NINE
~MIA~
I woke up feeling like I was hungover. My head ached and my vision was blurry from crying all night. Candy had been there to support me during my breakdown, but I still couldn’t wrap my mind on what had changed with Jace. The night had drawn on in a haze of uncontrolled sobbing until, at some point, I must have just cried myself out. Now my body was cursing me for it.
Groaning, I clenched my eyes shut—trying to will the world away through blindness—and chanted “fuck” to myself. It was a silly, vulgar mantra, but one that seemed to work, at least. I managed to calm down a bit, to get a grip on my awakening emotions, and avoided erupting into a new round of sobs. Finally, still chanting “fuck,” I opened my eyes and sat up. I’d spent the night crying on Candy’s couch, and Candy’s couch was where I’d since remained. The rhythm of my “fuck”s slowed, but I continued the chant as I glanced down at my phone. No missed calls. No messages.
“Fuck…” I muttered, this one feeling somehow different from the others.
And, it being the last “fuck” uttered—in that instant, at least—I supposed it was a fair assumption.
I chewed my lip, asking myself if I should try to contact Jace. I wrestled with the idea of calling him, toyed with the idea of texting him, and then, finally, slipped off into a plane of thought that rested comfortably between two possibilities; both of them rock-solid in the resolve that, no, I should not try to make contact at all.
He has to be the one to engage the dialogue that fixes all of this, one part of this logic explained.
There’s nothing left to fix, and you’d just be wasting your time in trying to talk to him, the other said.
My lip trembled.
And then I stopped it.
“Why the fucking shit should I be sad?” I demanded aloud, asking the question of nobody—letting it resound off the empty room. Scoffing—and telling myself it was in no way forced—I added, “I don’t even know what his problem was!”
But that, I felt, wasn’t entirely true. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it, but I felt like I knew exactly what had come over Jace.
However, as the sadness inside me began to boil into rage, logic and reason fizzled away; drops of water-like enlightenment evaporating on a hot, angry skillet and vanishing like steam on a breeze.
I hated him!
And, what’s more, I loved him too much to hate him…
Which only made me hate him more!
Growling, wanting to slap him and, at the same time, make love to him, I jumped to my feet and consulted my phone yet again. I saw that it was nearly two in the afternoon. I glanced around, wondering if Candy had left for the day. It seemed distantly obvious—but, again, logic and reasoning had gone the way of the dodo—since I’d been chanting “fuck” and making a rage-bitch ruckus practically since the moment I’d woken up. That Candy hadn’t made an appearance to, at the very least, tell me to quiet down was a good sign that she’d already gone out. Standing, I walked on sleep-drunken legs into kitchen and saw a note on the table. Recognizing Candy’s handwriting even from a distance, I shuffled to it, scooped it up, and scanned its message:
Hey slut,
Take it easy today. Do the Netflix and chill thang! Things will get better. I promise. Guys do dumb shit, but it doesn’t mean forever.
Might feel like forever to you right now, but it ain’t forever.
You two are too retarded for each other for this to be forever.
So chill!
I had to run out with Faggy McDick-Lover to talk some of the old crew into not being stupid. (Don’t worry, I won’t bring this up to him.)
I’ll be back later tonight! Order a pizza for us!
XOXO
Your Candy-girl :-)
PS – I like my pizza like I like my men: with extra meat.
Snoogens :-P
I sighed, looking down at the note and watched as the page began to grow blurry. It wasn’t until a few spots of moisture began dampening the paper and streaking the ink that I realized I’d begun crying again.
“‘… too retarded for each other…’” I read, then reread aloud.
And then I was hugging the letter to my chest and weeping. Minutes ticked by, the empty room content with listening and waiting while I cried it out, and then, after who-knew-how-long, I’d done just that. I’d cried it out. I took a deep breath, feeling surprisingly better.
I wanted Candy to be right, and so I believed that she was. After all, that had been the logic I’d followed regarding Danny and his predictions regarding Jace. And just look how that had turned out!
Nodding to myself, I decided that I had to hold out on faith that Jace would come back to me. It wouldn’t take a genius to figure out where I would’ve gone. Sooner or later, I had to have faith that Jace would come for me.
Right?
I bit my lip, hating how conflicted I felt. Taking another deep breath, I began to get dressed, deciding that what I needed right now was some shop therapy. Even if I had no one to do it with, and even if I barely had enough money to cover the sort of pizza habits that Candy had developed since we’d escaped from the Carrion Crew. Despite all that, I needed to get out and just…
Just chill, I thought, looking back at Candy’s letter.
Smiling, I took a moment to fold the paper and slip it into my pocket. For some silly reason, I felt more comfortable having it on me. It felt like, in some way, Candy was with me.
As I set out, still trying to figure out just what I was going to do with myself, I moved to return Candy’s spare key to my purse. As I did, my hand fell on the crow keychain and I froze. I looked down at it, surprising myself with the bizarre, totem-like power it seemed to hold over me. Then, slowly—carefully—I picked it up, letting it sit in the hammock of my palm. A part of me wanted to throw it away—to hurl it as far into any distance would present itself and, in some impossible way, have that symbolic message carry over to Jace—but another part of me felt comforted with it there, in my hand. It seemed almost sacrilegious to part with it, not until it was in the hands of its rightful owner—the man I’d gotten it for in the first place. After all, I’d spent so much time just searching for it; searching for the perfect gift. All to make things right.
Fat lot of good that did, I thought.
But I hadn’t even had the chance to give it to Jace, had I? We’d both slipped off into our own little protective corners—pride and defensiveness getting in the way of logic and reason—and we’d said and done things we hadn’t meant to.
Or, at least, I had.
I wanted to believe that Jace was feeling the same sort of regret that I was.
“Pride has no business in matters of the heart.”
I felt like I’d heard that somewhere before—perhaps read it in one of the many books that Candy was always teasing me for burying myself in on my Kindle—and, though I couldn’t place the source, I still felt like it was one of the world’s only great truths.
Eying the crow keychain again, I closed my hand around it and gave it a silent promise that I wouldn’t do anything stupid with it until I got back home.
Home.
Assuming I could call it that anymore.
NO! I mentally stopped the whole clockwork process from spiraling me out then and there. Setting the keychain back in my purse, I patted my pocket where Candy’s letter still lay, folded and brilliant, and reminded myself to have faith.
“‘retarded for each other,’” I repeated, giggling at my friend’s awful-yet-wonderful choice of wording.
Leave it to Candy to be so politically incorrect and, at the same time, so gloriously brilliant.
****
Alright. Retail therapy. Let’s get shopping.
That’s how it had started…
I’d spent nearly three hours walking through different shops, buying small things here-and-there. The previous day I’d been nervous about how little money I had, and now I was dropping dollars I’d felt certain I’d never be able to part with. What had started as a self-assured session of window-shopping and maybe—MAYBE!—a trinket here or a knick-knack there quickly became something else entirely. While I hadn’t thought I had made too many purchases, the new heft I was carrying begged to differ. I knew I shouldn’t be spending too much of the money I had saved up, but I couldn’t deny that I did feel better for it. And wasn’t that what mattered?
Retail therapy.
“Retail therapy.”
Somewhere out there was a marketing consultant rolling on millions of dollars, laughing like a madman and likely rolling in hookers that would have made Candy and me look like bargain outlet whores by comparison. And, through his caviar-and-champagne days and into his cocaine-and-pussy filled nights, he owed it all to two little words that now had me spending money I likely didn’t have to spend:
“Retail-fucking-therapy,” I muttered to myself.
“What’s that, Miss?” a cashier asked, their hand still outstretched to accept the bills that still occupied mine.
“Nothing,” I said, and then I paid them.
I hadn’t been able to shop this way in so long, not since I’d begun to work for T-Built. If I’d made purchases like these while working for the Carrion crew, they would’ve instantly thought I was stealing from them and I’d be severely punished. But now I was free, right?
But freedom wasn’t free. It was covered in dollar signs and, in this case, acted as bits of patchwork for a broken heart.
But if it worked then…
I paused in mid-step as I worked my way away from the store; began looking around before I even realized why. The feeling of being watched had returned. I frowned, knowing that I wouldn’t be free as long as the Carrion Crew was out there; as long as Mack was still out there. Then, considering this, I blanched—nearly had a wave of sickness barrel into me and knock me off my feet—and realized that I was out on the streets, alone, and uncertain if I even had ties with the Crows any longer. No. No, Jace might be mad at me, but he’d never go so far as to let me…
But was it fair of me to just expect Jace, no matter what, to be there to rescue me?
Wasn’t that, at least in part, what had been bothering him the night before?
I began to look around my shoulders, seeing if I could spot anyone watching me.
Come on, Mia. You’re just being paranoid.
That’s when I spotted him.
Mack.
Standing in the middle of the mall, just watching me. He smirked knowingly, almost as if he’d been waiting for me to spot him. I realized with no real surprise that this was likely exactly the case. A part of me screamed to run, to just get out of there and pretend that I hadn’t seen him. But we both knew that I had seen him, and if I ran now I’d be handing him an advantage—I’d be telling him I was afraid of him, and I’d be giving him a reason to follow. Besides, I’d spent enough time… how had he put it? “Playing victim.”
Squaring my shoulders, I forced myself to walk toward him. A brief flash of surprise moved across his face before returning to that smug grin. A part of me wondered if it had just been a trick of the light, but I knew better. He hadn’t expected me to just go to him. He had expected me to run; had wanted me to run.
“You seem surprised?” I taunted once I was close enough to call out to him without shouting.
“You spend your entire life watching a dog—a bitch—cower and piss on herself when another dog walks into the room,” he said with a dismissive shrug, “and you’ll realize your breath catches the day it finally doesn’t happen.”
“I’m to assume that I’m the bitch in that scenario?” I asked.
Another shrug. It occurred to me in that instant that men were very shrug-happy creatures, and I wondered what made them so noncommittal by nature. “Seems an appropriate comparison across the board, wouldn’t you say?” Mack rebutted.
“You seem real quick to throw my fears back in my face when it was you who locked me in the basement with a dead woman?” I shot, not even bothering to hide the scorn I still felt towards him from that night.
“First off: I didn’t know there was a dead body down there. Nobody did,” he began. “And, secondly: you should be thanking me for that. You were the one that asked for my help in the first place, and let’s not forget that, after that night, you became the talk of the town. For how many weeks did Missus Ornaly bring you a plate of cookies? And wasn’t it the talk of the town that got Billy Roberge to finally notice you and ask you out? And what about all the teachers who basically let you slide through the rest of the school year? Tell me, Mia, did you actually have to do anything that year? Even I took over all your chores!”
“Because Mom made you,” I reminded him. “It’s called being grounded, and it’s what asshole teens get when they sneak out of the house with their little sister to break into an abandoned house in the middle of the night.”
“Uh-huh. Still playing the ‘big bro should’ve been the grown-up’-card, I see.”
I scoffed at that. “I think you proved in that statement that you should have been, big bro!”
He scowled at me. “My dear little sister, Mia Chobavich: the tortured hero. You’ve never been happier than whenever you could complain about your life and point the blame on somebody else. Still a fucking little kid. You’re welcome for always having a target to aim that pristine finger at, by the way.”
“Even after all these years,” I mocked, “and grounding still doesn’t work. Didn’t prison teach you anything?”
“Yeah: not to trust a man who squares his feet behind you. I see your time on the streets taught you the complete opposite, whore!”
“Fuck you, Jace,” I spat. “I don’t know why I ever sat around and waited for you to be a brother; you can’t even learn how to be a decent human being. You’re sick! You’re fucking sick in the head for thinking I was ever happy with the way things were, that I ever could be happy after what happened to me. And rather than spend one damned second trying to understand what it must have been like for me, you just went on being a whiny, arrogant little shit; always making it somebody else’s fault when your own bullshit came raining down on you. Even now, Mack, you’re trying to blame me for everything when I was willing to… to do all that just to keep you alive!” I spat, literally this time, at his feet. “And now that you’re out you can’t leave me alone; can’t stop trying to convince others that their lives are as ugly and miserable as…” I stopped, eyes widening.
Mack was here, twisting my mind up with his words all over again.
He’d never left after that first day. He’d been here this whole time. Even after Jace had…
Jace…
“… trying to convince others that their lives are as ugly and miserable…”
“You son-of-a-bitch…” I muttered.
I knew I’d known.
I knew I’d known why Jace was acting so weird. I hadn’t wanted to fit the pieces together, but they’d been there all the same.
“You son-of-a-bitch!” I repeated.
Mack only grinned, seeming to know where my thoughts had gone. “Where’s lover-boy?” he asked with a heavy splash of acid in his tone and offering me that oily smile that creeped the hell out of me. “He getting cold feet or something? I can’t really blame him. Considering the sort of person he was married to before. No offense or anything, but you’re something of a downgrade.”
I was shaking with rage, reminding myself over and over again that there was no way he knew as much as he was letting on. All he’d have to know was that Jace had been married, that she’d died since then, and that’d be enough to say everything he was saying. He only had to know me—and, damn him, he did—to know how to use that against me. They were just words—only words!—but, fuck, Mack knew how to weaponize words.
All talk, I reminded myself over and over again. He’s just all talk. That’s all he’s ever been.
“I can’t really expect him to stick with you after the life he’d known before. Beautiful wife like that—family on the way and all—and you thought he’d settle for… well, a whore?”
“If he was here to hear you call me that,” I said through clenched teeth.
Mack chuckled. “If he was here to hear me call you that then he’d probably agree with me, sis. Hell, I called you a ‘whore’ plenty of times the other day when I caught up with him, and”—he held his arms out in a “look at me now”-gesture—“I’m still standing, aren’t I? None the worse for wear, because he didn’t lay a fucking finger on me, Mia. That tell you anything?”
“And what the fuck did you have to talk to him about?” I demanded.
Another shrug. “Same as you, I imagine,” he answered. “I wanted to know if he could help keep me safe from the Crew. Granted, I didn’t offer to suck his dick or let him ride me like a trick pony, but that’s the difference between you and me—I have class and you’re a cheap slut. What I’m offering him is information on the Crew, though, which is admittedly more valuable than anything you’ve got left to offer, which is, of course, why he doesn’t need you anymore.”
My breath caught at that. “Doesn’t…” I tried to say it snidely, but the word lurched and got stuck in my throat.
Mack laughed and nodded. “Of course. He was after T-Built, after all. The man did organize the attack on his home that got his pregnant wife killed. Jason had been on his heels for some time after that, gathering all sorts of information. Hell, Jason Presley was practically a stalker! Why the fuck else would he want to serenade a whore? Because she wasn’t just any whore; she was one of T-Built’s whores! A whore with all the makings to be a good little traitor to the cause, right? So he flashes a pretty grin, let’s you smear your jizz-soaked cunt all over his plush chopper’s seat, and buys you a few shiny-shinies, and…” he clapped his hands, “the door’s to his endgame pop open like a drugged-up Jack-in-the-Box! A bang-bang passes, a whore’s apartment burns to the ground, and all that’s left is to sweep up the ashes and move on with his life. So…” Mack grinned, let his eyes linger a moment on my now-heaving chest, and let himself fall into a casual lean against the wall behind him, “Did Jason Presley sweep you out his door then?”
“He’s done nothing of the sort,” I said, using every brick at my disposal to build up a wall of defense and hold back the tears. No matter what—even if every word he said was true—I could not let him see that he’d gotten to me. “H-he’s just busy today.”
Mack’s grin widened. “Oh, is ‘h-he’ now?” he asked, taunting me.
“Fuck off, Mack,” I growled. “If I catch you watching me again, you will regret it.”
“No,” he said, his eyes growing serious and cold with dark intent. “You’re going to be the one who regrets this, Mia. Now it’s just a question of how much you’re going to regret it. And, being the caring sibling that I am, I’m gonna give you a choice, and I suggest you think it over before you answer. If you come with me now, I can maybe—just maybe—talk Papa Raven into going easy on you. I’ll even vouch that none of this was your idea, that Jace orchestrated the whole thing—practically kidnapped you—so that he could get to T-Built. Given everything, I’d even say that’s not exactly a lie. You come with me, go along with that story—tell the big man how sorry you are for all the inconvenience you’ve caused him—and maybe we can both get through this without being dead by tomorrow!”
“And if I don’t?” I challenged.
“Then we’ll both almost certainly be dead by tomorrow. Or, if not then, then at least eventually. We’re really only gambling with our lives with every wasted moment,” he said matter-of-factly.
“Then good luck to you,” I said, turning away from him and calling back, “If I gotta die to know that you finally had to pay your own debts then at least I can die with a sense of justice to the universe.”
It honestly took every shred of willpower I had within me not to buckle in that instant, but—god-fucking-damn!—I actually pulled it off!
Please, I pleaded to that same universe I’d just referenced to my brother, Please don’t let any of what he said be true…
Please!