Maria had the bike I dreamed about all year. She sat on it just feet away.
"You ready to go down the hill again?"
We'd been doing it all day, riding down the hill and then back up again. Over and over. The tops of my thighs throbbed. Our street was something of an anomaly, a downward descent from the rest of the street down into a dead-end cul-de-sac. The hill sloped down to just two houses. Mine and Maria's. Not many people liked the area, claiming danger if a motorist lost control, not just for the driver by for those of us who lived at the bottom of the hill.
I didn't mind the hill. It was the best for bike riding – Maria agreed with me. I stared at her bike. The breeze caught the streamers, causing them to sparkle in the afternoon sun. The spokes on the wheels shone a shiny silver, still looking brand new, even though Christmas was several months ago.
"Adeline?"
I blinked and met her gaze. "What?"
"What's wrong? You ready?"
I nodded.
"Yippee!" she shouted as she took off.
I followed behind her. The pink of her shorts were darker than the pink of the bicycle seat. I had always thought it strange that one color could have so many shades. How could they both be pink if they were both so different? The pink on her shorts was too dark. The pink on the seat was light, pretty, perfect.
Life isn't fair.
I heard the rumble of the car engine behind me about halfway down the hill. No one ever came this way – only our parents for the most part.
I pumped my legs, moving them out of coasting mode. A few pumps and I'd caught up to Maria. She looked over at me and laughed. Her small teeth glinted in the sun, just like the streamers on her bike. The bike I wanted so badly.
Happy. That's what she was. Maria was happy. Her bike was pink and her mom and dad didn't fight all the time. Not the way my parents did. They loved her. They loved her so much they bought her the pink Huffy bike I wanted.
Nobody loved me.
The engine rumbled closer. Too close.
I reached for Maria. My opal butterfly ring glinted in the sunlight. She hadn't noticed the car. Hadn't heard the rumble. She laughed, with her mouth spread wide, but I couldn't hear the sound over the engine. She reached out her hand for mine. We'd done this before. Numerous times. Linking hands as we coasted down the hill like some sort of circus act. We imagined we rode matching unicycles on parallel tight ropes that dangled us over a precipice of nets far below. We survived every time. Never a fall. The crowd would go wild.
I didn't take her hand this time. I reached beyond her grasp and shoved against the pink shirt that matched her shorts.
It happened all at once and yet, in slow motion.
One moment Maria had been laughing all the way down Wuthering Lane on her pretty pink Huffy bike and the next she was dead. Dead was too simple a word, I decided. Too simple for the sound she made when the car hit her. She didn't have time to scream, and if she did, I didn't hear it because the engine was too loud.
It was the sound of her bones snapping, and breaking, crushed under the old steel truck, red like my bicycle. Her face had twisted in fear, in pain, the smile gone from her lips. Even after it was over, her hand still extended toward me, lifeless and limp on the ground.
Yet what stood out the most was the pink Huffy bicycle, all bent and twisted from the impact, scuffed up worse than mine. It wasn't really pink anymore either, but red now, like mine. A different shade of red. Darker, but still red. The sparkly streamers were muted, unable to blow in the breeze, too wet, sticky.
Maria's happiness was gone. Something inside me soared.
"Adeline."
I blinked, but there was no solace to be found. My eyes burned.
"Adeline."
Someone stumbled out of the old red truck, cans rolling out onto the cracked pavement. Feet under the truck door – worn brown boots unlaced – were all I could see, but I recognized them. I knew them. Daddy's boots.
"Adeline."
Daddy's hands fumbled with mine.
"Adeline."
There was something desperate about his touch, but I couldn't look at him. I tried to look up, tried to meet his gaze, but I couldn't. I was trapped somehow staring down at his bumbling hands over the cracked pavement. They danced, they twisted.
"Adeline!"
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
I no longer stood on the cracked pavement where Maria died. Where I pushed her in front of my dad's truck.
I pushed her.
I sucked in a breath. I pushed her. My best friend, Maria. I sent her sprawling to her death.
I blinked. I stood in my house. In the foyer, the weathered tile floor beneath my feet.
How did I get here?
"Adeline, what's going on? Talk to me." My gaze met Richard's blue one. His kind, understanding eyes. He stood with me in the place I'd called home for the last several months. He wore rubber boots with snow caked around the soles. It dripped onto my floor, wet.
"I pushed her." The words cracked as they left my throat. I blinked and warm tears seeped down my face. "I didn't remember." I jerked my hands through my hair, my fingers catching on knots, causing a blare of pain in my scalp. "I must have suppressed it. Shit!" My gaze searched around the room. Everything was the same as when I left this morning. "How did I fucking get here? I was—"
"You left Mr. Whitman's room really upset, so I volunteered to help you get home, Adeline." A warm hand touched my shoulder. "You're okay. You're here now. You're at home."
His blue gaze found mine again, and I realized the color was like the deep waters of the ocean, so dark they could almost be mistaken for black if one didn't pay close attention. They calmed me.
"I pushed her." I said the words again. They felt terrible, wrong, but strange and good all at once. It didn't make sense. "I pushed Maria. She was nine years old." The tears continued to leak down my face.
"Shhh, I know. It's okay." Richard's thick arms came around me, pulling me into his embrace. He was so warm, safe. It had been a long time since someone hugged me. Months, maybe longer. I didn't know how much I had missed the basic human contact until this moment. "Things happen, Adeline. They happen in our lives and sometimes that's just the way they are. We can't change it."
His words were familiar. Like something my mom had said to me many times, especially during the years after my dad's arrest for running over and killing Maria.
"We still have to love your daddy, even though he did something so terribly wrong. We have to forgive him. He was sick, baby, a sick man."
I could remember crying into her shoulder while she spoke those words. She never remarried, even after he died of cancer seven years into his life sentence. Her love for him, it seemed to become more real, tangible after he went to prison. Her love for him had never truly blossomed until after he was gone. Ironic.
"He might have hit her anyway, if you hadn't pushed her." Richard's words brought me back to the moment, brought me out of the memory of my mom's arms and back into his strong, warm ones.
"Maybe." I sniffed.
Richard started to pull away, but I couldn't seem to let him go. I didn't want to lose the warmth, the safety of his arms. They protected me. They saved me.
"Don't leave, please." I lifted my head up and met that dark blue gaze. So deep, so familiar. "Stay with me?"
We both knew the request I made. It wasn't for him to stay here and sleep on my couch. It wasn't for him to busy himself in the kitchen with more of those muffins he brought me each week.
"I'm so cold when I'm alone." I whispered the words. They hung there between us for a moment before his lips descended on mine. Warm, firm lips, they stirred something deep inside my belly.
"You're so beautiful, little Line." The endearment should have stopped me, the same one my dad had used for me before I killed Maria and he went away to prison forever, but it didn't. It warmed me more.
We were both panting, grasping at each other like there was no one else in the world
. For me, in that moment, there wasn't. My world had shrunk over the last few months until it included only myself and Aaron Whitman. The thought of him with his twitchy gray eyes, his fall into a manic low, my fault, with his denial of me. An ache spread across my chest and I kissed Richard harder. I tore at his clothes, I bit at his lips.
He responded, accepting me wholly, and picked me up. He carried me to my bedroom, our frantic mouths never parting, until we were on the bed. Richard loomed over me. Our clothes were gone as if they never existed. His body muscular, hard. A mountain of a man. He pressed his thick hardness inside me and I felt something I hadn't, not in a long, long time.
Relief.
I sat across from Aaron Whitman. Across the silver metal table that always separated us. He had calmed over night, enough so that Dr. Wintrone had released him from his imprisonment against the wall.
"How are you today, Mr. Whitman?" I fumbled with my pen in my hand, not looking directly at him. He tapped and hummed. I could feel his gaze on me, twitchy as always.
"So we're back to that, huh? Mr. Whitman." He repeated my words, mocking my voice.
I glanced up, meeting his gaze for the first time since I entered. The hollows of his eyes were black and blue, his nose swollen, probably broken. "Does it hurt?"
"No." He smiled, but it wasn't the same smile, the swelling from his nose made it awkward, different, wrong.
"How about you, Violet. Do you hurt?"
The use of my last name made my breathing falter for a moment. Yesterday I had been only Adeline, and today I was Violet again. I saw a glimmer of something in his eyes – a slight reflection of the Aaron I had come to know – not the volatile Aaron I met yesterday, but kind intelligent one I knew from before. The Aaron I fell in love with.
I cleared my throat. "I wanted to check in with you and make sure that things were better. That you felt okay. I heard from Christopher that you finally got some sleep."
"You didn't answer my question, Violet."
"What question?"
"Do you hurt?"
I chewed on my lips and stared into his bloodshot eyes. "Yes."
"I hoped so." He continued to smile. "You deserve to hurt for what you did to me. It felt good to watch you fall apart yesterday."
My face fell, it twisted and I could feel the tears again. The hurt pressed against my heart.
"Rejection is a funny thing, isn't it? Words, their power. You said I couldn't hurt you yesterday with my words, but I did." The smug look on his face, it twisted my insides. I realized now that I had been powerless against Aaron, all along, I had let him control me, my emotions, every step of the way.
"I don't know what you're referring to, Aaron."
He smiled again, revealing his white teeth. "You shouldn't take it so personally. You hurt me. So I hurt you. Fair is fair. I couldn't hurt you physically, obviously." He rattled his electronic chains. "So I had to hurt you emotionally. That fucking stings doesn't it. To have that pretty little ego of yours smashed to fucking smithereens. I bet you went home and cried all night about it, didn't you?" He chuckled. "I know you did. Just the thought of it had me hard all night. That look on your face—" he leaned forward "—when I shot you down, while you sat on your knees with me inside you. I broke you apart. I told you I'd do it." He tapped his fingers faster. "I told you I'd break you. I just didn't think it'd be so easy."
I chewed the inside of my cheek. Pain bloomed there when I bit too hard. I tasted copper in my mouth. I tried to hold on to myself, to the knowledge I knew – that Aaron had a sickness, that I had propelled him into this behavior. I tried to maintain it, the understanding the blame. I tried to hold on to it, to remind myself. But I couldn't seem to. Like my understanding of the mind, just when I thought I had it, it slipped away, and this was just the same. "You don't know anything." The words were soft, calm coming from my lips, but inside I was anything but calm.
"You don't think so?" He leaned back, still smiling. Even with his face all fucked up and bruised, he was still handsome. I hated it suddenly. I hated him.
"No."
"You know, just because I broke your ego yesterday, doesn't mean I'm done. Your transgressions against me have not yet been repaid, no matter how many tears you shed last night."
Anger. Bitterness. It slammed into my chest like a sledgehammer. "You can say whatever you like, Mr. Whitman. The only thing I cried out last night, was Richard's name. Over and over. While he fucked me."
I shouldn't have enjoyed it, the way the smile deflated from Aaron's face, like an unknotted balloon. I shouldn't have wanted this – my turn to observe the utter destruction and disappointment words could cause. His fingers stopped tapping. He stopped humming.
"You didn't."
"Oh, but I did." I leaned forward, my breasts pressing hard against the table. So while you were here in your little white room jerking off to the thought of my tears, someone else was inside me."
"Shut up." He looked away, but not before I saw it. That violent demon, that monster I'd seen yesterday. It reared its ugly head through his irises. I hurt him and in turn I hurt that being inside him. The one that let them scream. But I wanted more. I needed more. I wanted him to feel that hurt, that sting. It was wrong, but I didn't care. Not now, not today.
"I begged him for more."
"Shut the fuck up."
"He was so…accommodating." I stood up and leaned farther over the table. "He gave it to me. He wouldn't stop until I was satisfied."
"You're a bitch, you know that?"
I licked my lips, heat had spread across my skin, my heart thrummed quickly in my chest, but not from describing the sex with Richard, but from the utter disappointment on Aaron's face. He asked for this.
"Why? Are you jealous, Aaron? Of me? Pathetic old, Violet. Just another person you could manipulate and destroy with your monstrous ways?" My voice grew louder and I cackled from somewhere deep within my soul. "You thought you could break me – with your words?" I laughed, the laugh coming somewhere from dark and bitter. "You thought you were the monster, Aaron. But you were wrong all along."
He met my gaze then. I hoped for tears, but they were dry. "I never said you weren't a monster, Violet. In fact, I said the opposite. I told you there was a darkness in you. It's what drew me to you, the way it festered inside, frantic to escape. You're the one who said you weren't a monster, remember?"
I did remember.
"Unlike the rest of the world, I've accepted my monster. Have you accepted yours?"
Maybe that was it. I had accepted my monster. I had accepted something dark and dismal that lived inside me. She revealed herself to me yesterday as I stood before Aaron Whitman, my body stinging with his rejection, true and utter rejection this time, when the memory of my monster reared her head. She wasn't ugly though, not like I imagined a monster would be. She was sneaky, silent. She kept to herself mostly, but she wanted something more – to spread her wings like she did that day on the cracked pavement of Wuthering Lane. She wanted me to remember. She wanted me to take control of my life like I did that day.
I accepted her yesterday, I realized instantly. She had lain dormant for so long, but with the true memory of Maria's death, I accepted that she was more a part of me than anything else. She was the reason I went to bed with Richard, and she was the reason I stood before Aaron Whitman now.
"I've accepted my monster." Saying the words out loud sent exhilaration through my body. "And I'm done with you."
I didn't have to treat him anymore. This was Ward Z. No one gave a shit about this place. Not the government and sure as shit not anyone else. I didn't have to care about Aaron Whitman. I didn't have to meet with him several times a week. I didn't have to do shit – and no one would care either way.
"Violet, do you want to know why I had the Brotherhood plant that bomb in the Aplex Mall?"
I paused just in front of the door. In the months I had been treating him, he had refused to give me any sort of viable information about his actions that
led to him being here, in Z15, nothing that wasn't laced in miles upon miles of riddles. The Aplex Mall incident had all but sealed the deal for him – that and the chase that ensued over the next several months after the tragic bombing that had killed hundreds of innocent shoppers. The police report talked about catching him in some fancy Detroit hotel, where he holed up with a large artillery of weapons, killing numerous SWAT and policemen, before they managed to subdue him and take him in.
"I wanted to die, Violet. Since the day I lost her, that's all I wanted."
I stood still, my back still turned to him. Ruby.
"I stopped giving a fuck about everything. The only thing I wanted was to die, but not easily. A noose from a rafter would never be enough. I wanted to take as many people out as I could. If she couldn't live, then everyone was meant to die."
I wanted to tell him what a shit reason that was. That people die all time, fairly, unfairly. This was life and it wasn't fair. It was that simple. Plenty of other people lived their lives through tragedies without blowing up shopping malls and destroying hundreds of innocent lives. Plenty of people turned themselves in after a crime, without a blaze of guns and anger in a standoff with police.
But I didn't say any of those things, because I understood. I knew that feeling – the utter feeling of life being unfair and taking matters into my own hands. Maria's face flashed into my head. The soft texture of her shirt tingled against my fingertips. I tried to feel something, regret, sorrow, but I instead I was empty. The only feeling left to me was that of being finished. I was done with this bullshit I'd let myself fall into with Aaron. I didn't need him.
I pressed my hand against the pad and left Aaron without a word.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
"What do you think about this, Patricia?" I placed a coloring book in front of her. There were colorful unicorns on the cover. "Do you think you would like to color today?" I was trying something new with Patricia, especially now that I didn't see Aaron anymore. Not being caught up in him left me with enormous amounts of time to devote to my other patients, especially Patricia. Raymond and Dr. Carl McTavish, didn't have a future outside these walls, and even though Patricia wasn't supposed to have one either, I felt certain that if anyone had a chance – it was her.
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