good.”
