Burn Down the Night (Everything I Left Unsaid #3)- Molly O'Keefe Page 0,43
grave. That hotel room off the highway. That dawn ride through the desert under a hot-pink sky when everything had seemed so clear. So obvious. I’d made a mistake years ago and I was getting a chance to start over.
But then Dylan called and told me I had to come back or Rabbit was going to hurt the woman he loved.
And I’d gone back. Because I owed Dylan. Because he was my brother. My flesh and blood.
Because guys like me didn’t get second chances.
Something painful was happening in my chest. Something awful. Like in those natural disaster movies they showed late at night—there was a sinkhole opening and everything was getting sucked into it.
“Max,” she sighed, her voice all soft with sympathy.
“Is that all?” I snapped. Because her sympathy pissed me off. My whole body was burning with an anger and a grief and a fear—and I couldn’t separate them from each other. It was a mess in my gut. A fire-breathing mess.
“Well, Sharon really misses you. There’s a couple more shots here—”
Fuck Sharon. Fuck Joan. Fuck everyone.
“But no,” she said, “that’s it.”
Lagan’s number was still in my head. I could tell her to call it. And maybe nothing would happen, or maybe some terrible stone would start rolling downhill.
Death and destruction followed me around like a ball and chain.
She got up off the dresser and stood just outside my reach.
Cagey.
“I’m…sorry.”
“For what.”
She made some soft sympathetic sound that lit fire to my rage. Impotent and useless, my rage burned through everything until it was all I felt.
“What’s your name?”
“Joan.”
“Your real name?” I don’t know why it mattered so much, but it did.
“Joan.”
“Take off your fucking clothes.”
“I’m not getting close to you. Not like this.”
“I want to fuck you. Not hurt you.”
She looked at me, her eyes bright. She was into it. I could see it on her face. In her skin. I could smell it in the air.
“You want it, too,” I told her. This is what a mess we were. This was how our wires were crossed. She looked away like this thing between us—raw and thorned—was too much to see. Everything had to be watched from her peripheral vision. And I wanted to look right at it, I wanted to smash myself into it so I could feel something—anything but this gnawing panic. This growing despair.
“Suck my dick and I’ll call him.”
“You’re lying.”
I was. I was lying.
“Fine, suck my dick because you want to. Suck my dick and I’ll make you come so hard you black out and for a minute, one goddamn minute, we’ll pretend we don’t live like this. We’ll pretend that we’re normal. That we’re decent fucking humans and not the pieces of shit we are.”
“You’re not…you’re not a piece of shit,” she whispered. At that moment I wanted her to believe that about me. I wanted someone on this Earth to care.
“Let me go.”
She shook her head, afraid of me. I hated that and I loved it at the same time.
“Show me something,” I whispered. “You just ripped out my guts. Give me something and I’ll give you the number.”
She stood there, blinking at me like she didn’t understand what I was asking. But she did. Show me something you never show anyone. Give me a piece of your soul, because I just showed you mine and because I need to fucking live on something and I have nothing.
Give me something I can live on. For a minute. That’s all I want.
But she stood there and pretended not to understand. She pretended she didn’t know what I was talking about.
“Get out of here,” I told her. I couldn’t look at her anymore. I couldn’t look at her and see my reflection anymore. Dylan was okay. Pops was…okay. That’s all that mattered.
I didn’t. I never mattered.
Chapter 13
Joan
The gas station across the road had a pay phone. Probably the last one in the state.
Maybe the world.
It was around the back of the buildings, by the dumpsters.
I could see the canal through the trees on the other side of the parking lot. We were on a thin piece of land between the ocean and the canal and it felt—at the moment—like it was getting smaller every minute.
Like I was getting squeezed between possible disasters every minute I stood here staring at the last pay phone in the world.
I was Princess Leia down in the garbage compactor, only instead of Han, Luke, and Chewie for company, all I had was that fucking snake.