by Lindsey Hart
“I… I don’t know what to do.” Evie turned towards Della and wrapped her arms around her. She rested her head on Della’s shoulder. “You have no idea what this year was really like for me. How I wanted to leave before the accident. How I kept hoping that something will change, inside me, or with Thomas, but nothing does.” She laughed bitterly, a laugh that wasn’t a laugh at all. “No, that’s not true. Everything changed. Everything just kept getting worse. Sometimes I can barely stand to be there at all. The times I said I couldn’t make it to the hospital-it was because I didn’t want to go. I didn’t want to hear his screams of pain anymore or sit there and hold his hand and tell him everything was going to be alright when I felt so dead inside.”
Della shivered. She’d never heard her sister talk like that before. Not once, in the entire year Thomas had been in that hospital, had Evie ever said anything like that.
“Stay here then,” Della whispered into her sister’s hair. Her arms tightened around Evie’s shoulders and for the first time, she realized how frail her sister felt. “Don’t go back home. Do my makeup and give me your clothes and I’ll go. I’ll go and I’ll stay and I’ll keep staying until we can just go back to being us again. You’ll see. One day, when all this is behind us, we’ll look back and be glad we did this. I’ll get through to Thomas. I’ll make sure he’s okay. We’ll all be okay. I promise.”
“And what happens if we’re not?” Evie whispered into Della’s shoulder. “What happens if this all goes to hell?”
From the sounds of it, we’re already there, every single one of us. “It won’t. I promise, it won’t.”
Evie shuddered violently. She began to tremble and there was no stopping it. Della knew she had won.
The morning had started off so normal, so sweet and filled with promise and innocence and then her sister had walked in and suddenly, everything Della had ever wanted was on offer. The man she loved could be hers, if only for a short time. She would be the one to help him heal, to walk through the worst of it beside him. It was all she had ever dreamed of.
Except it wasn’t a dream any longer. It was real and she’d made a promise. A promise she wasn’t sure if she could keep. There wasn’t any alternative. She couldn’t fail. She wouldn’t fail. Not if it meant hurting Thomas. That, she could never, ever do.
CHAPTER 3
Thomas
The burn of whisky was always sweeter after the first drink.
Thomas Porter never used to touch the stuff. He used to scoff at people who had a drink or two after a hard day or those who longed to find an ounce of solace at the bottom of a bottle. They were weak. Shameful. Unable to deal with the realities of life.
He used to believe that the reason certain people weren’t successful was because they were the ones holding themselves back. What a fucking joke.
He knew better now. After living through a year of hell that scarred him inside and out. He damn well knew better.
His home office was dark, the shades drawn against the overly warm Phoenix sunlight. It was early. Far too early to start drinking, but then again, he hadn’t slept. Couldn’t remember the last time he had. Sure, he lay in bed, sometimes during the appropriate hours of darkness, sometimes not. He lay there, alone, because he wanted to be. Alone and awake because if he slept then the dreams would come. No, the terrors. Not dreams. Never dreams.
The whisky splashed from the bottle into the crystal glass with a dull hiss. Thomas liked the sound. It was somehow lyrical, musical. His savior in a bottle.
He finally got it now; what everyone else saw in the stuff.
He realized, through a fog, that the bottle was half full. Or was it half empty? Who the fuck cares? It still meant the same thing. He’d still drunk half of it since he got up and fumbled his way to his office just past seven that morning.
He’d heard Evie get up and get dressed. She’d called to him, once. At least she still cared enough to do that. He’d left her alone. The way she wanted to be. He knew. He knew she didn’t love him. Couldn’t. He didn’t blame her. He couldn’t even love himself, the way he was now.
The feel of the flames came on suddenly, hot, wretchedly hot, licking their way up his leg first. Tearing at jeans that had fused with his skin before eating their way up his flesh, climbing higher and higher, the pain all-consuming.
Thomas dropped the glass, half raised to his mouth, as he cried out. It slipped from his hand, the whisky sloshing uselessly over his desk and the floor as the glass hit. It shattered on impact with the hard tile. The sound of breaking glass slammed him back into the present. The flames disappeared.
He brought his hands up and tugged uselessly at his hair. He’d cut it. Shaved the sides and left the top long. Went to the barber earlier that week. He thought doing something normal would make him normal. Instead, he’d faced exactly what he knew he would. The stares. The cold, hard stares of those around him. The barber, a middle-age balding man, staring incessantly at the whirled, twisted patterns of grafted, healed skin on his neck and cheek. He must have wondered just how deep those scars went, how much of his body they covered.
All of it. They covered all of him. Went beyond his skin into his mind and soul.
Thomas bent to inspect the shards of broken glass. He’d been sitting in his desk chair, a modern monstrosity that never really was very comfortable. Despite that, he’d spent the past hours in it. How many, he wasn’t even sure. It was so easy to lose track of time when you didn’t give a shit about it any longer.
He leaned forward and tipped out of the chair, landing unceremoniously on the floor in a pile of broken glass.
It bit into his skin. His face, his hands. He didn’t care. He enjoyed the sharp burst of pain. The fog in his brain made it nearly impossible to right himself. He tucked his hand under his chest, came into contact with more broken glass. More cuts. The pain from those tiny cuts didn’t matter. Not after half his body had been grafted with the skin of the dead. That’s what they did. Used skin from another person, a non-living person, to heal those who should have died but hadn’t.
He managed to get to his knees. His head swam, and he fell back against the desk. How much whisky did I drink? He didn’t know.
Through the soupy fog in his head, the swimming room and the whirling thoughts that never quite left him alone, Thomas stood. He groped his way through the room, gripping the wall to keep vertical. He made his way down the hall, into the large kitchen.
Sunlight streamed through the open blinds. He hated the fucking sunlight. He stumbled over to the window and managed to draw them half closed. He stumbled over to the kitchen table. His hands gripped the cool, hard edge of the glass top. He hated that fucking table. Hated the modern silver chairs that matched. Hated the entire god damn kitchen with its sleek metal backsplash, the white quartz countertops, the cold stainless steel appliances.
The whole house had been for Evie. She’d picked it. She liked modern, new, shiny. The unlived, unloved feel.
It was like a metaphor for their entire relationship.
He didn’t love the house, but he stayed.
She didn’t love him, but she stayed.
This house that he hated had become more of a prison than a sanctuary. The woman he loved disappeared long before that accident, but she stuck with him out of obligation. Out of pity. Out of something. He clung to her because she was all he had left. No one else would want him now. Not like this. Not ever. He craved solitude, but he didn’t want to be truly alone.
The glass was cool under his fingertips. He realized it was his left hand on the table top. His right, the fingerprints melted off, wouldn’t have felt a thing.
The urge to shatter that table top, splinter it like the broken glass in his office, was so great it took all he had not to make a fist and attempt to smash it through the top. It probably would have held. The glass was thick. Impenetrable.
Thomas moved his hand away. His eyes focused on the bloody marks his cut hand had left behind. There were probably splinter
s of glass in his hand. It didn’t matter. Nothing truly did.
His vision cleared, as though the whisky decided to give up the ghost for the moment, and his eyes fixed on the glossy white cabinets.
Inside those pristine cabinets he detested so much were the dishes he hated. Dishes Eve loved. Square things. Heavy. Annoying as hell to wash and dry and put back.
Thomas fumbled his way over to the closet cabinet. He braced his hand on the countertop, satisfied at the smears of red he left on the shining white surface. He ripped open the cabinet and stared at the mounds of dishes stacked inside.
He reached in with a hand that was usually numb. The hand itself had feelings, but the fingertips were deadened. He produced one of the dinner plates. The square was offensive in itself. Who the hell designed something like this?
He drew back his arm. In his mind, he saw his car. Flipped over, on its roof. Gas leaking, leaking everywhere. The spark from somewhere unseen, the flames licking their way through the car, over to him. So very slowly, eating everything, devouring everything.
An inhuman cry of rage was torn from the deep recess of a throat always perpetually raw. Raw with sorrow. Impotent rage. Anger. Hopelessness.
He let the plate fly. Fly across the kitchen and smash into the fridge.
The fucking thing left a dent on impact. It dropped to the floor, still whole. Unharmed.
Thomas just lost it. Blackness closed in around the edges of his vision. The room swam, changed, morphed. Nothing was real. He felt nothing.
He was aware of the sounds of breaking glass, shattering dishes, cups, drawers pulled out and emptied onto the floor.
Then one sound. A voice, crystal, clear, melodic. The one sound that could pull him back from the brink of oblivion.
He opened his eyes.
There, standing across the kitchen, pink high heels surrounded by broken shards of plates, mugs, cups, was Evie.
Thomas slammed back into his body at the same time he felt his knees give out. He was falling. Falling hard. He hit the floor, broken glass biting into his knees. One good, one with the twisted, scarred skin he kept hidden and refused to look at.
He covered his face. Hid it in his arm because he couldn’t look at her. Couldn’t bear to see the judgment and the disappointment and the lack of love that had once shone so brightly.
When he felt her arms, so infinitely soft and warm, whole and perfect, slide around his shoulders, he trembled with shock and shame. He should have died that day. Died and spared them all of this, this constant no man’s land of non-existence.
CHAPTER 4
Della
Della didn’t know what she’d find when she entered her sister’s house. She certainly hadn’t been prepared for the kitchen Armageddon she’d walked into. Her sister’s pride and joy kept so spotless and clean, looked like a bomb had just exploded. The cabinets hung open, one door half ripped off its hinges. Drawers were pulled out and strewn on the floor in the pile of broken glass and dishes. The holes in the cabinets where they had been stared back like blank, sightless eyes.
The fridge, which faced the line of cabinets that Thomas had apparently decided to vent his frustration on, took most of the brunt of the impact. It was dented and scratched. She remembered the day Eve bought those new appliances. That damn fridge cost more than Della made in three months working at the lighting store.
And Thomas. Thomas, the man she loved, had loved since the day she met him, stood shivering and shaking in the middle of all that ruin.
Evie was fucking right. This is a disaster.
Thomas was a gentle man. Quiet, even. He shouldn’t be capable of this kind of rage.
Della watched as Thomas slid away from the counter. His legs just gave out, after she’d called his name and stopped the madness. He fell to the floor, crumbled into the shards of broken glass. He covered his head like he was taking cover. Taking cover from her.
Her chest collapsed. Her lungs literally caved in on themselves. She struggled to breathe. She was moving before she was conscious of what she was doing.
Della squatted down beside Thomas, letting her shoes take the brunt of the broken glass around her. She wrapped her arms around his shoulders. His black t-shirt was sweat soaked and clung to his broad shoulders and barrel chest. It felt strange to touch him, to finally, after five years, wrap her arms around those massive, trembling shoulders. She bent her head to the crook of his neck, the good side and breathed in. He smelled like stale whisky and sweat and spent hope.
“Tommy,” she whispered in his ear. “It’s alright.” Her arms tightened as she moved in closer, pressing herself as tight to him as she could get. The arms of her sister’s blazer, uncomfortable as hell, pressed in against her skin beneath.
She pulled away, unbuttoned the damn thing and threw it into the mess. She rocked back on her heels again, her too short, too tight pink dress riding high up on her thighs. She didn’t care.
“Thomas, look at me,” she commanded gently. “Look at me.” He raised his head, slowly. Blue eyes opened under heavy lids. They were bloodshot, hazy from too much whisky and too little sleep, but they were still as beautiful as they always had been because they were his.
Della reached out slowly and placed her hand on his cheek. The burned cheek. She traced the whirls of scarred skin, skin that had melted and grafted and healed. He closed his eyes and sighed. Low and deep in his throat. A sigh of shocked surprise. She realized just how powerful one small touch could be.
“It’s going to be alright,” she whispered. “I promise.”
Those blue eyes, colder than they ever had been, stared past her. “Look at what I’ve done,” he choked out harshly. “Look at what I’ve fucking done.”
“No, no…” Della placed her other hand on Thomas’s face. She held him there so that he couldn’t look away. “That doesn’t matter. The dishes don’t matter. The glass doesn’t matter. The fridge, the floor, this house, all of it. It doesn’t mean anything.”
“You don’t… care.” His eyes locked on hers.
She knew what he meant. He wasn’t talking about the damn dishes or the kitchen. No, he was talking about her. She silently cursed her sister. Evie. Always the life of the party. Evie, who everyone loved. Evie who had always got what she wanted. And what Della always wanted too. Evie, who had won Tommy Porter and thrown him away long before she’d stumbled into Della’s apartment that morning. She knew it wasn’t her sister’s fault that she’d fallen out of love. Not really, but the heaviness in her heart remained.
“I do,” Della assured him. “I do, Tommy. This has been so hard… for all of us. It’s been so damn hard. I just… I got lost. Forgot what was important.” This isn’t helping. She pulled away a fraction because she had to. She knew she was supposed to help Tommy heal. Heal so she could walk out on him and not look back. She and her sister couldn’t keep playing each other’s lives forever.
Thomas shifted. He rested his head against the cupboards. There was a hole just above, where a drawer had been ripped out.
“You’re bleeding.” Della finally took in the blood on Thomas’ hands and lower, the red stains seeping through his jeans where his knees hit the floor hard.
“Am I?” He stared down at his hands, as surprised as she was.
“Come on. Come to the bathroom. We’ll have a look.”
“I don’t need a mother,” Thomas mumbled.
“I know.” Della slipped her hand under his arm and together they rose shakily, nearly falling again before righting themselves.
“She never came once,” Thomas hissed as they stepped through the broken glass. It crunched uselessly under their shoes.
She knew that too. Thomas’s father had died when he was a kid and his mother raised him. She didn’t do a very good job of it either. According to him, she was always out partying, finding other guys. Always chasing the next best thing. To her, having a child just got in the way. She managed to feed and clothe him, give him a roof and a bed, but she hadn’t done m
ore than that. The day Tommy graduated he moved out. He’d worked hard to better himself. The house he and Eve owned was proof of it. He’d put himself through college, got a Business Degree and got himself hired at some big company that did overseas trading.
The accident was what really improved his circumstances, at least financially. Eve had told Della everything. Thomas’ lawyer sued the other party involved in the accident. An elderly woman who had been driving on the wrong side of the road. Thomas had swerved to miss her and his car had rolled off the road and caught fire. The other party’s insurance paid out right away. Eve had actually laughed bitterly at how quickly it all had happened. Just like that, money was supposed to compensate for everything that had been taken away from someone who had once been so vibrant. Overnight, Thomas had become a very rich man. A man who never had to work again. Who never had to face the world again…
“I came,” Della whispered.
Thomas’ head cranked up and she readjusted her hold on him. He was much larger, taller, more powerful than she was, even after a year wasting away in a hospital bed. It took all of her strength to keep him upright, to keep propelling him forward.
“Of course.” Two identical lines appeared on Thomas’ forehead and Della realized, too late, that what she’d said was obvious. She had to stop thinking like herself and start thinking like her sister.
She decided to say nothing at all and just steered Tommy into the bathroom. There was nowhere to sit. She slammed the toilet closed and he sunk down, presenting his bloodied hand for inspection.
The bathroom was huge. Double vanity, round, freestanding tub, glass shower, huge windows that let in lots of sunlight.
Della bent and, hands shaking, took Tommy’s palm in her own. It was the first time she’d ever touched it and her stomach clenched hard. A flood of emotion washed over her. She couldn’t even begin to define what she felt. It was all jumbled, all mixed up and screwed up. As screwed up as all of this is.