We walked down the stairs silently, words impossible now that anyone could be listening, the grungy walls and sticky railing felt like an omen that I’d missed on the way in. Brown chipped paint flaked off the metal underneath my hands as I lightly gripped the railing for support.
My legs were steady. At the moment.
My stomach felt like it was overflowing with curdling milk, excessively full of acid, and as much as I wanted to heave it out of my system, I wanted as far away from her place as possible. Lucy followed me quietly as I led us to my car, thankfully not stripped of its rims or stereo system.
Three men watched us from a sagging stoop across the street, suspicious eyes aimed in our direction. Sweat broke out over the back of my neck at their scrutiny. My clothes felt too tight, my skin raked over with coals.
In the pristine black paint of my car, the sun reflected back at me so brightly that I squinted. The chirp of the car when I unlocked it made Lucy jump next to me. Unthinkingly, I opened the passenger door and held it for her. She stared at me for a beat, eyes unreadable, face still pale.
“Thank you,” she said quietly and slid into the seat, her plastic grocery bags held tightly in her lap. I closed the door and walked as calmly as possible around the front end of the car. My body itched for me to sprint, to slam the door shut and lock it, to keep us blocked away and safe from whatever was outside of the car.
But I kept my movements slow and loose, nothing to raise suspicion, considering I was carrying a plastic bag that held a murder weapon. Once I sat in my seat, I let out a ragged breath and dropped my head back onto the headrest.
“You want me to drive?” Lucy asked. She reached over and took the bag out of my lap and tucked it carefully underneath her seat.
I laughed under my breath. “Yeah right. For all I know, you snorted something up your nose before I walked in the door.”
She punched my shoulder and I cursed. “I’m not a druggie. Well, not anymore.” When I gave her a dry look, she rolled her eyes. Then she muttered under her breath, “Drug dealers don’ t always do drugs, you know. Prick. It’s really presumptuous.”
The guys across the street watched carefully as I pulled the car out of the parking spot and eased it down the narrow road. Their eyes hurt my skin, and I rolled my shoulders when we were out of view.
My hands gripped the steering wheel tightly as I took a careful right turn onto the freeway. Lucy was watching me for a while before she glanced behind her at the semi bearing down on me. My foot pushed down on the accelerator. A little.
The speedometer crept up to fifty-eight and I put the cruise on, my knuckles tightening again to the point that my skin turned white.
“Am I allowed to ask a question?”
“No.”
“Mmmkay.”
The angry blare of a horn sounded from a bright red car that swerved around us, and the driver flashed me his middle finger.
“Hey, umm, Xenon?”
I let out a slow, even breath and kept my eyes on the road. That was all I could focus on, all my brain had capacity for. If I let a single thing in that I couldn’t control, that I couldn’t bend to my will, I’d lose it. I’d lose the tenuous grip that I was currently holding on my sanity.
It was a slippery thread wrapped around a single finger, but the grip was there.
“Lucy,” I cautioned.
“Why did we take the pan again? I mean, I love it, don’t get me wrong. Makes the best bacon, but it doesn’t seem like we should be waltzing around with it.”
It took everything in my power to keep my breathing steady, to focus on the road in front of me and the cars flying past us. Why did everyone go so damn fast in Chicago?
But still, I found myself answering. “You’re the one who was afraid they wouldn’t believe you. Seemed … prudent, I guess. Make sure we could prove ourselves true.”
“Uh-huh.” She was staring out the windows at the other cars, her voice clouded with concern. “Yeah, that makes sense. But uhh, maybe you could speed it up a bit? Not sure I want to get flattened by Bubba back there.”
Nope. I would not engage. I could already tell that she thrived on ridiculous banter in the most uncomfortable situations. Didn’t she understand how close I was to losing my mind?
Clearly not, because she couldn’t stop. Couldn’t leave me alone.
“The speed limit is sixty-five here. People pretty much always go eighty. You know that right?”
Deep breaths. Focus, Xavier. Ignore her. She’s trying to push your buttons to distract herself from the reality of what had happened back there.
His head was so hard when I hit it. He fell to the ground so gracelessly. Crumpled. My breath started coming faster and my fingers tingled at the tips.
“X?”
I licked my lips when she said my name again, more forcefully this time.
“I’m not going to go faster,” I snapped and she drew back in her seat. “The number of traffic accidents in Chicago have increased by at least eight percent every year since 2013. Someone dies every other day in a car accident in this city. Did you know that? Our odds of a fatal accident increase exponentially with every mile per hour my speed increases.”
When she didn’t answer, I glanced over at her and almost swerved into the car next to me. Her head was leaning back, her mouth was open and she was emitting soft snoring noises.
“Lucy,” I snapped and she blinked dramatically, arching her back in a slow stretch and glancing over at me with an unconcerned look on her face.
“Oh sorry, the gentle hum of a car going forty-seven miles slower than the flow of traffic lulled me to sleep.”
“I should’ve left you there with his body,” I said under my breath.
“You probably should have.”
I glanced at her sharply, but she was staring straight ahead at the road. Her fingers were knit tightly together in her lap, but I could still see the slight shake in her hands, the way her legs bounced constantly.
With every fiber of my being, I didn’t want to feel sorry for her. I didn’t want to care about whether she was scared or if stepping over a dead body was a normal Tuesday for Lucy. Whether that asshole had ever done something like that to her before.
“H-how long had you been putting up with that guy?” I found myself asking. I winced and looked away in embarrassment. It was like the first day I’d met her all over again. Unconscious actions, words coming out my mouth before I realized what I was doing, making the kind of reckless choices that I’d never normally make, it all seemed to be a symptom of spending time with Lucy Connors.
I’d never met anyone who elicited that sort of reaction, that side of me, and maybe it should have prompted me to drive to the nearest corner, open the door and shove her out. But I wouldn’t. Equal to the force of my strange personality shift when I was around her was an unexplainable drive to help. To cover. To protect.
There had been so many opportunities to expose her, to numerous people. To the police after her stunt in my home, Watkins the day after that, her parole officer.
Even the drug dealer himself. I could’ve told him she stole my watch, maybe even given him the money. Instead, my immediate reaction was to bash him over the head with a frying pan. The same frying pan currently wrapped in a dollar store plastic bag, shoved under Lucy’s seat.
Slowly, Lucy folded one leg underneath herself and faced me as much as possible given the constraints of her seat belt. “Why? Trying to make yourself feel better?”
“No,” I said instantly. “Just ... curious, I guess. What else do we have to talk about?”
Her green eyes regarded me steadily when I pulled to a stop at a red light just off the freeway. “I’m surprised you want to talk to me at all. I can’t figure you out, Xena.”
I rolled my eyes and she cracked a small smile. To my utter shock, I found myself returning it. The silly nickname, the fact that she was still wondering what X stood for made me not want to tell her, see how far she’d stretch the little game.
“So, Lockwood, how many traffic deaths were there in 2016?”
Interesting diversion, but I indulged, because I imagined that neither of us wanted to be pushed too hard given the last hour of our lives.
“Nationwide, there was a six percent increase in traffic fatalities, making it the deadliest year on the roads in over a decade. The increase from 2014 was fourteen percent, which is the highest two-year jump in over five decades. Which is why I rarely drive over fifty-five miles per hour. If you don’t like it, you can walk.”
“That’s...” She cleared her throat when I took the turn into my neighborhood.
“That’s what?” I saw a cop car in my rear-view mirror and let out a relieved breath when it turned in the opposite direction at the intersection. Good Lord, would the rest of my life be like that? At least I could afford good lawyers. Lucy though ... it didn’t look like she could afford much of anything.
“Adorable.”
I shook my head, couldn’t even find it in me to snap at her. Did that mean I was getting used to her? Lucy Connors seemed like the kind of person that you’d never get used to, even if you tried every single day to adjust yourself to her presence. She was unsettling. “You’re ...” When I almost said insane, I bit my tongue, given that it seemed like a sore spot earlier. “Strange.”
Lucy beamed at me when I pulled the car into my driveway. Shifting the car into park in the safety of my garage should have made me feel better. The spaced-out houses, the lack of people paying attention to us should have ushered in a sense of safety and security, but it didn’t.
Silently, we got out of the car, her clutching her bags to her chest like they were her only life preserver, and me just doing my best to breathe. To not pass out. To not puke over my garage floor. Lucy waited for me to unlock the door into the house and deactivate the alarm.
I stood frozen over the panel while she walked into the kitchen and set her plastic bags on the kitchen island.
“Remind me next time I come here to just waltz right in the door with you. Way easier.”
In the next breath, I pulled my fist back and punched the drywall above security panel.
“I killed someone, Lucy,” I yelled, gripping the sides of my head while I paced around the room. She approached me with raised hands, soothing noises coming from her mouth, but all I could hear was static and the constant drumming of my heart. Faster and faster it went until the static was gone too. Drums in my ears, the beat overwhelming and terrifying. I clutched my chest and tried to suck in air, but it was like breathing through a clamped plastic straw. “Oh my God, I can’t breathe. It’s so hot in here.”
The memory of his blank eyes wouldn’t go away. I pinched my eyes shut and tried to claw them from my memory. My shaking hands pressed into my face, but his eyes wouldn’t go away.
I killed someone. He was breathing one second. Not breathing the next. Did he have parents? A wife? The bitter, choking bile swelled up my throat when I wondered if he had kids.
“Hey, come here,” Lucy said in a soothing voice, the soft sound breaking through the insistent drumming in my ears. “Let’s get you some water. Take deep breaths. You’re safe. Can you hear me? You’re safe here.”
I nodded frantically. “I can hear you. Oh my God, Lucy. What did I do?”
It was too hot. Flames licked at my skin, and I yanked my shirt away from my chest. Everything was sticking to me. Frantically, I ripped my shirt off and dropped my head into my hands when it didn’t help. Maybe I was dying. I probably deserved it. Who the hell did I think I was, taking someone’s life with my bare hands? I didn’t know that man.
And now no one would.
“Okay, so we’re getting undressed now,” I heard her murmur, but she sat next to me, our sides pressing together.
My skin crawled and tightened over my bones at the thought of her seeing me like that. It had been years since I’d experienced a true, definitive, textbook panic attack. And now I was having one in front of her.
“Shhh,” she whispered. Her hands soothed across my skin, cooling the flames. “You’re safe. I’m not leaving.”
Good, I thought. Good. That was right before my vision started going black around the edges.