I looked down at my hands. Just the other morning I was holding Perry’s hand as she slept, not really knowing if she’d ever really wake up. If she’d be the same. Now my hands were dirty and scraped pink from the fall from the police car, my wrists were rubbed raw from the cuffs.
Had I become a better man? That was the question, what it all came down to, wasn’t it?
I had done a lot in Perry’s absence. There was more change than I was comfortable with. I ended things with Jenn, which was still surprisingly hard considering what we knew about each other. I confessed to being with Perry, she confessed to being with Bradley. Say what you want about our relationship, about Jenn, but a lot of habits were made over the course of three years. Saying goodbye to something or someone after that long of a time, even if it brought you pain and misery, is hard. It’s like living with a gangrene foot. You know you need to just whack it off and you’ll be healthier for it. But damn if you don’t feel some sort of emptiness when your decaying foot is gone. You look at the end of your leg expecting to see it there in all black and rotting but there’s just nothing but air now. And, if I’m being honest here, I do miss the sex. Anyone would. The earlier pat-down aside, who knew when I’d next get laid? It would be a lot of wishful fucking thinking to imagine it would be Perry.
So there was that. No more long-term girlfriend. No more sex life. Then I listened to the tapes, heard what Pippa told Perry, found out about the switched meds. It made me hate her just a little bit, which lessened the pain of having her gone. Then it made me appreciate what Perry did in her diabolical, scheming little way. She did me a favor. And I let that favor continue. I threw out all my meds. Fuck it all to hell, if I was going to see ghosts, I was going to see ghosts. If they could see me, I decided I’d want to see them. And so far, they’d been kind and few and far between. No sign of the one ghost I hoped I’d never see.
With the medication out of my system, my body responded by piling on some weight. It didn’t help that I’d also gone from lying-on-the-bathroom-floor-drinking-Jack-out-of-the-bottle to stuffing every single thing in my face. One month of being depressed and desperate as shit and I was going to make up for it with every food possible. So I started going to the gym and directed some of that weight in the right places. I started training for 10K runs with Dean, started feeling stronger. More capable. More of a man.
I even got a new tattoo, one that would remind me of exactly what was important in my life. And what was worth fighting for, every bitter step of the way.
So was I a better man? The minute I heard from Ada I knew that question would be put to the test. Here was my chance to really come through, to prove myself. I did end up saving Perry. I give myself credit for that. I give her credit for actually allowing me to save her too.
But, didn’t I also make things worse? If it hadn’t been for me, she wouldn’t be alive. But here I was in jail with Gus, unable to help her and she was…fuck. I had no fucking idea where she was. The demon was gone but she had new demons to consider. Ones that wouldn’t bow to a shaman. For all I knew, Perry could be walking down the same path that her mother pushed on Pippa. She could be alone at this very instance with no one to look out for her, no one to protect her.
She might not even be the Perry I know anymore, medicated to a point of lifelessness and apathy, the passion and fire sucked right out of her.
The thought rattled me. It really fucking shook my organs, stabbed at my heart, squeezed my lungs until my face grew hot and tense and the volcano inside threatened to cut loose.
I had to get out of there.
“Are you OK man?” Gus asked.
I barely heard him. Panic dulled all my senses.
I got up and all I could think was GET OUT OF HERE.
Like a raging robot, I put my hands on both sides of sink…
“No man, she’s not worth it,” I heard Gus like background music.
…and with a terrifying cry of metal and concrete, I pulled the metal fixture out of the ground. Water gushed straight up in to the cell, soaking me in minutes flat.
I smiled.
Someone yelled, “Guard!”
I think it was Gus.
It didn’t matter. I wasn’t even sure what I was going to do with myself. In my head I saw myself walking over to the sink and ripping it out of the ground and then throwing it at the bars. The bars would break open and I would walk out, free.
Only I knew that was impossible. Throwing the sink would do nothing to the bars but create a lot of noise and ruin their plumbing. But how the fuck was I holding it in my hands? How did I manage to rip it out of the ground?
My muscles were much bigger and I was stronger, I knew that, but…this?
Before I could even contemplate it further, the cell door slid open and a bunch of yelling guards came in. I felt something hard hit the back of my neck and I was down.
The last thing I remember thinking as I lay on the wet, cold, disgusting ground was that I never answered Gus. I never told him if I was a better man or not.
~~~
When I came too I had a killer headache and I was alone. No more Gus, now I was in another cell. The bars opened up onto a hallway with a guard sitting across from me – which meant I still wasn’t using the can in public – but at least I no longer had a roommate. Not that Gus was bad, but look where his questions had gotten me.
I rubbed the back of neck, wondering what brutal police instrument came down on me and eyed the guard suspiciously. He returned the favor. I got it. I was more than a troublemaker, I was a force to be reckoned with and I had my own permanent guard. Seemed the more upset I was getting over Perry, the more I was dooming myself to life in prison.
“What time is it?” I asked the guard. My voice sound raw and groggy.
The guard didn’t say anything, just kept on giving me the evil eye.
I got up – slowly – feeling all out of sorts.
“Not the talkative type, huh?” I asked. It felt like I’d been in a washing machine with bricks. My clothes were completely dry though, and in the dank jail, I doubted that would have happened fast. I staggered over to the bars and leaned against them, eyeing down the guard. He was a big guy. He didn’t flinch. He didn’t look away. He was made for this sort of thing.
“Aren’t I supposed to get one phone call?”
The guard didn’t look away. “Normal perps get them. You ain’t normal.”
Wasn’t that the understatement.
“Is it because I damaged your sink?”
“Not my sink,” he said with a haughty sniff. “And it was damaged to begin with. No way you could have pulled that shit out of the ground, so get that higher than thou look off your face and sit your skinny ass back down.”
He might have been right about that but I wasn’t about to sit down.
“I think I want my phone call.”
“No phone calls.”
“I think I want to know what time it is.”
“Fuck off.”
I think I might bend these bars in two, I thought, my hands tightening their grip on them.
Glad I didn’t say it out loud. Nothing happened. Hulk I wasn’t.
So I continued to stare at the guard. I thought about kicking up a fuss about police brutality and being hit on the head, I thought about threatening them over my rights and how I didn’t have. But thinking didn’t do me any good. They would just say it was in self-defense, and who would they ask as a witness? Gus? They’d let him out early if they could get him to twist his version of events around.
I wanted to sigh. I wanted to exhale all the anger and frustration boiling inside of me but that would only show weakness. I wasn’t weak. I was going to get out somehow, I just didn’t know when.
“Declan Foray?” Someone yelled from down the hall.
My head whipped up as did the guard’s. He looked less than pleased.
The Step-Up cop was in front of me with a wary smile on his face. He must have been fantasizing about tasing me again.
“You’re free to go, your bail has been posted.” He stuck keys in the lock and the door opened.
“What?” I asked, shocked, really.
“You sound as surprised as I was,” he commented, grabbing me roughly by the arm and leading me down the hall. I heard the guard growl in my wake.
We came into a room where they gave my meager possessions back and I caught a glimpse of a clock. It was at three. And judging by the dim light that streamed in through the windows as I was escorted into the waiting area, it was three in the afternoon, the next day.
Holy fuck, how long had I been out for?
Not only that but, holy fuck, what the fuck is Ginger Elvis doing here?
Across the room, rising up from his seat, like some redneck giant from Planet Flannel, was Max.
It took every bit of control to keep myself from wrapping my hands around his fat neck and squeezing.
So much control that I could barely move. It was like being tased all over again.
“Don’t look so happy to be free,” he drawled in his stupid accent. He sauntered over to me and laid his hand on my shoulder. “Would you rather they put you back in there? I still have the receipt.”
He waved it in the air with his other hand. I was proud of myself for just swatting away his freckled hand and doing nothing else.
“I could kill you,” I said, seething the words through grinding teeth.
“I reckon you shouldn’t make such threats in a police station,” he said in a lowered voice. He turned and ambled out of the room and into the blowing cold wind outside. “Come on, I’ll give you a ride to your car. It’s at the impound lot. Did you hit a deer or something?”
I was in no mood to talk to him. I was so fucking angry and relieved at the same time and my feet were itching to take me back to Perry.
We got in his truck and I shuddered at the thought of Perry being in this car with him. I knew she had, I could also smell it. He knew too. He had another idiotic grin on his face.
“You could thank me, ya know,” he said as he flipped the engine.
“Where’s Perry?”
He narrowed his eyes at me. I narrowed mine right back. As the guard learned, you don’t play the glare game with Dex Foray.
Finally he said, “She’s fine, don’t worry about her.”
“Don’t worry about her,” I growled. “You fucking dickwad. Because of you, she’s in danger.”
“She’s not in danger,” he said, bringing the truck out onto the street. “She’s at home and she’s fine. And it’s because of you this whole mess started in the first place so if I were you, I wouldn’t throw stones.”
Throw stones? I was beyond throwing stones.
I headbutted him instead.
I felt nothing but pleasure as my head connected with his cheek. He dropped the wheel for a few seconds and the truck wiggled down the lane.
“What the fuck?!” he cried out, reaching for his face with one hand and trying to regain control of the wheel with the other. A few other cars honked in the twilight until the truck was under his control.
“Pull over,” I said, my teeth grinding.
“Fuck you.”
“Pull. Over.”
Max took one look at my face, his eyes watering, and gave in. I was absolutely seething. I didn’t want to do anything to him at the police station, but now that we were a few blocks away, there was nothing stopping me from going apeshit on him.
He pulled the truck to the side of the road outside a small house. I wondered if the owners would mind if I murdered someone in their front yard. A big red-headed someone. He was so full of shit, he’d make fantastic fertilizer for their garden.
I reached over and turned off the engine. My fists curled at my side.