by Jo Raven
“I don’t know. A second chance? You know the rule: You only want something after you’ve thrown it away.”
Lin’s rules don’t have an order, numbers, or cohesion. They’re life tidbits she gathered on the way to me and is freely handing out whenever she feels they’re needed.
It doesn’t matter. The rules don’t matter. And I especially don’t care if Steve wants a second chance.
Putting my phone down, I head out of the bathroom and straight to the door. I open it, and take in the sight of my ex.
Boy it’s been a while. I stare at his washed-out blue eyes, his dark scruff, his arrogant smile when he sees me, and I feel sick.
I wanted that? Seriously? I can’t recall why.
“Go away,” I tell him, and start to close the door in his face.
He sticks his foot in the opening before I manage. “We should talk, you and I.”
“No, we really shouldn’t.” But I opened the door for a reason, so here goes. “Stay away from me, Steve. I don’t want to see you again.”
His eyes bulge a little. “Oh, you grew a spine sometime between the last time I saw you and now? That’s okay, I like them feisty.”
And he grabs for me, manages to snag my arm and yanks me out of the apartment.
“What are you doing?” I push at him, cold sweat beading on my forehead. “Stop!”
“You want me, Cosima. Don’t pretend.”
“I’m not pretending! I won’t be around for you to screw whenever you feel like it—dammit, let me go!”
“Cos?” Lin tugs on my other hand from inside the apartment. “Let her go, you ass.”
“You wanted me before,” Steve says.
“Well, things change. I learned my lesson.”
“Did you now? I’m willing to take you back. I’m doing you a favor. Who will want you except for me?”
“Take me back? Who asked you to do that?” God, is he for real? “I don’t want you back, not even if you crawled all the way from your apartment here. I don’t need you, Steve, I don’t want you, and I sure as hell don’t love you. So take a hike.”
He stares and finally lets me go. “Holy hell, you sure have changed.”
“Yeah, I’m not a doormat for you to walk over anymore. Surprise.” I slam the door in his face, at long last.
It’s as if a weight has lifted off my shoulders. Not because I ever kidded myself that Steve was the man of my life, but it sure stung when he kicked me out and told me nobody would ever want me.
Merc wants me. Merc says I’m pretty.
And I feel pretty now, I feel wanted. Funny how finding the right person can change how you see yourself. Maybe someone might say I should have saved myself first. Found out for myself that I’m pretty enough, good enough, and not wait for Merc to convince me.
But the truth is, nobody’s an island. We all need people around us who will lift us up and keep us smiling.
A person can really change your life. The right person.
Lin is asking if I’m okay, asking if I want to file a restraining order for Steve, but all I want is to grab my phone and call.
I need to hear Merc’s voice.
But Merc isn’t answering his phone.
“Pick up, pick up…” I mutter, pacing Lin’s bedroom. “Come on, Merc…”
My first reaction is to think he’s ignoring my call, and yeah, I need to get rid of those insecurities. I love him. I trust him. He wouldn’t do that.
So if he isn’t ignoring me, then maybe he left his phone somewhere, or he’s asleep, in too deep sleep to hear the ringing.
Though he doesn’t sleep so deeply, does he? If he sleeps at all.
The knot in my chest tightens.
Don’t, I warm myself. Don’t panic again. No reason for that.
But I can’t stop my mind from running a million miles an hour.
He was at his sister’s house. Maybe Gigi was there. I shoot her a text, then bite my nails until Lin comes and glares at me, gesturing that I should stop.
So I stop, hop off the kitchen table where I was sitting and proceed to pace around the living room.
I can drive myself crazy with this.
Or, you know. I could gather my stuff and drive back to St. Louis. So what if I come off as paranoid to Merc’s family and Merc himself?
“Cos?” Lin is giving me concerned looks.
I’d be giving myself concerned looks if I could. Maybe I should go back to the bathroom mirror and practice them.
Just then my phone pings. ‘Call me,’ she writes.
I blow Lin a kiss to reassure her I’m okay and call.
Gigi replies on the first ring, with the not so reassuring question, “Is Merc with you?”
“No, Merc isn’t with me,” I say for what feels like the hundredth time. “I’m in Springfield with a friend. Where’s he?”
Gigi converses with someone in the background and then comes back, breathless. “Ross, our half-brother, called Octavia. Said Merc called him earlier, sounded drunk or on drugs, then stopped replying, and the line disconnected. And I was worried already. I tried calling him earlier because he left suddenly, and he’d been sick, and he won’t reply, and his bedroom door is locked.”
“Sick? What do you mean? Are you at his apartment?”
“Yes. JC says the door was locked when he arrived, but nobody answers. I can hear his phone ring from inside when I call.”
Oh shit.
“I’m scared,” she whispers. “We talked earlier today about his dreams, and something happened to him long ago, and oh God, Cosima…”
“I’m on my way. Open that door now. Find someone to open it, okay?”
“Jarett’s here. He’s working on it. Listen… JC says Merc takes sleeping pills sometimes.”
Of course. I hadn’t thought of that. He has trouble sleeping, so it makes sense, but if something has happened to him…
No. I refuse to even consider that option.
“Get the door open, and I’m on my way,” I repeat and hang up.
To do what exactly, I don’t know, and I’m glad she doesn’t ask. I have to be there, is all. And I will be.
“What is it?” Lin grumbles as I drag her out the door and down the stairs to her car. “Just tell me.”
“It’s Merc. Please, Lin, hurry!”
“I am hurrying! But what is the rush? What happened now?”
“Nobody knows. He’s locked himself up in his room and isn’t answering his phone, and…”
“And you think he has harmed himself?”
I gape at her as she unlocks her car. “No, of course not. Merc wouldn’t do that.”
Right?
I mean, what would you do if you couldn’t sleep? If every time you closed your eyes, you sank into blood and horror?
No, Merc wouldn’t.
“I don’t know if anything happened,” I tell her as we start driving, still dressed up for a night out, made up and dolled up, as if we’re actresses in the wrong movie. “But I had a gut feeling that something was wrong, and just pray I wasn’t right.”
We’ve barely left Springfield when I get a call from Gigi that they got the door open and called the paramedics.
Merc won’t wake up.
How many sleeping pills did he take? He can’t die from just that, right? Unless he mixed them with booze.
No. He’ll be okay. I keep telling myself that as we speed toward St. Louis, but truth is, the next hour is the longest of my life.
I Google ‘sleeping pills overdose’ anyway. Turns out he should be okay.
He will be. He has to.
“Where to?” Lin asks as we wind through evening traffic. “Hospital?”
“No.” I check Gigi’s latest text. “It seems… Wait.”
Another text comes in from Gigi. “He’s awake.”
Oh thank God. “We’re going to Merc’s,” I tell Lin and rattle off the address.
Then I hit call.
“How is he?” I blurt the moment she answers. No
hellos, not how-are-yous. “Is he all right?”
“Awake, like I said.” Gigi sounds like she’s on a wind-buffeted desert somewhere, her voice cut by static. “Paramedics said he’s fine. He needs to sleep the pills off. He can’t remember locking the door.” She laughs nervously. “Guess subconsciously he wanted to escape from my interrogation? Oh God, is this my fault?”
“No, Gigi.” It feels slightly weird that we’re talking like this, when I only saw her that one time at their family lunch. “He’s just tired, that’d be my guess. He took the pills to sleep, miscalculated. That’s all.”
“I just…” Her breath hitches. “I don’t know what to do. How to help him.”
“We’ll find a way.”
“He doesn’t want to talk about it, about the dreams, he says he can’t remember what happened that night…”
“What night?” What did I miss? “Gigi, what night?”
“The night his nightmares started,” she whispers, and I’m not even sure that’s what she said, the line is so broken.
“You were there? You saw what happened?”
“No, I found him afterward. He was so little, he didn’t want to speak, and then what he said made no sense, and he just stopped… stop talking about it. And his memories turned into dreams.”
Silence falls. I don’t know what to say, what to ask.
Finally, I just say, “I’ll be there in a few minutes,” and hang up.
I thought something was bothering him, some unresolved issue—stress from work, from his studies, from not knowing what exactly he wants.
But if his dreams are memories, and he dreams of blood, and a body… then what could he have gone through? My golden boy with the shadow slash across his soul.
The man I love.
How much is there that I don’t I know about Mercury Watson?
Chapter Twenty-Five
Merc
Ugh. Ow.
Hell.
Light burns through my lashes like a laser beam straight to my brain. I groan and try to throw an arm over my face, but moving is hard.
Hell, waking up today is hard. My body’s heavy. My head weighs about a ton and is sunk so deep in my pillow they’ll have to cut me out.
Okay, I can do this. Rolling my head to the side, I grab the edge of the mattress and pull, but can’t move. Shit, it’s like trying to dig my way out of the earth like a zombie during the goddamn apocalypse.
Someone is sitting by my bed, slender arms folded on the edge, dark head resting on them.
“Cos…” I whisper her name, and my voice’s hoarse as fuck. My throat burns, my stomach hurts. I’m so thirsty.
I feel like roadkill. I feel sick. Reminds me of one time as a kid when I’d contracted a nasty case of the flu and stayed in bed for so long I’d become one with the mattress. Sort of how I feel right now.
But CosieCat is here. Even though I’m not sure what happened and why I feel like something the cat dragged in, seeing her here, with me, puts me at ease.
Planting my hand on the mattress, I push myself up in a sitting position, then have to stay still as my stomach revolts and tries to send its contents up my throat.
Fuck, I hate puking. What the hell did I do, go on a bender? And why is Cos asleep by the side of the bed and not on it?
“Merc?” Cos lifts her head.
Not asleep anymore.
I take some deep breaths, will my stomach to settle. “Hey.”
“Oh God, Merc.” Shooting upright, she all but falls on top of me, wrapping her arms around my neck. Her sweet scent, her voice, the tickle of her soft hair on my skin, it feels right. “You’re awake.”
“Yeah,” I croak, lifting arms heavy like tree logs and wrapping them around her.
“I was afraid that… I don’t know but…” She babbles against my neck, her breath warm. “You scared me so badly.”
“Why? What’s going on?”
She lifts her head, gives me a serious look. “You serious? Jesus, Merc. How do you feel?”
Never a promising question. “A bit off?” I say cautiously. “I’m okay, though.”
I can’t remember why I feel like shit, but instinct tells me that’s probably not the right thing to mention right now.
Not with the concern I see etched on her face, and not even knowing what I did to cause it.
“You called Ross,” she says, sitting back on the bed.
I blink. “I did what?” I expected anything but those words, and I open my mouth to deny it, but then I hear an echo of Ross’s voice in my mind, asking me what the hell I want and why I’m asking about an ax…
“And you took too many sleeping pills.”
Ah fuck. I rake a hand through my hair, keeping the other on her. So that’s what happened. “I just wanted to sleep.”
“Just wanted… God, Merc.” Her mouth twists. “I should have been here for you. I shouldn’t have left.”
“Cos, no. It’s not like that, okay?” I tug on my hair, but my head hurts, so I stop. Thinking hurts. “Did I… What happened? How come you’re here?” Held in her arms, I don’t feel defensive. I only want to know. “How do you know about Ross?”
“He called Octavia. It seems you got him worried, too.”
“A talent of mine, it turns out,” I say drily.
And hey, give this man a prize. How the fuck did I manage to worry Ross? Guy has no feelings. Certainly doesn’t give a damn about me, or this family as a whole.
Heh, I probably shocked him half to death by calling him, though. That has to be it. ‘How to shock Ross Jones: Ask him how he is. Show some drunken kindness.’
Damn. Why does the thought make me sad?
“He was in my dreams,” I say.
“Ross?”
“Yeah.”
“Is that a new development?”
“It’s not the first time.” But something was different… what was it?
Something more.
“They’re outside,” she says.
“Who’s outside?”
“Your family. Well, your sisters, and Jarett and… Matt? The bearded one. Your mom was here too but went home at some point.”
Jesus fuck. I want to solve this. I feel like shit, but my mind’s clearer than it has been for weeks. “I think I dreamed… I dreamed of the body, and the face belonged to Ross. Christ, that was weird. But I wasn’t as terrified as I usually am, for whatever reason.”
“Ross was the body?”
“Yeah, I know, it makes no sense.”
And I wanna make sense of it, find out what it all means, get it over with. It’s time to face my demons and lay them to rest.
I’m sitting in bed, propped up by a stack of fluffy pillows that probably belong to JC, my family gathered around me, like one of those paintings by some classical painter or other. The Sick Man. Behold how they all grieve.
Only I’m not dead, or even sick. Just nauseous and tired.
Same old.
At least Cos is sitting beside me on the bed, holding my right hand in hers.
“How could you do that?” Octavia says, her voice shaky. Her big eyes are red. “What are you taking? Are you taking benzos? You could get addicted.”
And let the grilling commence.
“Not taking benzos, sis, I—”
“You can’t keep taking sleeping pills so carelessly. You could have died! And if you mix them with—”
“I know. Hey, look, I’m not normally this fucking careless, and I didn’t try to off myself, I swear. I could have taken a handful of pills and still not have di—”
“It’s not funny, Merc!”
“Fuck, I know, okay? I’m sorry I worried you all.” I glance around at their pale, exhausted faces and am glad Mom isn’t here right now. “So fucking sorry. I was too tired to think straight, and I made a mistake.”
“God.” Octavia sort of launches herself on top of me and hugs me tight. “I can’t lose you, little brother. Don’t ever scare me like this again.”
Cos moves away slightly, to give us space, but I grip her hand tighter, keeping her beside me.
“I won’t,” I promise Octavia, and all of them. “I’m ditching the pills, okay?”
Though God knows how I’ll be able to catch any sleep without them.
One problem at a time.
Then Gigi is there, too, beside Octavia. She slips an arm around my neck and mumbles something accusatory against my shoulder.
“Sorry, sis,” I tell her.
“You should be sorry,” Matt growls. “That was hell, man. Turned my beard gray. Not cool.”
I grin shakily at him. “You know my sister finds those gray hairs sexy, right? Soon you’ll be a silver fox, and—”
“Merc!” Octavia swats at my arm, reddening, but at least the atmosphere lightens.
“And she’ll love that, too,” I finish, exhausted, and let my head fall back against the pillows. I still feel like shit, that much hasn’t changed.
“Okay guys, back off.” That’s Jarett who tugs Gigi away, nudges Octavia to the side, and pushes a mug of steaming coffee into my hands. “Life elixir,” he says gravely.
“I owe you,” I reply just as gravely, accepting the mug and taking a long gulp of sugary coffee. My stomach twists, but I’m determined to ignore it. “Anyone else who wants to play ‘flay Merc alive’?”
“Don’t be mean.” Gigi sniffles as Jarett gathers her into his arms. “And overdramatic. We thought the worst there for a while.”
The alternative “guilt Merc to death” game is even crueler, let me tell you.
“Sorry,” I say again. It’s becoming an automatic response by now.
“Will you talk now about your dreams?” she continues, on a roll. “Or will you keep ignoring them? I told you we had to talk.”
“You did. You were right.” I sigh. “So was Octavia. And Cos. I thought that… if I didn’t talk about them, they’d go away. Like any self-respecting dreams would. But guess what,” I finish a tad bitterly. “I won the lottery with these nightmares. They’re here to stay.”
“No, they won’t.” Cos slips her arm around me, and some of the tension leeches out of my body. “You said it. We’ll get to the bottom of this.”