Page 89 of This Bitter Sweet Temptation
Well.
These things matter in my very fickle, very confused, still grieving brain.
So, fine.
Instead of marching out there with a brave face and telling Moody McMiserable we’re behaving like grown-ups, I hide in my room. I grab my pad again and start drawing a tinman-like Holden clutching the Hera Egg over his empty chest.
It’s just a cartoony sketch, hardly serious and not my best effort, but it makes some part of me feel better.
After I’ve drawn a few stormy feelings out, I set my stuff on the table and close my eyes. Old habit.
I used to do this when I was a little girl and Dad would stumble home drunk. He’d barge in late and yell at me the second my sitter left, after another critic called his stuff juvenile, derivative, uninspired.
I’d get my feelings out on paper before they chewed me to pieces from the inside out. Spiders under the skin.
I couldn’t escape in that house.
I couldn’t stand up to him.
I was too young to grasp his malfunctions or even my own feelings.
The art was always there. My one lovely constant, my shelter against the storm.
It saved me then and it’ll save me now.
If Holden’s grumpy, bitter ass wants to tiptoe around heartache, I’ll cut myself open. I’ll bleed sharp lines on paper he’ll never see.
Self-directed therapy.
If I can push him out of my system like snake venom just tonight, we might rediscover old boundaries without uttering a word.
I just have to keep him from following me into my dreams and haunting me forever.
12
NICKEL AND DIMED (HOLDEN)
I’ve never been this restless on duty before.
Every time I stop moving, I can’t stand still for more than a few seconds before there’s hellfire in my knees. Ironically, the only fix is to keep going.
Press the fuck on.
Round and round this big old house I know like the back of my hand.
It’s not the hint of arthritic damage or whatever the fuck that’s bothering me. It’s something deeper, not rooted in flesh and bone.
I scrub under my eyes, trying to bleach Cleo’s kiss from my brain.
She’s lodged there like a splinter, a thorn no amount of rubbing will ever get out.
I head downstairs to the basement to check the vault. Everything’s in order.
I glance at the camera system on my phone before heading back upstairs. No disturbances whatsoever.
Aside from us, the lawyer, Fairfax, and a few of his overseas contacts, no one else knows this thing exists.
I wish we could keep it that way. It’s starting to feel like a fucking curse in gold and jewels that can fit in your hands.
