Kick (Songs of Perdition #1)(3)

“You don’t remember?”

“You know I don’t.”

He put his elbows on the desk and looked right into my eyes. I wanted to know what he saw, other than what everyone saw—a party girl with a permanent smile and spread legs. A balls-to-the-wall princess with an entourage and two wrecked Bentleys in the garage. But more than that, I wanted to know how old he was. He looked so young and so wise at the same time.

“If I tell you why you’re here,” he said with that gentle voice, “I want to warn you, that you’ve probably blocked it because it’s painful to you.”

“Okay.” I didn’t believe him, but I let him think I’d blocked it. The reason I didn’t know was because I’d been drunk or high. Whatever sweet chemicals I’d taken had kept my neurons from connecting.

It must have been bad, and I could never feel guilty about it because I didn’t remember it. I’d had a drunk driving accident. I’d given someone bad pills. I’d been gang-f*cked and dumped in an alley. I’d killed some random paparazzi. One of the entourage had turned on me. All the things Mom had listed as a fear and Dad had implied with his look.

“You’re making me nervous,” I whispered even though my headache abated.

“Do you know Deacon Bruce?”

I heard his last name so infrequently, sometimes I forgot he even had one. “Yes.”

“Do you remember what he is to you?”

“Yes.” I refused to clarify further. He was my safety. My control. The hub on the wheel of my life. Without him, the spokes didn’t meet.

And he was coming for me. All I had to do was stall.

“It would help if you told me the last thing you remember.”

“I don’t remember anything.”

“Do you remember going to the Branwyn Stables yesterday?”

“I haven’t been to the stables in years.” As if the back of my face had a surface all its own, it tingled. A corset tightened around my chest. I was going to cry, and I had no idea why. “I need you to just tell me, Doctor.”

“Call me Elliot.”

“Fucking tell me right now!”

“Can you stay calm?”

I swallowed a golf ball of cry gunk. “Yes. I’m fine. Yes.”

Seconds passed. He watched me as if casually observing a churning barrel of worry.

“I’m fine,” I said. “You can tell me. I’ll be cool.”

“We don’t know what happened exactly. There are details missing. Mister Bruce isn’t well enough to be interviewed.”

I tried to hold myself together, but my fingers gripped the edge of the chair. He saw my knuckles turn white. I knew it, but I had nowhere else for the tension to go.

“Go on,” I said.

“There are some things that are known for sure, and some questions. If you remember any portion of what I’m telling you, please stop me.”

“Is Deacon okay?”

He cleared his throat and looked away before turning back to me. I realized he didn’t want to tell me at all, and that barrel of worry filled up with panic.

“You stabbed him in the chest.”

three.

I woke up strapped to the bed with a brain full of fog. Then they took me to a room with a balding doctor and a nurse whose face I couldn’t make out through my drug-induced lethargy.

The doctor clucked and groaned as he read things off to the nurse. I could barely sort through what he was saying, and I could barely remember what had happened a few hours ago. Had I attacked someone? The therapist? I’d apologize. He seemed nice. I hoped I didn’t hurt him. What had he said to make me freak out? Something about something I did. The reason I was here.

I was in incredible physical shape—I knew that because suspending a woman from the ceiling in rough hemp ropes took hours of work, days of practice, and stamina and strength from both parties. And Deacon, Master Deacon, did not f*ck around. I had to get off the flake, reduce the alcohol, and sleep eight hours a day, even if they were when the sun was out. He’d had to watch me sometimes to make sure I ate right, stretched, and stayed off substances, but it was worth it.

Except I was here.

Had Deacon been away?

If he’d been around, I wouldn’t have done whatever it was I’d done to land in Westonwood. He’d come and…something. Something was wrong. Something about Deacon. I couldn’t find the specifics, but it was something huge and upsetting. My heart beat faster when I tried to think of it. I got impatient with the nurse as she moved my wrist and said a bunch of gibberish as if I wasn’t there. She was keeping me from thinking the things I needed to think. Facts lay a layer under the sand, and I was trying to dig them up, but the bitch kept taking my shovel.

The doctor looked at my teeth and poked a molar. A shot of pain cut through me, and I pushed him away so hard he crashed into a tray of torture devices.

Fucking meds. I was going to have to detox again. Once I was curled up in my bed again, I would get the itchy skin, the broken lethargy, the attacks of consciousness that cut into my thoughtless reflections on my sensory space. I’d spent a lot of time trying to get away from my thoughts. Most of my days, actually. I had it down to a science. I never thought about a damn thing.

Or more accurately, I thought plenty and drowned it however I could. When the therapist had told me I’d done something so terrible, such an anathema to me, and I didn’t have a substance or an orgasm to drape over the news, I did things without thinking. My determination to be good had gone out the window, and I’d lunged for that lying doctor. I remembered being hauled away screaming, strapped down, and I remembered the injection.