“Fine,” he says turning away from me. “Fine. Let’s go.”
“Go? Go where?”
He starts walking up the stairs. “I’m changing, and we’re going to your house. We’re going there so I can see for myself that she’s gone. And then we’re calling every goddamned hotel in Seafare to make sure she’s not camped out somewhere. You’re lying to me, Bear, and I swear to God I’m going to find out why.”
I follow him. “We aren’t going anywhere!” I shout after him. “Why can’t you get the point, Otter?”
“Because the Bear I know would never do this. The Bear I know wouldn’t crap out on something like this. On me.”
“Then obviously you don’t know me as well as you think you do,” I say with a scowl, feeling my insides turn to liquid mush. I reach up to try and stop him. My hand grabs hold of his arm, and I’m already thinking of the next line I could feed him, how to cut him where it would hurt the most. I hate her and will hate her for the rest of my life. I feel his arm tense, but I don’t have time to prepare even though I know what’s coming. I wonder if I could have stopped it even if I did.
“Bear,” I hear him say, and his voice is tinged with something that I can’t quite place. Then he’s whirling around, jerking his arm out of my hands and inadvertently striking my chest in the process. I try to keep myself from falling back, but gravity is a funny thing. It never works when you think about it. I reach for t
he railing. I reach for him, and I can see his eyes widen as his arms shoot out, but by the time they reach where I was standing, I’ve already fallen back. I take a moment while I’m suspended in free fall to ponder just how fucked this situation is, and then I try to curl myself up into a ball, but my back hits one of the stairs, and my arms shoot one way, and my legs shoot another, and the breath is knocked out of me as I roll down the stairs. Carpet! I think hysterically. Thank God for carpet! It’s over before I have time to register that it is. I lay on my back and stare up at the ceiling, wondering how it could have come to this.
“Bear?” I hear him whisper, and my eyes find him still standing at the top of the stairs, and I see him shaking in horror. My body goes through a preliminary check list, trying to find the places that hurt, trying to batten down the hatches against the inevitable waves of pain in case something is broken. “Bear?” he says again.
“Oh God,” I whisper.
Hearing my words seems to have more of an effect on Otter than anything else. One moment he’s at the top of the stairs and the next he is by my side, and I allow myself to admire how fast he can move. He sinks to his knees and puts out his hands but stops right before he reaches me. It’s almost like he’s scared to touch me, like I’ll crumble beneath him. “Jesus, Bear,” he moans. “Jesus Christ, are you all right?”
The diagnostic check is done, and I am fairly certain that the only things broken within me are my heart and soul. My body seems to be fine, or at least as fine as a body can be after telling the only person I have ever really loved that it’s over and then falling down a flight of stairs. This strikes me as funny in some sick, twisted way, but the laughter dies in my throat, and I take in a harsh breath.
“I didn’t—I didn’t mean—” Otter says, his eyes wide and shiny.
“I know,” I mutter. Do I? Do I really?
I want to believe I do.
His hands are finally on me, rubbing up and down trying to find where I am broken, trying to find where I bleed. I close my eyes for a moment, against my better judgment, relishing the feeling of his hands on me through the low ache that has already raised its ugly head. His hand reaches my thigh and grazes over it gently, and I inadvertently arch into it, unable to stop myself. I can tell he notices this as his breath catches in his throat and his hand grips harder. Electricity flows underneath his fingertips, and I can’t help but groan, and he hears it, and suddenly his hands are all over me, and I feel his lips press against mine, and his mouth is hot and harsh as his tongue pierces my lips. I bring up my hands to wrap them around his neck and pull him down on top of me when I hear her warning once again, when I hear her damnable voice in my head, and it’s like she’s right next to me, and I want to scream, but I know that it won’t block her out, and it won’t keep her away and—
who’s more important to you
—it’s loud, and it rings throughout my being, and I stop myself from grabbing onto his head. I stop myself from shoving him so deep inside of me that he’ll never get out because—
i can promise you that you will never see him again
—if I don’t, I won’t be able to end this, I won’t be able to be the one that Tyson needs me to be, and so it’s there, the question that rapes my head, and it whispers so loudly—
who needs you more
—over and over and over again, and I find my hands on his chest, and I push him away. Oh, how I push him away.
“No,” I say. “No, Otter.”
He falls back on his ass, and I scramble to get away from him. My body hurts now as I move, and I know I’m going to feel like shit tomorrow. I have to keep from crying out as I step down hard on my right ankle and pain flares up, glassy and bright. I don’t think it’s broken, but it’s definitely twisted something fierce, and I kind of hop and skip away from him, realizing how ridiculous I must look, how ridiculous this whole thing must be. I need to get out of here. I need to leave before something else happens that I’ll regret. Nothing can stop me from leaving now.
“Why, Bear?” he says, his voice broken and sad.
Nothing, I guess, except that. I stop. And turn.
“Why?” he says again when I can’t bring myself to look at him.
“Otter,” I sigh heavily. “I… I’ve told you.” A tear fights its way out of my eye, and I wipe it quickly away before it’s joined by more.
“I don’t believe you.”
“Then I don’t know what else to say.”