Page 137 of Where Your Scars Meet Mine
Chest heaving, I drag both hands through my hair, tugging hard at the roots, trying to find my pulse under the roar in my ears. I can’t look at him, but I do anyway. His mouth hangs open, gummy threads of spit and blood dribbling down his chin. Thick crimson pools under his neck, seeping into the cheap rug. It runs around the shards of broken glass like a river finding new paths. The sight makes bile rise in my throat.
He’s dead.
The thought is just there, as loud and irreversible as the blood soaking into the floorboards. My heart slams against my ribs, a raw hammering that won’t slow. Gasping again, chest burning, I snap forward, hands braced on my knees, sucking in whistling breaths. Tears streak a hot path through the blood on my face. Wiping them away, the red smears higher.
When the dizziness passes enough for me to stand, the fury swells back up. It doesn’t matter that his eyes are empty or that the gospel murmurs have gone silent. For years he taught mepain. For years he called it God. Now there’s only me and the body of a monster sprawled at my feet.
I snarl something I don’t even recognize and plant my foot square in his stomach. The kick lands with a dull thud. His torso lurches. Blood splashes. I kick again, harder. “You hear me?” My voice shatters. “You don’t get to hurt me anymore.” I slam my heel against his ribs, over and over, each strike punctuated by guttural screams that rip from somewhere I didn’t know existed. The sound breaks apart, becomes sobbing and rage tangled together. My foot jams into his arm, his thigh, his chest, each impact a final refusal.
Eventually I collapse backward, legs giving out, dropping to my knees beside the gory wreckage. My chest heaves in ragged gasps. His blood stains my jeans, my hands, my skin. The smell of copper thickens. I stare at him, at the emptiness I carved into him, and force myself to keep breathing, keep upright, keep from falling into the void that yawns open in the wake of what I’ve done.
No more pain.
No more punishments.
The mantra loops through my skull as I wipe my face with a shaking hand. Hugging my arms around myself, I rock once, twice, before forcing myself to stand again. The living room feels warped, its angles strange, as if the house itself recoils. Dust floats through a slant of moonlight. Outside, the world is still disgustingly normal. Inside, the monster that defined my whole life lies on the floor, and I’m the only thing left standing.
My hands are still shaking when I stumble into the kitchen. Blood streaks to my elbows. His blood. I spot his phone on the counter by an overflowing ashtray. My fingers barely work; I jab at the screen until 9-1-1 flashes back.
“911, what’s your emergency?” the dispatcher asks, voice steady, professional.
Looking at the red crust under my nails, my pulse is a hammer behind my eyes. “I killed my father,” I say, words flat and echoing in the tile room. “I meant to.”
Silence. Static. Then she launches into protocol...where are you, is anyone else hurt, stay on the line.
I pace, toes sticking to the kitchen linoleum with every step, trying to keep my breathing under control. Adrenaline drains, leaving exhaustion and a gnawing emptiness in my gut. My stomach growls, loud and pathetic. The sound shocks me. Hunger is ridiculous after murder, but it slices through everything else.
The dispatcher is still talking. I cut her off. “Do they feed you in jail?”
A pause stretches, hesitant. “Yes,” she says softly. “They will.”
Throat tightening, I stare at the streaks of red on the counter where my fingertips press. “Okay,” I whisper. “I’ll be waiting.”
CHAPTER 29
Silas
Sleep breaks slowly, dragged apart by the soft roll of movie credits and the low blue flicker of the television still glowing across the living room.
For a few heavy seconds, nothing moves.
Warmth is the first thing that registers. Not the blanket twisted at my waist, not the ache in my neck from the couch, but her. Octavia is wrapped around me like sleep found her and decided I was the safest place to leave her. One leg is hooked over mine, her head settled squarely on my chest, one hand folded near my ribs as if even unconscious she needed to stay anchored to something real. Each breath leaves her in a slow, even rhythm that rises and falls against me with enough trust in it to make my throat tighten.
The sight of her like this should feel dangerous.
Instead it feels sacred.
My hand drifts through her hair without thought, fingers moving carefully, reverently, like touching her too abruptly might shatter the strange peace that has settled over the room. The softness of it slips through my hand while the television paints her face in pale shifting light. No tension in her mouthnow. No panic behind her eyes. No ghosts reaching through her body to remind her what the world once made of her. Just sleep. Deep, honest sleep.
God.
A girl like that should never have had to become so strong.
My attention lingers on her longer than it should, marveling a little helplessly at the fact that after everything, after the fear, blood, texts, confessions, and all the ways we have already ruined each other for anyone else, she still fell asleep on me as if my chest were a safe place to put her heart.
Then a throat clears.
One second there is only Octavia’s weight on me, the soft rise and fall of her breathing against my chest, the credits rolling blue light across the room. The next, my eyes snap to the armchair across from the couch.
