I look at her. It’s
better than I expected. I thought it would be good, but the way Amy falls apart
is maybe the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. It starts in her shoulders,
where she seems to go weak, and at last, when her hand closes over the kid’s,
when she takes the flowers, the weakness goes to her eyes.
Oh, all her tricks
are gone now. She’s afraid and real and sad and crying into a pile of flowers
that are already dying.
Amy looks at Max, and then at me. She can’t decide what to say or do. That kind of feeling makes
me want to destroy things. But Amy doesn’t want to destroy anything. She wants
to save Max, protect him from the big bad monster. That is what tears at her.
Amy’s wondering where the danger is and I smell fear rolling off her in waves —
such intense fear that she will do or say the wrong thing. She can’t guess what
I’m up to. She’s wondering if I plan to give her a demonstration of what kind
of monster I really could be. Remind her I have a fuck for a heart.
The flowers fall out
of Amy’s delicate hands and onto the floor. She says to the kid, ‘Thank you,
Max. You mind if you leave me and Shepherd alone? We’ve got some important
adult matters to discuss. Boring stuff. Why don’t you go back to your mum? I’m
sure she’s missing you.’
‘Okay, Mamy.’ Max
trots out of Amy’s room, saying, ‘Smell you laters,’ with a
skip in his step.
‘You wouldn’t use a
kid? Surely?’ Amy whispers, her words hot as lava.
‘Yeah I would.’
‘Please don’t drag
Max into this.’
And for the first
time, she looks at me. Looks into my eyes with pure hatred. It’s what I wanted,
and now I can’t remember why I wanted it so bad.
‘You downright
refuse my help with your OCD, Amy. Don’t you get it? This shit is ruining your
life.’
Her pale lips
quiver. ‘Why can’t you leave me alone? Why is it so hard for you to just let me
be?’
‘I’m not leaving you
alone again.’
The response is
automatic. Easy. Because god fucking forbid she withers and dies.
Can you save
someone who’s already dying?
‘You don’t think I
see?’ I say. ‘You’re a zombie, Amy. Still fucking beautiful, but half alive. You’ve
given me no choice. If you don’t let me inside that pretty little head of
yours, I’ll kick Max and his mum out onto the streets.’
Sometimes the stars
don’t align so you have to make them. That’s what I’m doing with Amy. I’m
playing God. Fuck Fate. Fuck us destined for a never. I’m
making it happen.
Her mouth smacks
open. I can see into the dark reaches of her. ‘You can’t.’
‘Yeah I can. Daisy,
right? She’s poor. Comes from some derelict housing estate on the east side. I
hear it’s bad for her at home. Her uncle or something . . . They can’t afford
to pay for treatment — you know that? They’re behind on their payments. I’ve
been letting her stay scot-free.’
‘I didn’t know you
were doing that for Daisy . . . ’ Her voice is quiet like a mouse.
‘You don’t know a
lot about me.’
I can’t help the
pride that creeps in my voice. All that destruction, all that chaos I’m making
for her. It’s like a lion lying a bird at her feet.
I always get what I
want. The lies give me that power. That’s what got me addicted to them.
‘So, what’s it gonna
be? Start therapy with me? Or you wanna go downstairs and help Daisy pack her
bags?’
I’m a snake in a
suit with dead eyes and a poison tongue, and Amy gives me a death stare. Her
face is glazed for a split-second, like a China doll. Then she frowns. Her lips
purse together. Her eyes are unblinking.
‘My friends are the
one real thing in my life and you’re wrecking it,’ she says.
Wrecking things
is what I do best.
In this moment, if
her eyes were a weapon, the piercing look in them could cause serious
annihilation. It’s like she’s a lioness and I just went into her territory,
poked her, and she’s ready to attack.
‘This is emotional
blackmail. You’re using my friend and little Max to get what you want. I never
thought you could sink this low.’
It just about kills
me laughing the way she looks at me. Pure fucking contempt on a cracker. If
looks could kill, Amy would be more deadly than me. Her hate — that’s good all
by itself, makes me run hot.
I lean closer,
breathe her in. All vanilla and flower and bubble-gum. I give her a reassuring
smile. Such a narrow margin between reassuring and predatory.
‘That’s what you
want, isn’t it?’ she says. ‘You want me to hate you, because you think hate is
stronger than love,’ she says right in my face.
‘Baby, they’re not
opposites.’ I smile wickedly. ‘I think hate and lust are very close.’
It makes her eyes
hot with hate. She’s not afraid of what I’ll do or say next. She’s thinking
about killing me, maybe.
‘No, they are not
opposites, but you’re wrong. Hate isn’t stronger,’ she snarls, spit in the
corners of her mouth, and I don’t want her to stop. I want her to hate me a
whole lot harder if that’s what this is.
Got your
attention, now.
‘You want me to hate
you, but hate is weak. Don’t you understand? I feel nothing. I don’t even hate
you, anymore.’
‘You will,’ I say.
‘Soon enough, you’ll want me dead.’
But it blows my mind
that she doesn’t already.
I straighten the
gold seahorse around her neck. ‘Start making an effort to heal — or Daisy and
her little kid get booted out. Hell, I’ll raise the prices so high nobody will
be able to afford living here. Even those stuck-up rich girls. The roof over
their heads rests on your shoulders. Sink or swim — your choice, Amy.’
I’m pulling her
apart like candy floss. I’ve ruined her. I’ve burned down her dreams, hopes.
Turned her wishes to ashes. And I’ll keep ruining her, keep destroying her.
Maybe a deep part of me wants her to stop me.
‘Fine,’ she mutters.
She doesn’t
hesitate. Doesn’t even calculate. That’s how bad she wants to save Daisy and
Max from the big evil monster.
‘Just like that? No
fight?’
‘I can’t cut off my
heart. I’m not you.’ She looks down at her bare dainty feet. ‘I just want
peace.’
Something you
could kill your way to . . . that’s how I see peace, Amy.
Whole lot of silence
after that.
Finally she says,
‘You’re vile.’
‘Tell me something I
don’t already know.’
Her eyes are jewel
green, hazed in mist. ‘I thought you were beautiful when I first saw you at the
children’s home.’
She never flatters
me, not since I hurt her. And a slow, sickening feeling comes on me.
‘Is that so?’
‘When I was
fourteen, I used to love you.’ She says it all in a cold, steady voice, and it
stabs like sharp icicles in my heart.
I pin her against
the wall behind her, and snarl, ‘Used to love me?’
The air around us is
heavy, rage brews in my gut.
‘Yes. Imagine that.
Little fourteen-year-old me — in love and thinking about you.’
It’s the closest
she’s come to showing me any real feelings. But she uses it in
the past fucking tense.
‘What do you think
that does to me, Amy, hearing you used to love me?’
‘What do you think
it does to my heart?’
The problem is, that
as good as it feels, as much as I want to lean back and get off on her
submission, I can’t. Because she looks at me from under her eyelashes. Looks at
me with my damned soul in her eyes. She never looks at me when I — no, I never
let her look at me when I go over the edge of ecstasy. And now she won’t stop
looking at me. It knocks me for six.
I clench my teeth,
damp down the anger. Pride — that’s my cardinal vice. Not wrath. Pride. The one
sin from which all others stem. Yeah, I can be the greedy man and the mean man,
the envious and the enraged man, the licentious and the vicious man, but it all
spirals down to pride. To the mortal sin of playing God. Of being a complete
arse to the only girl I fucking love.
I keep my face
neutral and fix my raw eyes at the butchered flowers on the floor.
The ache fades and
the pleasure comes back so intense I want to eat her alive. For the first time
I have to give chase, like a wolf after prey. I take her to her bed, and her
tears are hot and delicious in my mouth.
This ‘thing’ between
us, the chemistry, it’s fucking toxic. I know my body is some kind of
painkiller, a poisonous addiction, a fix she needs when it
hurts too bad. It’s like a knife to my chest but I’ll let her use me. Take
whatever I can get. Give whatever she needs. I’ll feed her addiction.
I make her hurt,
knowing I’m the one she needs to make the pain go away.
When I’m inside her,
she’s crying so hard, her sobbing clutches at me so tightly, it feels like a
supernova when I come.
I live my life in
the Artic. Like a vampire, there’s no place for sunshine in my world.
Sunshine is a
fucking killer to dead souls like me. All the same, I’m like a wasp to the
biggest flame.
I don’t care if Amy
hates me, forever. All I want is for her eyes to stay alive when I’m there. If
she loved me again, would the darkness in my soul be converted? Or would the
scar her soul has left in me, fade?
Reading Renee 
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