Falling
I took three quick steps back. “I have no idea why I did that.”
Shit. ShitFUCK. I was losing my fucking mind. I spun, stalked, arms shaking, legs shaking, brain shaking because—
Because I was falling, sinking fast like a bowling ball dropped off a skyscraper, and I didn’t know which way was up and which was down—knew nothing but that I was going to smack the pavement at any moment and bleed all over the ground.
I scooped up a half-empty fifth of Jack D on the coffee table—there were a few bottles there of various alcohols I hadn’t noticed before, and perhaps they’d dug them out for Ellie knowing he’d need it when we got Sean out. Regardless, my hand locked on the neck, and I screwed off the cap and tossed it over my shoulder. Took a long draught that sent fire rolling down my throat, flames licking my insides. And another. And another. And it wasn’t quieting the noise in my brain, wasn’t stopping the shaking—wasn’t helping the scary, nervous energy in my gut.
The bottle clanked on the coffee table, honey brown liquid sloshing around and around, and I dropped to sit on the couch. My head did a spinny thing and I decided to stare at my knees. At least they weren’t staring back.
Like Nic.
I didn’t like girls. Not like that. Not even as friends because they were catty and irritating. I’d been a tomboy as a kid and even in a business skirt set at the office, working with other women in the graphics department, I always gravitated toward the men. Plus even though she clearly did like girls, I shouldn’t have assumed she’d like me. Because I’d been born missing that critical piece the rest of humanity have that made them worth the goodness of others. Maybe it was the demon in my DNA. Maybe I was just a sociopath. But there was no reason in the world for Nic to like me.
I shouldn’t have done that. I just—
I couldn’t even finish a thought about it so I picked up Jack again—there wasn’t a lot left but I didn’t have much weight on me and it hit hard, smashing into my brain with a lovely haze.
Movement in my peripheral vision. I didn’t look up. Didn’t pay any attention, like if I kept staring at the grimy, bloodstained knees of the scrubs I stole from the med unit, I wouldn’t know she was there—wouldn’t feel the couch cushion sink under her weight, wouldn’t feel her presence pressing in. Wouldn’t feel that fucking light.
“Peri,” she said softly.
I shut my eyes. Squeezed them tighter as her arm draped over my shoulder, as her hand touched the back of my head tentatively and drifted through my hair. Reassuringly. Gentle.
“It’s okay.”
It was stupid. That’s what it was. Not okay but fucking stupid. And I wasn’t mad at myself anymore for hitting on a girl—it wasn’t that at all. I couldn’t even wrap my fucking brain around doing that.
No, it was her. It was thinking I was...I don’t know, good enough for her. She was day, and I was night, and the two didn’t mix. I killed people, happily. I cheated on my husband. I left my kids during the moment I should’ve stayed with them. Drew loved me, tried to help me, and I killed him.
She was too bright for me. Too much. And if I stayed near her too long, I’d burn.
So that’s what I said. “It’s too much light and I’m too broken. I’m sorry. I just...I don’t know what...I’m doing. Now.” It sounded lame but it was all I could come up with. “I’m sorry.”
“You...don’t have anything to be sorry for.”
I gave a snort of a laugh, my eyes opening briefly to glare at the floor as I shook my head. “I’ve got plenty to be sorry for.”
“Not this time.”
I looked at her. I had to, like I couldn’t control it, like I had no say in the matter. I had to turn and meet her gaze, had to see her sad blue eyes, had to feel that fucking sun on me again.
If you seek out that light again, perhaps you’re not entirely broken.
“I don’t know if I can... You’re right, okay? What you said in the car. Maybe it’s...brighter now, but I still don’t think...”
A small nod, glance to the side. Beat of silence passed. Then: “I was talking about me.”
Maybe I wasn’t entirely broken then because I kissed her again.
And she kissed me back.
Why, I didn’t know. Why me, how she could think of me that way when I was nothing but razor edged darkness, but for some reason she liked me and I didn’t have the energy to question that further tonight. Her lips were soft. So was her skin, I realized, because I’d reached up to touch her face, cup her cheek. The world just...melted. It seeped back, all the guilt and horror in my mind slinking into the far shadows, tension easing from me as the moments passed. Like I’d stopped falling, or at least stopped worrying about hitting the ground, floating there in a quiet calm. Like Oblivion.
Like home.
Lips hit my chin, my throat, pausing over my pulse, and it slammed into me suddenly that I shouldn’t be worried about the same-sex-ness of the situation, but that she was a vampire.
I must’ve tensed because Nic leaned back and chuckled. “I’m not going to bite you.”
“I wasn’t...okay, yeah, I thought you were.”
She shook her head, looked away, leaning on the back of the couch. “I’ve never taken blood from a living human, never bitten anyone. Never, only ever took...”
Annalise’s. Her wife. I didn’t know how vampirism worked, but it must’ve involved an exchange of bodily fluids like that. And I felt like shit because I hadn’t even been thinking of her. I’d been so in my head...twelve years, she’d been with the vampire. Longer than my marriage to Ken—longer than I’d known him. And that she dove in to be turned must’ve meant they’d had a happy relationship. I didn’t know how she was functioning, with that kind of loss.
“I’m sorry.” I seemed to be saying that a lot lately.
She glanced at me, cocked a brow playfully, but her eyes were still sad. “For?”
“Annalise’s death.”
“Thank you.”
I leaned back and stared up at the ceiling, saying nothing. She did the same. Just...just the possibility seemed to open up before me, wide and endless. Maybe...maybe I’d fix myself, somehow. Maybe there was more. Maybe I didn’t need to die.
Maybe I still did. But I didn’t need to die tonight—there was always tomorrow.
“The Veil could still be coming,” I said absently.
“I know. We can take a car.”
We could but I was exhausted. “You can. I want to see what happens.”
“So do I.” Her hand folded over mine and I let it, let her sit next to me, let the silence pick up and let my brain go a little while longer, wandering, wondering, and weighing the possibility of life.
****
I awoke on the couch. A floor lamp still burned in the corner and I wondered how the vampires could stand it—could stand never knowing what time it was. Granted, the underground Bravo Division bases had the same sort of issue, but I usually went out at least once a day with them and kept some sort of schedule.
My arm was asleep, tangled with Nicolette.
Nicolette. Shit.
We’d fixed the blinds as well as we could—her vampire strength bent them back easily and then it was just a matter of running duct tape over them to cover any holes. Then...I guess we fell asleep.
I still didn’t know what happened. I knew my head was all over the place. I didn’t know what any of this was, though, and I itched, needing to get up and move. And think. Not that I was a big thinker, but wandering around the busy anonymity of the city would be good for me.
I eased up, rose on shaky legs. A shower would be nice but the longer I hung around, the greater the chance she’d wake and then it might be Weird and Awkward, or it might be Time to Talk or...fuck, I didn’t know. I was just now contemplating the possibility of not killing myself for a while longer. I didn’t want it any more complicated than that, and now that the emotion had worn off and I no longer literally stared a gun down its barrel, I was more than a little freaked out.
I stole across the floor and crept into Nic’s room. My stuff was still there, neatly tucked to the side. I slipped out of the ruined scrubs pants and into a pair of my own jeans. The shirt I left and just threw a sweatshirt on over top, though the green scrubs top was bulky beneath and the hem stuck out at the bottom. My original runners were there as I’d left the place in the store bought ones, which were now wherever Drew had put them after stripping me down and sticking me on a hospital bed.
Drew.
His name was a big black space in my brain stuffed full of all kinds of things I didn’t want to think about, so I shoved it aside. Nic was still out when I passed the living room again and if she stirred at all when I slipped into the elevator and went downstairs, I didn’t hear her.