Page 43

The pain is like nothing I could have imagined. Like a knife stuck in my chest, the blade scratching, slicing—endlessly—through the outermost layers of my black heart. I’m still alive, but with every beat of my pumping, wounded heart, a new gash appears, each mark gouging deeper than the last.

It’s death by a thousand cuts. Over and over. And through it all, the same haunting memory—Matthew walking away, head held high. Higher than me. Always.

“Goddamn him!” I scream the words into my tear-soaked pillow. I punch the feathery fluff, stuff my bruised knuckles against my teeth, biting down.

My mother’s voice comes next. You aren’t meant to be seen, Katarina. Why, oh why, did you let him see?

“I don’t know,” I mumble, burying the words in the pillow. I imagine myself dancing with the sun. The warmth rushing in, then sputtering out. Plunging me into frigid darkness. It’s so cold now. A starving man knows hunger all the better for having feasted. I wish I never had. I wish—

“Kat?”

The door creaks open, light streaking in. I roll away from it.

“Kat?” Mellie is poking my back. “I brought a plate of dinner for you. Meatloaf and potatoes. You should eat.”

“I’m not hungry. Leave me alone, Mellie.”

There’s a gentle thump as porcelain hits the wood of my desk. Then, to my abject horror, the foot of my bed sinks, lowering under Mellie’s weight.

“Get out, Mellie.” I try for my usual fierceness, the tenor that always makes her capitulate, but her butt remains firmly planted on my bed. Her body warms the bundle of blankets around my feet.

“Kat, it’s been three days.”

Three days? I blink stupidly, the action painful in my swollen, sandpaper eyes.

“I can’t cover for you much longer. Headmistress Helena is sending for a doctor in the morning.”

I grunt, unmoved.

“Kat.” Her hand lands on my ankle, her fingers curling around it with worry. “What happened?”

I want to kick her away. I want her to stop talking. I want her to leave me alone.

“I’m not moving from your bed until you talk to me.” She wiggles backward, all the way back, until her spine rests comfortably against the wall. Legs stretched out, she settles in for the long haul.

I pull my bedraggled head off the pillow to stare at her, aghast.

“Golly.” Her gaze roves over my splotchy face and tangled hair. “Things are worse than I thought.”

“What are you doing?” I croak, summoning a weak glare. “Get off my bed and leave me alone.”

“I won’t.” There’s a stubborn tilt to her chin.

“Why not?”

“Because you’re my friend and you’re hurting. I don’t know why, but—”

“We’re not friends.” I’m shocked by her assertion.

“Of course we are.”

“No. We’re not.” I drop my head back to the pillow, exhausted. Certain now I’ve won, and she’ll leave me in peace.

But Mellie does something wholly unexpected.

She punches the blankets hard, right beside my feet.

“You better hope we’re friends, Katarina.

” The bedsprings creak as she shifts her weight.

She’s climbing up the bed, right on top of me.

“You better hope we’re friends,” she repeats, her body pinning me, her head mere inches from mine.

“Because you do not want me as your enemy.”

I sputter. Her hands press my shoulders into the mattress. Her bony little fingers form claws, digging into pressure points at my clavicle.

“Please don’t make me do something that isn’t ladylike, Katarina.”

“Like what?” I cock my head because I’m almost curious. A tiny flare of light, of engagement with the world, blooms in my belly.

Mellie’s eyes are pure fire. “Like slap the shit outta you,” she cries, voice squeaking.

“Slap some goddamn sense into you!” She shoves hard, pressing me into the mattress.

We both bounce lightly on the rebound before she shoves herself off, sliding onto the bed beside me.

She slips her legs, rather audaciously, under the sheets alongside mine.

“Would that make you listen to me? We are friends, goddammit. And friends tell .”

My mouth opens, then closes. I blink furiously, trying to stave off the floodgates.

“Oh, Kat.” She reaches for me, brushes a tangled strand of hair away from my face. “What happened? Is it Matthew…or your beau from back home? Please tell me. We can fix this. Whatever it is, I know we can fix it.”

And it’s her kindness that undoes me, her gentle patience, when I simply don’t deserve it. I begin to wail, words rushing out so fast and jumbled, I wonder if she’ll be able to make any sense of them. “I’ve ruined everything, Mellie. I’ve gone and ruined it all…”

The whole sordid tale spills out with very few omissions.

I don’t tell her about the Wolfpack, but I tell her about getting into trouble in the bayou, about Paul getting shot, about sending for Matthew.

About our conversation at the end of the night, the one that ended with Matthew leaving me, walking away as I crumpled in the street. I pull very few punches.

Mellie’s eyes grow wider and wider as the story progresses.

“I wish it had never happened, Mellie,” I cry, blinking through tears. “I wish I’d never met him.” Because the pain of this—this leaving —cuts so deep. Especially after I tried, tried so hard, to be worth sticking around for.

“You don’t mean that. You love him.”

“I don’t want to love him,” I roar, flinging back the covers. “I don’t want to feel this way at all.”

“But you do.” Her voice is small. “You do, and you need to tell him. You should have already told him.”

“I can’t tell him, Mellie. I need to let him walk away clean. He deserves it, after all I’ve put him through.”

“He wants to know.” Her chin juts out again. “He asked you outright, and you lied. Again.”

“Perchance I didn’t lie,” I stipulate. “I simply held my tongue.”

“ Perchance that’s bullshit, Kat. And you know it.”

A tiny laugh slips out, the absolute tiniest, but it breaks the dam. I cover my face with my hands, laughing and crying all at once.

“Sometimes, Katarina,” Mellie says, a small chuckle betraying her own lips, “you can be a real simpleton. And a harlot, to boot, juggling all these men. I told you this wouldn’t end well, straddling two worlds, but you didn’t listen to your friend , now did you?”

I laugh a little harder now, simply because it feels good. Mellie yanks me to a sitting position. She swipes a hairbrush from my dresser and begins running it through the rat’s nest atop my head.

“This is a horror,” she murmurs, ripping the brush through snarls. Not gently. “An absolute horror. And we’ll need teabags for your eyes, for the swelling. You must promise me something right now, Kat. Swear? ”

“Swear what?”

“Swear you will never give a man this kind of power over you again. Not Matthew. Not your fella from the Catacombs. No man is worth your dignity, and no man should accept you without it. If he does, he doesn’t have your best interest at heart.”

I consider this. I buried my dignity so very long ago, locked it inside a chest alongside my heart and handed it to Paul. Deep in the Catacombs.

“You’re a lady now,” Mellie continues, running the brush through, again and again. “So swear it to me.”

“I swear.”

It’s not nearly as simple as Mellie believes, digging myself out of this hole.

Weighing my dignity against Matthew and Paul.

I know perfectly well what Mellie believes I should do.

The fairytale has written itself, and all that remains, in her mind, is to declare my love and allow the prince to sweep me away. Because no one ever roots for Paul.

No one, that is, except me.

Even still, with Mellie’s encouragement, I send a letter to Matthew at the hospital. It’s brief, borderline impersonal, but I tell him where I’m going to be and when. I make no promises, no sweeping statements, because I have none. I’m wrung plumb dry.

It matters not. He meets me at the streetcar stop in the late afternoon.

I’m not sure how to greet him, but Matthew makes things quite simple when he leans in and kisses me on the temple as we wait for the streetcar to arrive.

Then we stand in roaring silence, the kind that punishes your eardrums.

After we board the streetcar, Matthew speaks. “How’s he doing? ”

“Fine. He’s doing well.” A note from Abe two days past said as much. “It’s…it’s nice of you to check on him with me.”

“I said I would.”

When the train pulls up to the bayou stop, I grab his hand.

Together, we weave through the streets until we reach the loft.

I keep ahold of him as I unlock the door.

He gazes with interest at the riot of color in our den.

The draped silks and tapestries. Persian rugs.

Well-worn furniture and eclectic—stolen—knickknacks scattered on tables.

“It’s very…you,” he pronounces.

“Really?” I look around, a bit surprised.

“Bohemian,” he observes. He lifts our joined hands. “Like your rings.”

“I suppose.”

We go to Paul’s back bedroom, and I steel myself before giving a sharp knock on the door. Just one, then I push it open and walk inside with Matthew. Our entrance sucks all the air from the room. Tony lets out a stream of Spanish curses, more colorful and lengthier than I’ve heard from him before.

“What the hell is he doing here, Kat?” Paul immediately tries to sit up.

“He’s here to check your stitches, idiot.”

Tony paces, still muttering curses. Abe is dumbstruck, paling at the sight of a newcomer to our sacred loft.

Paul shakes his head. “Kat, why on earth would you bring him here?”

“He’s not going to say anything, Paul. We can trust him.”

“I don’t trust him any further than I can throw him. Which, right now, isn’t very far.” He glances down at his abdomen.

“Ha ha,” I mock laugh. “You’re hysterical. Just let him take a look, would ya?”

Stony silence. All around the room.

“Phew.” Tony exhales, breaking the tension. He glances from Abe to Paul to Matthew, all of whom are glowering. “Mierda. I want no parts of this.”