Page 85 of The Eleventh Hour
“It was the best day ever,” Mum says slowly. “Those days were too few. I wanted…I had ideas, plans. Things went wrong. You can understand now, can’t you?”
“Yes, Mum, I understand. It wasn’t your fault. You were sick.”
The colours flare brighter for a moment. I can almost sense her frustration.
“We went back to that spot a couple of times, but we couldn’t find the magic of that day. It’s funny that you can do everything the same way and try to recreate exact moments and fail so spectacularly. Chasing the high.”
Mum sounds like she’s lost, scared. I reach out, but the room spins in a whirl of colours, and we are standing in my childhood home. The beat up kitchen table with its two vinyl chairs and its empty cupboards. There’s a notebook on the counter next to a kettle and my mum’s keys that are over-packed with a million keyrings she doesn’t need. I used to love the sound they made when she carted them around. The bedroom doorway yawns open, the room beyond it looming dark like a pit. It makes my heart race. I can barely take my eyes from it. There is something really wrong in that darkness.
Mum moans again and reaches for my hand. “Chasing the high. You have to remember. Everything you need to know to survive is in your mind. Wash the drugs, the feelings, everything you think you know, away, and let the past reclaim you.”
I shake my head. “I can’t do that. He’ll kill me.”
“Oh, baby, you’re already dead.”
I don’t expect the hand that smashes into my cheek. The other hand grips into the back of my neck, nails digging deeper and deeper. I throw my head back and groan.
My mother reappears, her eyes so close to mine I can see the moment the tiny veins explode. She opens her mouth, and dirt and maggots roll out onto my chest.
“WAKE UP!”
I throw myself out of the bed, land hard on my knees, and scramble to the other side of the room. My cheek still smarts, and I raise my hand to the back of my neck. When I pull it away, there’s blood on my hand.
The red on my fingertips smears down towards my palm, and today, after that dream, it seems ominous. I get up and find a neatly stacked pile of clothes on the chest of drawers that I hadn’t noticed last night. I walk over to them and look at the pink lace panties and decide that murdering Dane might make me feel a bit better.
Rafael looks up when I sweep into the kitchen. He holds up a cup of coffee that I reach for gratefully while Dane snickers into his tablet. Rafe leans down and kisses my cheek. It’s so unexpected and sweet that I just stand there thunderstruck. It takes effort to shake off the effects of that innocuous kiss, but I have to. I have somewhere I need to be.
“I have to go home.”
“No!” Rafael shouts.
I cock my head to the side and watch him curiously. Red stains his cheekbones, and he meets my eyes with a look of determination that takes my breath away.
“You can’t go back there. If someone is drugging you. No. It’s too dangerous.”
Rafael crosses his arms across his chest and glares past me.
“I see.” With a frown, I purse my lips and hum, immediately recognising the same sound my mother used to make. I force myself to stop and focus on Rafe, but my blood feels like it’s boiling in its veins. “You don’t get to tell me what to do, ever,” I snarl, finally snapping.
Dane whistles and leans on the counter to get a better view. I shift my focus to him.
“I really, really hate pink.”
“But you’re wearing them,” Dane points out.
“Am I?” I give him an evil look and turn back to Rafael while Dane chokes on his coffee.
“I’m not completely unreasonable. I can be talked to, have things discussed with, but I am a fully grown adult woman who is capable of deciding things for herself. Do not give me orders.”
“You can’t go somewhere where you’ll be in danger,” Rafe shouts.
“Newsflash, Rafael, I’m always in fucking danger. This guy has been around for years, and if he wasn’t, I have my mystery ghosts, and if they weren’t enough, there’s the psychopathic psychiatrist and the deranged detectives. My whole life is a balancing act, but it’s my life. My choices. I’ll fight everyone over the right to choose.”
Rafe slumps. “I don’t want to see you get hurt.”
“Which is really sweet, but if you’d asked, you’d know I wasn’t talking about that home,” I cut through his moping dryly.
Dane is still dabbing at his shirt and gives me a long, slow up and down before meeting my eyes.