attacked and criticized. “Feel like what?” I spat defensively.
Audrey lifted the cake back into its bakery box and closed it before facing me with one word: “Unworthy.”
Leaving me stupefied at the counter, she put the cake in the refrigerator and left the room, as I slipped into a contemplative void.
Unworthy? It honestly wasn’t far from the truth. I certainly didn’t feel worthy of celebration or praise, everybody knew that and Dr. Travetti reminded me of it on a regular basis. In fact, as I spiraled through shards of memory, the good doctor’s scrawled message zigzagged across my mind, “Why won’t he give himself a chance?” None of it was a lie, but I’d never once wondered from where this poisonous mindset had come from. Never once had I thought to become a cliché and blame my parents for drilling it into my brain that I was a monster. Not until Audrey said something, and now I wondered, did she see something I’d been blind to for years?
Her footsteps sounded behind me, I’d know them anywhere by now, and she came to stand beside me once again. In her hands was a present, and at the sight of the colorful paper and spiraled ribbon, a wave of nausea and anticipation struck my gut.
“You might not care, but I do.”
“You have no obligation to care,” I stated, so emotionless, it irked me. “You barely even know me, Audrey. There is no reason whatsoever for you to waste any of your time caring about m—"
“Please shut up,” she said, and so I did. “I don’t know my mailman at all, Blake, and I wish him a merry Christmas and a happy birthday, because every life, every day, should be celebrated. It’s all precious and sacred.”
With a sordid scoff, I shook my head, despite hearing her and wanting so much to wrap myself in her words and believe in them. To believe in something. To believe I wasn’t a monster, but just a guy who caused a horrific accident over twenty years ago. “Yeah, I bet everybody thought Jeffrey Dahmer was precious and something to celebrate, too.”
“Jeffrey Dahmer was still someone’s son, and I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that she celebrated him every day,” she retorted with more warmth than such a sentence deserved. “You don’t have to condone the actions of your children to maintain that unconditional love.”
“Is that what the Bible taught you?”
She was silent and when my eyes met hers, I found a glare that knocked me down to the level of a snake, slithering on its dirt-covered belly. She shook her head and opened her mouth, that gorgeous, terrifying mouth, to speak. “You can try and push me away with that garbage all you want, Blake. You can even try to make me hate you as much as you hate yourself. But I am telling you right now, it’s not going to work.”
“You’ll give up eventually,” I challenged her.
“You’d have to do something really horrible to me, to make me give up on you. And the garbage you say when you’re angry isn’t gonna cut it.”
“Why the hell not?” I asked, unsure there had ever been someone alive more frustratingly gorgeous than her in that moment.
“Because you’re wrong, Blake. I do know you. And I know that you aren’t the crap you say.”
My defenses eased as I relented with a sag of my shoulders. “Yeah? And how the hell do you know that?”
“Because while you think you stole everything from your brother, he gave you a heart. And I can see how good and beautiful it is. It’s in your art, and in your devotion to him. And those are the most honest things about you.”
My lips curled between my teeth, battling the urgency to grab one of the liquor bottles on the shelf within reach. “Even Jeffrey Dahmer had a heart,” I pushed out through a startling clot of emotion.
“Yeah,” she replied with a somber nod, “but it wasn’t Jake’s, and there isn’t anything impure about that.” And that was a point I couldn’t argue.
Chapter Twenty-Four
“YOU DON’T HAVE TO open it now,” she had said before leaving, “and it’s not a big deal. Just a little thing.” The present had been left on the counter as she stood on her toes to kiss my cheek. “Happy birthday, Blake.”
I could still hear her voice now, hours later. I could still feel the soft touch of her lips against my skin. I stared at the present, still lying on the