Twice Bitten

by Diana Greenbird

  ‘You have not.’

  ‘No? How would you know?’

  I laughed at the idea of anyone coming to talk to Christian about their trouble, let along seasoned criminals. Christian mostly communicated through grunts. The only people who got fully formed sentences from him was Rayan and Jennings – and me. Then again, his silent type might make him perfect for people to unload and talk at him.

  Christian only spoke in long sentences when he was trying to bring me out of my own head, either by making me laugh or by drawing me in with nonsense I couldn’t help but argue with. It was strange how easily we slipped back into our old roles.

  ‘See, it wouldn’t really be that big of a deal if you spoke to me. It’d be purely in a professional capacity. No friendship involved. No need to worry about putting me in any more danger or whatever shit you’re thinking so hard about.’

  I should have stayed silent. Whilst I’d chosen to visit him, I’d never really planned on coming clean about what sent me here in the first place. Part of me had never believed I’d see him even if I did make the drive up here. But my problems were still right there at the end of my switched off phone. And I had no one else. I’d give myself one last selfish moment before I gave friendship up for good.

  I unloaded on him. From where I left off in my letter, to crashing my baby and waking up in the hospital again. The stupid normal drama at high school with Emma and Gi. How I’d punched her because she’d stolen my clothes and how my continuing friendship with Gi pissed off Emma to no end, to the point that she’d told the whole school what had happened between me and Christian.

  It felt vapid and utterly ridiculous telling him all the petty high school BS I was going through when Christian hadn’t even been able to graduate because he’d been too busy getting a twenty-five-year prison sentence.

  ‘I didn’t run because of the gazette. I’ve had two years of dealing with that shit and I can mostly get through it. I have the occasional panic attack, but,’ I shrugged. That was beside the point. ‘It was that they were both defending me. Even Martha, who’d never even shown an inkling that she liked me, was trying to protect me – protect me from my own history.’

  Christian studied me from his chair, prison jumpsuit worn down from hard wear, his arms still crossed, his face a mask as he read every emotion that flitted through my mind. He’d stayed silent throughout my story, barely moving. Christian was one of those people who listened when you spoke. More than just to your words, but your every gesture as well: what you said when you were taking a breath in between words. I’d never understood how people could think he wasn’t anything more than a thug. How could they not see the intelligence working behind those beautiful brown eyes?

  ‘I shouldn’t have been selfish, but I thought I could just play at being normal just this once and it wouldn’t come back to bite me in the ass. Brianna’s words got to me, that it was my final year and all. My last chance to try. And I got carried away spending more time with them.

  ‘My original plan was to stick around after my birthday, stay at Maybelle’s until graduation, but it’s better if I just skipped town altogether.’

  Christian knew this wasn’t about some high school drama. He was the only person I’d talked to about my theory on Death.

  ‘You’re birthday’s in eight weeks. Where would you go ‘til then?’

  ‘New York. It’s where I was heading anyway. I could hang out with Ali.’

  Christian was the only one from my past who’d met Ali and knew who she was. Not that she was part of the Order, but he knew she was a hacktivist and involved in some shady business. Christian and Nowak had certainly gotten along the one time they’d met since they could bond over cars, Nowak being a street racer and all.

  But as much as he’d gotten on with them, he didn’t like me spending long periods of time with them. He liked that they were literally on the other side of the States to me and our only contact was mostly over the phone or online. Christian’s dad had been part of a gang, running guns. He knew how unsafe that life was, especially for people who lived on the edge of that world with no protection. Since he had no idea about the Blood World, or what the Order was, he had been left to the assumption that Ali and Nowak were part of an obscure gang. He didn’t want me caught up with any of that shit. Especially with my bad luck with Death.

  ‘Sure. Because that’s safer than high school,’ he said sarcastically.

  ‘Right, and nothing bad ever happens to me at school?’ I asked.

  Christian grimaced, his eyes traveling down to my stomach were most of the scarring was from the school shooting.

  ‘I worry about you when you’re in New York,’ he admitted.

  He’d said that before, when I left for my birthday a couple months after we’d met. He hadn’t met Ali at that point; he only knew what I’d told him about her and her gang. We’d gotten into a massive argument. Him telling me that he didn’t want me to go, me shouting at him that I always went back to New York for my birthday and I wasn’t going to change my mind because he was uncomfortable with it.

  When I’d got back, he’d told me about his dad and how his mum had been killed because of some bad blood between gangs. Then, he’d pulled out the guitar he’d bought me with all his savings.

  ‘I was an asshole. More expensive the present, better the apology, right?’

  ‘I worry about you all the time, really, sweetheart,’ Christian admitted.

  I didn’t give him any platitudes like “there’s no reason to worry about me” or “I’m fine”. That didn’t work. Not when he knew my history.

  ‘I’ll probably not be able to head to New York straight away,’ I said, changing the subject. ‘For one, the gas. Two, I don’t have any of my stuff with me.’

  ‘Isn’t your friend going to want their car back?’ Christian asked me.

  ‘Probably. I mean, it’s just borrowed for now, but stealing it would be the trifecta since I already broke his windows once and then almost crashed it when I was high.’

  ‘Him?’ Christian asked. Christian’s lips curved up into a half smile and he bit his lower lip as he always did when pieces of a puzzle he was trying to solve came together in his mind.

  ‘It’s not like that.’

  Christian chuckled low in this throat. ‘Let me guess, this is the friend you conveniently missed out from that whole story you told me about the cheerleaders? The one you’re actually afraid of getting too close with. The other half of the “both” when you only mentioned Martha by name who defended you today.’

  I didn’t answer him. Of course he bloody read between the lines and saw the details I’d missed out from my retelling of what had been going on with me.

  ‘I’m not some halfwit who thinks you’re waiting for me out there. I specifically told you not to, remember? I’d like to think there’s some guy looking out for you.’

  ‘I’m not dating him.’

  ‘No? Shouldn’t be too hard to tell me about him, then.’

  I crossed my arms, mirroring Christian’s position. I stayed silent.

  ‘Come on, give a guy a little bit of info here. All I’ve got is four plain walls most of the time and the same bastards to talk to.’

  ‘I thought you said you’d found pleasure in the art of reading,’ I said.

  ‘What are words from published authors in comparison to the astounding word smithery of one such as the incomparable Liv Morgan?’ Christian asked, a flirtatious grin creeping into his smile. ‘Plus, you know, if you don’t tell me I’ll start to think that you must be dating him as you had no trouble telling me all about Gi and Martha and… was it Jenny?’

  I held in a groan. He knew exactly how to play me. ‘He’s insufferable, like you.’

  Christian laughed. His first proper laugh, not just a chuckle. His laugh reminded me of melted syrup on a chocolate cake, sickly sweet, delicious – and something that even when you knew it was bad for you, you still craved again. God, I’d missed that laugh.


  ‘He’s a cocky asshole with a chip on his shoulder?’

  That was a quote he was pulling out of our past – when some girl in my class had asked who I was walking home with from high school. He’d ended up overhearing and had punished me that night, by flushing the toilet at the exact moment I’d stepped into the shower, turning it freezing cold, and then opening my bedroom window so I continued to freeze my ass off.

  Cold body to match your cold, cold heart, Morgan, Christian had told me through our bedroom wall, laughing until Darren had told him to shut up.

  I kept my feelings close. Even though Christian and I had spent a lot of time together outside of high school, we always kept it private. I thought as soon as someone else caught on what it meant to me, it would stop. So, to anyone who asked me about my relationship with my foster brother, I’d said it was alright, but he was a bit of an asshole. Only his friends knew the truth. That hadn’t really helped with the trial.

  I snorted. ‘Yeah. Kind of.’

  I thought about it – him, Emerson. No matter how much I called him a prick or an asshole, that didn’t quite fit. I’d always been the one to antagonise him – apart from that short week where he’d stepped up to the plate and bugged the hell out of me for breaking into his car and stealing his sketch. He was confident, but not in a cocky way. Not really. And if he had a chip on his shoulder, it wasn’t because he thought too much of himself. It was because he was genuinely good – at baseball, at singing, at being a friend, his artwork, studies.

  ‘I mean, not exactly,’ I faltered. ‘He’s confident, but he’s not an asshole. It’s mainly an act. Some role he plays…’

  I shook my head. I wasn’t sure why he tried being the It crowd super star. Being dissociated most of the time it didn’t make sense that he’d play baseball or attend parties and practice. But him attending high school in general didn’t make any sense. All of it was a role to him.

  ‘Is he any good?’ Christian asked. ‘Acting like a confident asshole?’

  ‘Excellent. He could give you a run for your money.’

  Christian was an actual dick. Not to me or his friends. He learnt long ago that being in foster care, with your dad a con, and dead biker-whore mom, meant you were likely to get the shit end of the stick when it came to the social hierarchy at high school. He dodged that bullet by being the resident bad boy no guy wanted to mess with, and no girl looked at long enough in case her panties dissolved, and she accidentally became pregnant.

  ‘What’s he really like?’ Christian asked, ignoring my lie.

  ‘Honest. Open. He quotes Classic prose like he’s got Google hardwired into his brain. There’s not a thing I’ve found that he’s not good at – he’s a baseball god and sings like he’s already got a record deal.’

  He was the opposite to Christian who wouldn’t touch a high school extracurricular. School was something to be tolerated because if he didn’t go, he got punished, but it wasn’t something he bothered to try at, and would have thrown a full soda can at anyone who joked about him spending more time there. The only extra time he spent on campus was for detentions, and he’d told me he only went to them because it delayed having to go home for longer. He got less detentions when I moved into our group home.

  ‘Is he nice to you?’ Christian’s voice didn’t have that teasing tone anymore. But he hadn’t gone back to being fully serious, either. Like he knew that might make me shy away from answering him.

  I nodded. ‘When he’s not actively trying to get a rise out of me. He’s a good friend,’ I said, thinking about him and Gi at first, but then remembering how he remembered my favourite drink, always took me to get something to eat after his practice and talked to me about whatever book I was reading on the drive home.

  ‘You like him.’

  It sounded like a statement, rather than a question.

  ‘It doesn’t matter whether I like him or not. I’m not going back,’ I said.

  I certainly couldn’t go back because I did like him. Emerson didn’t deserve whatever hell me being in his life would bring him.

  ‘You’re just never going to see him again?’

  ‘Sure. It’s no biggie, right? Cutting people out of your life is really easy when you think about it.’

  Christian swore at me. ‘Don’t be petty. It doesn’t look good on you. This isn’t the same as what happened with us. I didn’t get screwed over because I was protecting you or because I was your friend and Death got jealous,’ Christian said, his voice tight, knowing exactly why I was running. ‘It just happened. Not every relationship you have is going to be shadowed by the Grim Reaper. You just focus so hard on the ones that do, you can’t see the ones that survive.’

  The guards were motioning to the clock, telling people visiting time was nearly over. I couldn’t believe that hours had already passed talking to him.

  ‘Don’t run away,’ he told me. ‘Leave when you’re eighteen, sure. It’s not like you need to graduate anyway. You’re smart as hell and can always get your GED later. But go back. If you leave now, people will assume that you ran away because that cheerleader bitch was actually onto something.’

  ‘I don’t care what people think.’

  ‘No, you just care about an invisible entity’s jealousy.’

  He made me sound insane when he put it like that.

  ‘At least stick around for the next few weeks. I got a year with you. At least give this poor sap a few more months to love you.’

  I tensed. ‘He doesn’t love me.’

  Christian laughed at me. ‘He’s met you. From the way you talk about him, it’s clear you’ve spent a lot of time together. Believe me, he was probably in love with you from the second he saw you.’

  Since the second I saw him, I fled from his presence then only came back to punch him in the face with a fist of silver rings, I doubted that.

  ‘Take it from someone who knows, even if Death is your BFF and is a jealous asshole whose out to get anyone who gets close to you, some things are more important. And you don’t get to be the one to decide what’s more important for other people. Even to protect them.’

  ‘Look who’s talking,’ I said, my throat closing. He’d done the exact same: shutting me out of his life.

  ‘Yeah, and I’ve spent the past two years re-reading every one of your letters and asking Rayan to stalk you online. And you still came here, and I still nearly broke my neck trying to make it to visit you in time.’

  I dug my nails into my thighs through my jeans. I wanted to wrap my arms around him more than I’d ever wanted to before. I had a suspicion he did, too.

  ‘I stand by what I said: you need to move on with your life and leave me behind. But I’m still rooting for you. And just because it can’t be me, doesn’t mean I don’t want there to be someone else out there for you that…’

  Christian trailed of.

  ‘You deserve it all, sweetheart. And I can’t give you anything. By all means, run if he’s not worth it. But don’t run away because he is worth it.’

  19

  Walking away from Christian for the second time was almost as hard as the first, but I managed because I already knew how to live without him. It was painful, with a hole always there, but I knew that life got in the way enough that I could forget, for the most part, that there had ever been a person who filled that void.

  I bit the bullet and turned on my phone to be able to call Ali and ask her to book me a room in the nearest motel. I didn’t look at the thousand text messages or calls. My voicemail was maxed out.

  This wasn’t the first time I’d run and hadn’t had any money on me to be able to pay for a place to stay. Plus, places didn’t tend to rent out rooms for underage kids. Ali always sorted something for me. She said she’d prefer I bug her, than I sleep on a park bench somewhere. Because she was a skilled hacker, she was able to access the funds that would be released to me when I was eighteen and pay for my stays from there. At least I assumed that’s what she did. Unless Ali herself ha
d been footing the bill for me every time I ran…

  I was too tired to be hungry by the time I collapsed into the sagging bed of the seedy motel Ali had found for me. She would have gotten me a better place, but I asked for literally the closest place she could find as I didn’t have much gas left in the tank.

  I pulled free the tight laces on my boots and threw my shoes by the side of the bed. I didn’t bother to climb under the duvet, just laid on top. In the darkness, the lights from the traffic outside periodically lit up the room as a car or truck sped by. The sound of tires, splashing the puddles left behind from a downpour from a while ago, could be heard through the thin walls.

  I felt like I could breathe again. I was no longer burning up. I could almost feel the chill of the air working its way through the gap under the door into the threadbare carpet. My heartbeat was slow and steady. My eyelids felt heavy. And then there was darkness.

  I woke up past midnight with an uncomfortable feeling in my panties like I’d pissed myself. I walked to the bathroom and pulled down my trousers to find my underwear stained red.

  I’d not had a period for four years since I’d recovered from the surgery to my stomach. After the shooting, my periods had been painful to an unbearable degree. Whatever the bullet had done to my insides, the surgery had simply aggravated it more as the doctors had tried to save my life.

  To solve the problem, I’d tried going on the pill, but that hadn’t worked. Then I’d had the contraceptive injection. It had been a lifesaver and stopped my periods altogether. No more debilitating period cramps. My last annual injection had only been five months ago, there was no way I should be on right now. And even if I was, how was I not curled up into the foetal position, crying in pain?

  I plugged up the sink, filled it with soapy water and threw in my panties. I then stripped off all my clothes and stepped into the shower, washing the staining on the insides of my thighs. I stayed in a while longer, letting the heat from the water soak into my cold bones.