Page 110 of Corpse Roads
“They said you walked out,” I push again.
Theo removes his dirty glasses and tosses them aside to rub his temples. “I did. Waste of fucking space.”
“Hunter is?”
“No, me,” he clarifies. “Things were supposed to get easier with time, you know? This grief stuff. Richards said… time.”
Sipping my coffee, I watch the emotions cycle through him. Alyssa’s death messed them all up. She was an awesome person. I was behind bars when she passed, but it still hurt. We were friends, but she was their everything.
“It’s been years,” Theo admits roughly. “Why hasn’t it gotten easier, huh? I’m so tired of hurting. I can’t do it anymore.”
“Do you really want to know what I think?”
“Why not? Nobody else is listening to me.”
“Well, I think you’re waiting for things to go back to how they were. You know, before.”
Theo nods. “Perhaps.”
“You’re holding out for something that isn’t going to happen. How can you be happy, living in the past like that?”
“Fuck, Leigh,” he curses. “When you put it like that, I sound dumb as hell. I know she’s dead.”
I rest a hand on his hunched shoulder. “You’re still grieving. You think I didn’t spend three years behind bars wanting to go back and make a different choice? It’s human instinct.”
Gulping the coffee down, Theo replaces his glasses. They’re slightly crooked and still dirty, but he looks more like himself when his blue eyes meet mine.
“So how do I turn off human instinct?”
“You don’t. Follow it somewhere else instead.”
“Somewhere else?” he repeats, nose wrinkled.
“Anywhere’s better than the hell you’re in, right?”
Theo barks a bitter laugh. “When did you get so smart?”
I knock my cup into his. “Plenty of time to practise my wise buddha skills in the slammer. That and years of drunken conversations with strangers. It’s good for the soul.”
His head slumps and hits the breakfast bar. “Christ, I’ve been such a dickhead. I said some shitty stuff to Hunter and Enzo.”
“You put up with them for all these years. That’s earned you some leeway to be a dickhead, in my opinion.”
“Jeez, how comforting.”
Headlights suddenly light up the house as the security gate slides shut. A car parks, and we both watch as four figures step out. His monstrous frame betrays Enzo’s presence. He disengages the security system before unlocking the front door.
“Leighton!”
“This’ll be good,” I mutter to Theo’s slumped head. “In here, Enz.”
Halting in the doorway, Enzo takes one look around the half-destroyed room and spots us both. His face hardens.
“Theo, I have been looking all over the city for you,” he shouts. “You couldn’t even answer your goddamn phone?”
His head doesn’t lift. “Thought you’d take the hint three days ago, Enz. I don’t wanna talk.”
“We have bigger problems than your temper tantrum.”