“Things change. Let’s go.”
Everything in me wanted to go to Boo-Boo, but she hadn’t even looked my way when I started speaking.
Fuck.
Mental fingers crossed, I followed the other guy to group. Sixty hellish minutes later, I was back in the community room, but she was gone.
The next day, she arrived at the same time and they decided to haul me out again. Okay. Fine.
I punched the therapist in the group session. That got me locked in my room for twenty-four hours, a sedative—not bad—a new therapist, and a new time.
When they brought her in on the fourth day, no one called me out.
CHAPTER 19
EMERSYN
The coolness of a cloth over my face barely penetrated the layers of fog and cotton. I kind of liked it here. It was quiet. The air was soft. No expectations. Barely anyone to talk to or who would intrude. I could float.
The floating wasn’t flying. That thought brought a twinge with it. I missed flying. Then again, if I wasn’t flying—I couldn’t fall. I was so tired of falling. Whether I hit a ledge or an outcropping, the battering hurt. It hurt even more when the pain lit me up inside and out. I was so tired of hurting.
“Dove, you don’t have to hurt anymore,” Vaughn said in that beautiful voice of his. That voice followed me everywhere. I swore it lulled me to sleep. It drifted through the air with me as I floated. “Head up, yeah? Head up and wings out.”
“I don’t know if I can anymore,” I admitted. “I think my wings are gone.”
“Clipped, maybe,” he conceded. “But if you want them to unfurl, Dove, they’ll be there. How did you learn to fly to begin with?”
“I was running away. It was the only way to be free. When I was there—when I flew—I wasn’t me.” I didn’t much like me.
“You’re more than flight, though.”
All too soon though, he wandered away and I drifted some more. The cold came and went. Sometimes it brought the white noise, other times there were glimmers of sun. The doctor wanted me to talk, but I didn’t have much to say. It was almost too much effort anyway. No one really cared what I had to say.
“Of course, I fucking care,” Jasper said with a snarl and the chair scraped against the floor as he sat down. The scent of tobacco fluttered through the air. Why was he sitting when we could float? “Because the fire is here,” he pointed out and then the cool gray resolved to the roof of the clubhouse.
The wind was icy here and it made my teeth ache. Why were we up here? Then he passed me the joint and I stared at it for a moment. Oh. Maybe getting high wasn’t flying but I wanted to escape. This was a good way to do it, right?
“Talk to me, Swan,” he encouraged me after we sat there a while just passing the joint back and forth. The soft cotton layers separating me from the world thickened. Except Jasper was right here with me. I could reach out and touch him if I wanted. In fact, I did, and our fingers brushed every time we passed the blunt back and forth.
“About what?” Did he know he needed a haircut? Not that I minded. I liked that his hair curled under his collar sometimes. I liked his beard even more.
“Yeah?” He rubbed a hand against it. The colorful tattoos on his arm pulled my attention. “You like it?”
“I like a lot of things about you.”
“Even when I make you mad?”
I grinned. The expression was almost foreign on my face. “Maybe especially when you make me mad.”
“Why especially?” He waved the blunt back and forth, the haze of smoke seemed to soften him, or maybe it was the lights in his room. The soft fairy lights. Oh, I’d liked them. It was like starlight captured in one place. Kind of like being here in the gray, just us, the chairs, and the fire.
“Because you don’t want anything from me enough to lie and pretend we’re something we’re not.” It kind of made sense in my head. “Even when you didn’t tell me why you knew me before, you told me why you took me. I didn’t understand then.”
I did now.
All too soon he drifted away, and I sighed as I seemed to be sinking. It never seemed to last. Hands grabbed at me. Locking me down. Then the ice and the static came again.
He didn’t even seem to notice me as he painted and I didn’t mind. If anything, I huddled into the coat and just watched him. I could watch him for hours. Instead of a beach, though, he painted a cell, the bars forming from the disintegrating pieces of my life. Always in a cage, even when I thought I’d flown away, I was still in the cage. The only thing that changed were what they used for bars.
“Miss Sharpe,” the voice said. “This will go easier if you participate.”
Sure, it would. I didn’t want to talk to him though, I wanted to go back to the painting. Even if it was a cage. It was nice there.
“You know, Boo-Boo, this is getting awfully boring.”
“Why is it boring?” The air was warmer, but maybe it was because of the way we drifted together. I was lying on my back and he was right next to me. It would be kind of funny to do the backstroke in the air, I’d done something like that before when I first learned the silks.
“This whole place is boring. Don’t you think?” Freddie nudged me and a little laugh escaped.
“It’s not so bad. Not really. I like it—it’s peaceful.”
“Peace is a lie, Boo-Boo.”
I made a face. “Don’t say that.”
“Why not?”
“Cause I want it to be peaceful.” Maybe I wanted the lie.
“Do you?”
I didn’t know. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Okay.” Wow, that was easy. “How about we read instead?”
I groaned. “I’m tired.”
“It’s okay. I’ll read to you, okay?” The last “okay” sounded uncertain.
I wanted to drift, but… “Do you need to read to me?”
“Maybe,” he said. “Do you remember when you sat outside my door and read?”
“You never opened the door.” Sadness crawled through me. “I just wanted to help.”
“You did, Boo-Boo. You did.”
Then why didn’t you open the door? Only the words didn’t come out and Freddie drifted away just like… Oh, I was too tired to think of them right now. The cold was coming. And the doctor.
I didn’t have wings anymore. If I had wings, I’d fly away.
“You still floating here feeling sorry for yourself?”
Oh, of all the people. “Don’t,” I said.
“Why not, Hellspawn? You don’t want to be a princess, why the hell are you letting them lock you up in a damn tower?”
“Stop.” I couldn’t do this with him. I just couldn’t.
“Not happening.” Then he was there, looming over me. “Get off your ass, Hellspawn.”
“No.”
“Get up.”
“No.”
“I said…” Only when he reached for me this time, I flung my hand out and knocked his away. “No.”
“It’s about time, Hellspawn,” he whispered. “Now fucking fight.”