Chapter Thirty-Five
The underground community of Ţărână
Noon
Three days later
The Shank Tooth bar in Stânga Town was one of the seediest dives Charlize had ever been in, low-ceilinged and dark, several walls missing patchy bursts of plaster, probably either from water damage or the result of body slams—nightly bar fights were no doubt a showcase event in a place like this.
The occupants were slitty-eyed and slash-mouthed from being mean, dangerous, suspicious, or just plain high—take your pick—and in general made Clint and his Rhoad Rhage pals look like Cabbage Patch kids.
Just her type of crowd.
She was in no mood for apple dumplings and baskets of kittens today. Or any day in the past three, which she’d spent dodging Breen and his damned calm face, his deeply layered eyes, the chip in his fang that peeked out only occasionally but was a total heart-melter, and his stupid affection for her.
I like you, and when I’m inside you it’s kind of impossible to ignore.
She made a face. Soul-level, particle-deep jackhole had then gone and made things worse by forming a deeper connection with her in their last therapy session, showing her that he was as much of a survivor as she was.
And how do you deal with your father’s criticism?
I ignore what he says.
Ignore it?
Yeah. I learned to.
Charlize tossed back her drink. She was done with bullshit.
Everything she couldn’t deal with. Done.
Breen. A relationship. Sex.
She was shutting it all down.
A guy entered the bar, pausing long enough to look at her like she was harboring a new troubling form of STD. Or maybe it was her hair he was staring at. Her curls stood out like a glowing gold beacon in this joint. If there was another blond head in here, it was covered by a hat.
Giving her a final, unfriendly glare, the guy clumped to the right toward a scattering of tables and chairs that had seen better days. Up at the front of the bar there was a stage for live performances, although right now alternative rock droned from several cheap, wall-mounted speakers, tinny and garbled. The long wooden bar where she sat was directly across from the entrance. The top of it was covered in wet ring stains linked together in patterns that made her brain go psychedelic if she stared at them for too long.
She wiggled her fingers at the bartender, Anatol.
He’d never spoken to her. She only knew his name because when the young man first arrived for his shift about a half hour ago, sloppily dressed and with uncombed black hair, the other bartender complained, “What the farks, Anatol? You’re late.”
Anatol simply replied, “No I’m not,” then hadn’t spoken again. He’d wrapped a carnage-ridden apron around his waist, strode over to her, leaned both palms on the bar, and looked at her. She’d ordered a shot of tequila.
In answer to her summons, he did the same thing now.
So did she.
Anatol sloshed tequila into her glass.
A ripple of heightened awareness rolled through the crowd. Faces turned away. Shoulders hunched.
Someone sat on the stool next to Charlize.
She turned to look. She stiffened as a craving ache opened up a hole in her heart. She turned back to her drink. Her face probably showed too much of the pain ripping through her.
Anatol looked at Breen.
“Just a Bud,” he ordered.
Anatol nodded and went off to pull the draft.
“Hey,” Breen said to her.
She stared down into her drink, the tequila a rich gold color…like his eyes. She pressed a hand to her belly. Her stomach hurt. She was pretty sure it had been for three days straight. Why, just why couldn’t she be someone other than who she actually was?
Anatol dropped off a foaming mug of beer.
Breen tugged his wallet out of his back pocket. He found his money card and pointed it in Charlize’s direction before handing it to Anatol. “Hers too.”
Yeah, well, Breen probably had money to spare. The Spec Ops warriors were the highest paid workers in this town, second only to the leadership.
Anatol ran the card then set it in front of Breen on the bar before meandering off.
Breen didn’t pick up the card. He didn’t sip his drink. “You maybe shouldn’t be in a place like this.”
“I like it here. It suits me.” Face forward, she lifted her upper lip. “Dark and nasty and fucked up.”
“Charlize—”
“I’m thinking about making it my new hangout.”
Breen picked up his money card, tapped it a couple of times on the bar, then put it back in his wallet. “We’re supposed to be in session with Karrell right now.”
“Please pass on my regrets to her. I’m never going back there.” She moved her shot glass from one ring stain to the next to the next. A board game for the barfly, for the sad and pathetic and hopeless.
Breen hung the tips of his fingers on the rim of his beer mug and paused a long moment. “So we’re done? You and I?”
Emotion jammed in the back of Charlize’s throat. Oh, God, she was already on the verge of crying.
“I know I’ve let you down—”
“Stop!” She whirled on him—on him and his eyes, the corners of them squeezed down in pain. Because she was hurting him. “You haven’t let me down, dammit. You have done nothing but be nice. It’s me!”
From down the bar, Anatol glanced up from the stereo knobs he was fiddling with.
“I can’t do it anymore, Breen. I can’t keep h-hurting people.” Charlize wedged her palms against her face and wiped away her tears. Shit. “Karrell was right. I ruin everything, and when I do, I ruin everybody nearby.”
Breen’s brows sagged down.
She sniffed hard. “Consider my departure an early Christmas present.” She looked away and clenched a fist around her shot glass.
Deep inhale. Long exhale. “You’re stronger than this,” Breen told her quietly.
She closed her eyes and moved her lips around. No, her lips moved on their own, trembling. “Don’t,” she returned. “You don’t know who I am.”
“For the last few days,” he said, “I’ve been researching what it’s like to be the child of an alcoholic.”
She swallowed, but only succeeded in lodging the lump of emotions more firmly in her throat. He’d done that for her?
“It’s…messed up. But you were strong enough to make it through a fucked-up childhood, Charlize, so you’re strong enough to kick the ass of whatever it is scaring you. And…I don’t think it’s me you’re really scared of. Or us.”
“Well, I am.” People didn’t stick around, and it was her fault they didn’t. She couldn’t live with it anymore.
“Then there’s a reason for it, and you can face it.”
Ear-splitting guitar noise squealed from the speakers, and people in the bar turned and boo’d at Anatol. The sound quality was the worst ever in this place.
Breen cupped her elbow and eased her off her bar stool, leading her outside into the rotting stink of the slums—unwashed bodies, shoddy plumbing, and some kind of weird sulfuric reek.
Breen took her gently by the arms and turned her to face him. The warmest, deepest golden gaze that existed on earth stared down at her. “I’ve wanted to help you, but I’m just too much of a bonehead to know how. It’s why I feel like I’ve let you down. But…” One corner of his mouth strained outward. “Back while I was hanging from a tree for three nights, I decided not to be a do-nothing guy anymore, so I had to figure it out. And what I came up with is that I might not know how to help you, but Karrell does.” He gave her arms a little squeeze. “So I’m sorry, but I’m going to have to make you go back there.”
Panic iced her blood. “B-Breen…”
He pulled her against him, one arm wrapping around her back, the other hand coming to rest on her cheek, gently pressing the side of her face to the comforting warmth of his chest. He was holding her so she couldn’t pull away.
Tears filled her eyes and spilled over. Maybe he knew her pretty well after all.
“I can feel how much you hurt,” he whispered. “It’s monumental.”
She curled her arms into a little cocoon between their bodies and drew in a stuttering breath, filling her nose with his rich, animal scent. It blocked out the sewage smell and made her feel like she was…home. More tears poured.
“You need to go to Karrell and tell her the worst thing that’s ever happened to you.”
She smashed her eyelids closed. For an instant of flashback the precarious boundary between present and past collapsed—the diesel truck was there, its horn blaring, its eighteen locked-up wheels laying down a strip of rubber a block long. She let out a small cry.
His hold tightened on her. He was so much more powerful than she was. She’d never truly comprehended the full extent of it until now, when his strength was being used to console. “I’ll be with you the whole time,” he told her. “I know you’ve basically always been alone your entire life, with no one to watch out for you, but I’m not going to do that to you. Okay? I’m here, and not just because I’m physically bonded to you, but because I want to be here.” He shifted back, putting her at arm’s length and dipping his chin a bit so he could give her a steady look.
She stared at him through the huge, watery pools of her tears and pressed a hand over her heart, feeling the lurch and the double-pound.
Breen texted Karrell they were coming, so when they entered her office, the therapist was already seated and waiting for them.
Charlize stood in the doorway. The muscle fibers in her thighs gnarled into balls of yarn, and suddenly it felt like her nervous system was set up to relay only emergency alerts.
Karrell gave her an encouraging smile. “Why don’t you come in and sit down?”
Charlize couldn’t move. The therapist was so very motherly in a lot of ways.
Breen took Charlize by the elbow again and escorted her to her regular chair, helping her into it.
He sat next to her and scooted his chair closer.
The silence was thundering. Charlize dropped her hands into her lap and lowered her eyes, raking the tips of her fingers together, over and over. Her cheeks felt crackly from dried tears.
“What’s the hardest thing going on for you right now?” Karrell asked, her voice soothing and deep, like a radio therapist on the three-A.M. shift.
Charlize licked her lips. Her mouth tasted like day-old barbecue ash. “Memories.”
“Of your childhood?”
“Yes.”
“Your mother was an alcoholic, is that correct?”
“Yes. Still is.”
“Your father?”
“Bailed on us when I was seven. Just left his three kids with a woman he knew fuckerized everything.”
“I’m sorry.” Karrell’s voice was still low. “Who was in charge when your mother couldn’t be?”
“Me.” Tension flared across the bridge of Charlize’s nose. “I’m the oldest, so I had to be Miss Responsible.”
“That’s a lot for a kid to take on.” Karrell exhaled softly. “I can understand why you feel like you can’t be soft.”
“It’s more than that. It’s…” Every time I let my guard down, a diesel truck screeches across my memory.
Karrell waited a moment. “Did something happen shortly after the divorce…when you were eight years old?”
Charlize gripped the armrests. Cold dread seeped into her bones. She shut her eyes.
“In our last session you said you haven’t done anything right since you were eight, which doesn’t sound like how a Miss Responsible would describe herself.”
Charlize slowly opened her eyes, very slowly, like her lids were being operated by an old-fashioned winch. Inch worm, inch worm, little, scraggly, horrible inch worm… Karrell was inching toward a place where it was not nice to go.
Karrell’s tone never shifted off level and calm. “What happened when you were eight, Charlize?”
Charlize’s heart thumped wildly, pumping blood in the wrong direction. Everything was so wrong.
“It’s easier to be a rebel than Miss Responsible, isn’t it? It’s why you create chaos in your life. Not only because it’s what’s familiar to you, but because the child in charge is the one who has to clean up vomit and tuck a drunk mother into bed or bail her out of jail. Not the best of roles.”
Garish, rhinestone-like dots prickled at the sides of Charlize’s vision. Her skin went clammy.
“And constant disasters would also keep you from growing too close to anyone, you know, that someone who will eventually leave you—like your mother did for those three days of hell. Like she always did emotionally. Like your father did. Like Breen did on his mission.”
Breen shifted in his seat and rubbed his palms along his thighs.
Stomach acid churned, heaved, and bubbled up, burning the roof of Charlize’s mouth. She shoved a fist against her lips.
“Were you abandoned again at eight years old?” Karrell asked. “Is that what happened?”
Charlize dropped her fist. She shook her head. “No.” A burgeoning of hot tears ignited an inferno in her nose.
“Tell us what, then.” Karrell leaned forward, setting her elbows on the armrests, staring intently. “This memory controls you, Charlize. Vent it and get rid of it for good. You deserve to be happy.”
A swallow clotted in her throat midway down. She moved her mouth in soundless horror.
Breen set a palm on the armrest of her chair. He didn’t touch her. His hand was just there.
“No,” she hissed. “I don’t deserve to be happy. I-I don’t,” she quaked. And then her mouth spoke the abomination.
“I killed my sister.”