Page 24 of Antihero (Tregam’s Fractured Souls #3)

When we reach the shiny blue car, back on the edge of Kidswal at the other end of the trail, I pop the trunk and Tristan dumps Harry’s corpse in there, slamming it shut.

When he turns to me, focussing on the bruise lit up by the single streetlight on this edge of town, I turn away.

“Come on. Before he starts to stink,” I say.

I fall into the passenger seat, running my hands back through my tangled hair.

My head feels like fireworks are exploding inside my skull.

I avoid any mirror, not ready to see whatever bruise is forming on my cheek.

Tristan slides into the driver’s seat, pulling the door closed, shutting us off from the outside chill.

“Are you alright?” he asks now, sensing perhaps that the brief walk, and the fading adrenaline, has grounded me enough to bear it.

I shake my head, feeling tears prick behind my eyes. “I’m fine. It doesn’t hurt that much.”

Like he knows I’m lying, Tristan’s gaze lingers on me before he starts the car. “It’s going to be a long walk back,” he tells me.

“Good,” is all I say. Like I could sleep now, anyway.

Fifteen minutes later, we pull up to the side of the road near where I murdered the lech from the nightclub, and it doesn’t take long to get Harry’s body, already going stiff, into the driver’s seat.

Once everything is ready, Harry’s foot weighed on the accelerator, I slam the stick into gear and get out of the car.

I stand in the middle of the black snake of the road, and watch the car slide away, picking up speed as the tyres leave the road, hitting gravel, then grass, careening for the jagged cliff edge.

Tristan stands beside me, and when the headlights shine out into nothing, and the rear lights wobble then face the sky, I take a long breath. The distant sound of crumpling metal mingles with the crashing waves, until only the waves remain.

For a time we just stand there, looking out where the car disappeared, the stars twinkling.

My voice comes out with a slight rasp, throat sore. “You’re not evil, you know.” Harry was. He enjoyed every bad thing he ever did to people.

Tristan’s eyes glint white at me in the moonlight. He’s frowning.

“Nothing you’ve done is evil,” I say, trying to pick out the details of his expression in the dark.

His face turns away. “You don’t know everything I’ve done.”

“I know what parts you think were wrong. I know…” Clearing my throat against the catch, I finish, “I know you don’t enjoy the killing.”

He tilts his head again. “Paige…”

“I know because I don’t either. I enjoy the outcome, but not the act.

You’re the same.” I almost say it; You’re not like your sister .

But I fear I’ll lose him if I do, if I speak her name.

And I can’t bear that tonight. Though I know this can’t last, just like I’m not going to last. I’m destined to be another tragedy of his life.

A pause. Tristan ducks his head, turning his back on the cliff, back the way we’ve come. There’s a slight hitch in his voice as he speaks. “We should get back.”

I don’t say another word, just turn around and start walking back towards town alongside him.

The cool air is a balm on my aching face.

In the peace, the quiet, and the unexpected comfort of having him beside me—only him, like no one else in the world exists—I finally let my few tears fall, to dry in the crisp dark.

Harry is dead.

The moon comes up as we walk, the night unusually clear and quiet.

An hour or more passes too quickly, and we’re back to the low scrub around my place.

Tristan steps ahead of me, onto the path that will lead back to my front door.

When he realises I haven’t followed, he turns back and I see him under the last street light.

“I don’t want to go there,” I say, forcing the words out.

Tristan steps up to me, still not touching me. He hasn’t yet, like he’s not sure I want to be touched after what just happened. In truth, I'm not sure either. He opens his hands, letting them fall back against his thighs. “Sleep with me.”

I give him a look. “Cute that you’re deciding to try asking now, but I’m not exactly in the mood…”

“No, just sleep ,” he repeats. I close my mouth. A little closer now, he lets his hand brush mine. My fingers tingle at the touch, wanting to catch and hold on. I do want to be touched, comforted. Only by him. “No games, no tricks,” he says, slowly, voice soft, “Just sleep.”

My jaw works.

“I get nightmares,” I tell him, a whispered warning, a last chance for him to change his mind.

He doesn’t miss a beat. “So do I.”

I nod once, hating the way my eyes prick. I’m too close now to going soft, to letting the fear and need for others in.

But just for tonight… for one night. I can.

***

It must be close to midnight as I stand just inside his room. I feel awkward as Tristan peels off his jacket, disappearing to the bathroom for a moment before coming out with a small box of first aid supplies, Band-Aids and mild painkillers.

I eye the bed, and him. Realising I’ve never been here before without screwing him over in some way.

Yet he’s letting me back in. Because I’m scared to be alone tonight.

To be in my own house now would only lead to thinking about what Harry would’ve done had he gotten me inside.

It's hard to remember he's dead when I think of those moments he had me at his mercy.

Tristan glances up at me. “It’s warm in here,” he points out.

I slowly come back to the present, peeling off my coat, and hanging it on the hook beside his, before drifting over to sit on the desk.

While he’s focussed on my face, big gentle fingers rubbing something that stings just slightly on the bruise and cut next to my eye, I focus on not flinching away.

“His ring cut your cheek, but most of the impact was lower. You shouldn’t get a black eye. ”

I nod slowly. Like it matters. “Do you know what he did?” I ask.

Not needing me to specify, Tristan unwraps a small bandage. “I know a lot of what he did,” is all he says.

“You killed him.”

“Because of what he was doing to you. Though he deserved as much for the rest, too.”

He presses the bandage on lightly. “Take these for the headache. Here’s a spare toothbrush. Use whatever you need from the cabinets. I can get you a shirt to sleep in.”

When he steps back, turning to pull perfectly folded blankets from a box under the bed, I fidget with the packaged toothbrush and the two pills.

“You’re a little OCD, you know?” He glances back at me, eyes narrowed.

I manage a small smile. “Who has all these things just ready? Who’s always this clean? ”

He turns away again. “Too many times, no one had these things when I needed them. So, I always have them. And,” he adds, “I don’t like mess.”

“Because of how you grew up?”

His shoulders tense. Along with the folded blanket, he gets out a pillow, placing it on top. “Yes,” he answers, and I think that’s going to be that, but then he moves towards the couch, and elaborates, “You don’t know mess until you’ve had to live in somebody else’s drug den.”

I bite my lip. “Don’t sleep on the couch,” I say, eyeing the two-seater couch in the other corner that would only fit half of him, anyway.

Tristan faces me, holding onto the supplies. “I didn’t offer for you to sleep here, so I could force you to share a bed with me for the night.”

“I want to share a bed with you for the night, though. So put those away.”

Tristan glances down at the blanket, still undecided. “I know you were a patient in the asylum,” he tells me.

I just stare at him, needing the extra seconds between us to make sure I understood his words right.

I feel a little tremor of panic go through my limbs, fusing me into stillness.

First, that I was in the home for girls, now this?

“I… I’m not insane. I mean, I wasn’t insane,” I amend, stumbling over my words. Outright denial would be better.

“I didn’t say you were.” Silence. He takes a breath. I see his chest expand behind the folded blanket. “And I know why you can’t have children. The real reason.”

This time, I need to drop my gaze away from those perceiving eyes, my focus fixing on the floor. “How do you…”

“It doesn’t matter how.”

I manage a shaky laugh. “Right. Needler was a detective before he was anything else. You must have been good.”

“Not as good as I was at being Needler.”

I feel my head sway in a nod. I feel too light, so I slide off the table and head for the bathroom.

Maybe he doesn’t want to sleep in the same bed as me.

Maybe he only brought me here out of pity, some broken thing his morals wouldn’t allow him to leave for the night.

I need to put a closed door between us before any traitorous tears escape.

Tomorrow, I’ll be able to pull it all back together. Close these seams, seal the cracks, keep the darkness inside.

I’m at the door when he asks, “Is that why you need to get these tests so often? Why you’re sick?”

I brace a hand on the doorframe, admitting, “Yes, that’s why.” I look back over my shoulder and meet his eyes. “They used… waves, radiation, of some kind, to sterilise us. It’s how they ‘fixed’ us. One of the ways.”

“The bone marrow test. Did it come back?”

He worked that out, too. The narrow range of possibilities that a bandage on my lower spine could be. I shake my head. Why bother hiding anything from him?

The bandage is off now, just a bruise around where that horrible needle went in. “Not yet. It might be a false alarm. Even if it isn’t real now…” I trail off. Everything feels like borrowed time. “One day it won’t be.”

“We’ll see,” he says. But he crouches, putting the blanket back under the bed. “Get ready for bed. I’ll be here.”

***

Needler

Always the school. Always me and her.