Page 212 of Like Grim Death: Part One
I scramble to sit up and the room seems to spin around me. “Wait,” I call out, so faintly.“Wait.”He never leaves me like this. He has to cuddle me. He has to kiss me. He has to tell me tonight was a game and it’s all over now.
He has tocarefor me now.
He stops, his back muscles tense, the gun gripped tight in his hand. But he doesn’t turn around.
“Don’t leave me,” I whisper, suddenly terrified he’ll never come back. And with his parting words about Sid, it’s like I finally realize what he’s tried to tell me all along. He doesn’t want me to be like her. He wants me because I’m not her. Or… I wasn’t.
There’s a moment of silence. Then, “I think you’re in better hands with him than me tonight,” before he walks out, closing the door quietly behind him.
I shouldn’t have lefther, but I can’t go back now.
The look on her face when she was begging me not to leave her, when she wanted me to stay, probably to carry her out of Atlas’s room like Ishould’vedone… It’s like a dagger to the fucking heart.
But she was fucking around with him before I found her.
Still, it’s hard to hold onto the anger toward her because maybe I deserve it. In fact, IknowI do. I tied her to a bed once and made her watch me fuck Chelsea with no warning, all for flirting with a boy who was probably her only fucking friend. Then I took her away from him, from her mother, from any scraps of her old life.
I deserve far worse than what she did.
Besides, it was me who blew her off. Me who told her to leave. Me who was all over Sid in a pool and while it wasn’t what it looked like, I can understand it looked bad, particularly for a girl who thinks I’m actually in love with my fucking sister.
How long has this been going on?
Even knowing I deserve it, it’s one of the only questions inside my head. Is it why Atlas texted her late that night, asking for “photos of Rain?” They’ve developed their own secret fucking code? Or was this the first time? All the things I should have demanded answers to, but at the heart of it, the thing that matters most to me is Ella’s well-being. If Atlas was doing something to hurt her behind my back, he would have had no problems coming inside her.
It’s a weird, fucked-up marker of loyalty, but it’s one I believe in, nevertheless.
When daylight comes, I’ll ask the other questions.Did you fuck him before tonight? Do you love him? How did it start?
They didn’t act like they’d been together before. She doesn’t seem to love him.
But what if she does?
What if?
I glance at my phone as I head up the darkened stairwell to the fourth floor. No texts from her, no phone calls. Maybe part of me wants her to beg me again. Humiliation, I told her. I love to see her that way, because it’s a vulnerable side. It’s something I can control. Something I can stop, if I choose. Take away all her embarrassment. I told her before that I like seeing her that way—humiliated. But it goes deeper than that. I like stopping it too. Knowing I have that power, to soothe her fears.
Beg me again to come back, baby.
But there’s nothing on my phone, and she didn’t follow me. Every step forward feels like a step away from our bond, but I can’t bring myself to turn around.
I tighten my fingers around my phone and push open the double doors at the top of the stairs, stepping onto a quiet, empty hallway. The doors thud closed at my back and I lean against them, closing my eyes for a moment. Everything seems to spin inside my head, the alcohol and marijuana a blurry combination beneath my skin. My chest rises and falls softly but despite the calmness of my lungs, there’s a war going on inside my head.
I feel my fist going into the man’s face. Bones don’t concede initially, but after several more hits, they break beneath my knuckles. Blood sprays on my temple, warm and sticky and the result I’m craving. When his eyelashes are matted with crimson, his face nothing but swollen flesh and bloody demarcations separating nostrils from cheek cavities from lips, I stop. But in my mind, I see him holding a gun to Ella’s head, forcing me to make an impossible choice. Stop my natural reflexes to save her no matter the cost, or let her be led like a sheep to fucking slaughter?
Isn’t that the choice I fucked up with Malachi too? It was either kill him, or let him be killed by a death of a thousand cuts. By our nanny’s twisted sort of playtime, games of locked closets and porn enacted behind closed doors. I didn’t know what I was choosing when I pushed him, but ignorance won’t bring him back from the dead.
And what did I choose when Brooklin was underneath Atlas?
I knew what would happen to her. It’s why I wanted to kill Atlas. Because no matter what I said, no matter how I pleaded with my dad, he wouldn’t let Brooklin’s punishment go. And I knew that with every hit to Atlas’s head, every contact with his body, I was apologizing to my sister in the only way I knew how.
Violence.
But last night, Ella wanted something besides the depraved.“Hold me,”she asked. It’s not as if I don’t do that. It isn’t like Ican’t.I’ve held her so much, I know the exact weight of her in my arms. But after what I did with the men and the car… I couldn’t flip the switch for her, like she’s done for me so many times. I couldn’t come down from the high and loathing and triumph of murdering someone to prove my love to her.
I know words. I know emotions. Poetry, books, the things I feel when I think of all the people I’ve let down. It’s not as if I can’t get in touch with those things. The problem is Idrownin them. I fuckingchokeon them, and sometimes… I need to fucking breathe.
I slam my fist on the door at my back, savoring the sharp contact with my knuckles, but then it feels so immature. It feels like Lucifer at his worst, and I love him. I would doanythingfor my best friend. But I watched his entire world collapse and how it pulled down everyone around him, including me, even if he didn’t see it. Even if he can never be fucked enough to look out for me the way I care for him. It’s the role I’ve taken, and it’s one I could shrug off, but I haven’t. Not yet.
