I held the phone to my ear as I made a call.
“What?” Ronan asked irritably as he answered me and I pursed my lips at needing a favour from a member of my fucking family, but desperate times and all that shit.
“I need the jet,” I said in a low voice, making it clear with my tone that this wasn’t a discussion.
“When?”
“Now, dipshit,” I snarled. “I’ll be at the runway in less than an hour and it had better be fuelled and ready to fly when I arrive.”
“Or what?” he taunted.
“Or I’ll come to your house, cut off your legs and let ya watch while I roast them on that fancy new barbeque ya keep boasting about – you’re not MasterChef, arsehole, no one gives a fuck about your new grill.”
Ronan was silent for several seconds before he replied. “It’ll be ready. What do you want it for anyway? You need it for a job?”
“Mind your own business,” I snapped, hanging up on him and turning to find Brooklyn tugging drawers open to the side of the room.
“I can’t find it,” she complained.
“Find what?” I asked, wanting to give her whatever the fuck it was even if it was my own fucked up way of trying to offer some kind of reparation for what I’d just so blindly taken from her.
“His little hammer thingy. I thought it would be super handy for Death Club meetings.”
“We ain’t a club,” I muttered, a sneer pulling up my lip as I thought of those two fuckers who were currently enjoying the effects of the paralytic I’d slipped them in my house.
“Fine. The Society of Psychos it is,” she said like she was agreeing with me, but she absolutely fucking wasn’t. I also didn’t have time for this or the capacity available to deal with this bullshit without losing my fucking grip on reality entirely and entering into the kind of massacre which made news headlines.
“We need to go,” I barked, harsher than I wanted to be with her and really just angry with myself. I had to fix this. Had to fucking fix it and there was only one way that might come close to being able to do so, but even then, I was pretty certain it wouldn’t be enough. Ava was screaming inside my skull and the urge to re-watch that fucking video and remind myself of all the reasons I had to keep away was eating at me.
But it was too late for that. Far too fucking late.
“I’ll get you a gavel some other time,” I added as her face filled with disappointment and I fought against the worst in me as I worked to try and keep my anger from lashing her with its poisonous barbs. “Come on. We need to go.”
I held my hand out for her and she bit her bottom lip before crossing the space between us and taking it, my fingers enveloping hers and some of the tension in my chest loosening just a little.
I was pretty certain that I couldn’t make this any better, but I was damn well going to do what I could to try.
We headed out of the room, taking the bundled-up evidence with me and leaving the corpse for some sad Sandra to stumble across later. I led the way down through the house, heading towards the kitchen and keeping us out of sight as party goers stumbled about drunk, whooping and cheering, not having the faintest idea that their host was currently growing cold on the floor upstairs.
After I’d grabbed the bag with my tools and our swimwear in it from the sauna, it didn’t take me long to find the fuse box and with a simple flip of a switch I cut the power, plunging us into darkness, shutting off the music and making sure the CCTV was unable to see us as we walked straight out of the front door into the night, leading my little psycho back to my car.
I said nothing to her as I drove us towards the private airfield my family made use of for our jet and she remained silent too, the new truth between us cloying and suffocating.
I really was the worst of humanity and it looked like I was going to be dragging her down with me no matter how hard I’d been trying to stop that from happening.
T he take-off had been thrilling. I’d watched the lights of the runway disappear beneath us as we climbed up, up, up into the sky, my face squashed to the window as I took in the twinkly world below. When we’d risen above the clouds and the huge moon had appeared to light the entire fluffy world beneath the night sky, I’d stared, slack jawed and enthralled by every drop of silver light that kissed the bed of clouds.
There’d been some new clothes waiting for us onboard and even though they were as boring as a bag of beans, I’d changed into the black leggings and snuggly grey sweater, pulling on the socks and curling up in my seat. Niall was beside me in a big cream seat of his own, not seeming remotely interested in the view beyond the window even when I pointed out a cloud that looked like a giant turnip eating a mushroom.
He was wearing a navy tracksuit and his tattooed fingers were flexing against the arms of the chair as he stared at nothing with a deep frown drawn onto his features, like he was working out the most complicated math problem in the world. I’d never been good at math, numbers were tricksy things, always doing cartwheels around my head whenever I tried to wrangle them, giggling at me as I attempted to put a couple of them together and squish them up to make a bigger number. No, that cultured number stuff wasn’t for me. My mind didn’t put things together, it tore them apart and created fantasy worlds out of the pieces.
For the longest time, that had been all I’d had as company. In my head, I had friends who liked me, and I could be whoever I liked. A villainous princess or a heartless assassin. No one could tell me who to be inside my mind, no one could hurt me there, or reject me, or make me feel odd. That was what the people on the outside did. The real world looked at me and recoiled, but the people I made up in my head couldn’t do that. I’d made them up after all.
Niall had been the first outside world person who’d seen who I was and hadn’t flinched away. He’d answered my weirdness with a weirdness of his own, and tonight, I’d thought that was it. All those pretty declarations while he’d had me pinned beneath him, all the burning looks and kisses which I could still feel tingling within my lips. It had been beautiful for a minute there, the best feeling I’d ever found in the outside world with its realness and its rejection.
But now he’d gone all quiet, sitting there like a goose who’d lost its beak and nothing I said or did drew any reaction from him. Regrets were settling deep into his features and it left a pang in my heart as I stole glances at him, knowing I was the reason for them.
“I tried to tell you,” I said after a stretch of silence, wondering if he might not regret it so much if I could make him see that I’d wanted him to pop my strawberry. “But then it was happening and I was distracted and I liked it so much I didn’t think it mattered anyway. But I didn’t mean to not tell you, it was more that I didn’t get around to it. Like, I was on my way around the mulberry bush, but then I went wandering off to dick city, you see?”
“Brooklyn,” Niall sighed, swiping a palm down his face before looking me directly in the eye. “I never would have had sex with you if I’d known.”
Ouch. Glenda died. Quacked her last quack and fell down to the ground with a thump and didn’t get up again.
I was nodding and my mouth was open, but no words were coming out. Tears were welling in my eyes and before I knew it, they were spilling over like little rivers. I tried to catch them on my fingers to keep them back. I whipped around to face the window again, the moon so bright and watchful as always. And I didn’t find it beautiful anymore, I found it taunting, the craters on its face pulling up into a smirk.