Slow Agony (Assassins, #2)(85)

“Jesus,” he said. “You’re being way too harsh on yourself.”

“Am I?” I said. “Do you remember what Marcel’s body looked like?”

“Doll—”

“No. Look, maybe we both need to come to terms with the fact that neither of us really ‘turn off.’ Whatever violence is inside us, we carry it around with us all the time. It’s part of who we are. And compartmentalizing it is just... well, kind of schizophrenic.”

He got off the bed. “Maybe it is. I don’t know. It’s what we do, though. It’s what anyone who’s been through this does. Because if I let it out all the time, I’ll go crazy.” He turned to look at me. “You have to put up a wall, Leigh, and you have to shove it back there, or it will eat you alive.”

It was basically what Sloane had said. Bury it. But I felt like it was cheating. I felt guilty for a reason, didn’t I? What business did I have running from my guilt?

He sat down with me again. He caressed my cheek. “Look, take a night away from me, if that’s what you need.”

I licked my lips. “I need time to think.”

“I understand,” he said.

“I have some things I have to take care of back in Thomas,” I said. “I missed graduation, you know. And I think I’d like to make a grave marker for my father, even though I don’t have his body.”

“Okay,” he said.

“But I’ll be in Morgantown for the fall semester—”

“Wait a second,” he said. “That’s not a night, doll. That’s months.”

I looked away.

He sighed. “I can’t.”

“I need some time. You have to let me take that time.”

“Well, even if I wasn’t hurt that you don’t want to include me in the memorializing of your father, I can’t let you be alone like that, because there’s a chance that French is still alive and that she’s after us.”

“She’s dead, Griffin. She couldn’t have gotten out. She’s dead, and we killed her.”

He hung his head.

“I’ll be in touch,” I said. “Besides, I’m getting much better at taking care of myself.”

“Please don’t shut me out,” he said. “We need each other right now. You need me, I need you. Please.”

I could hear the desperation in his voice. There was an echo in there of those heartrending sobs. He must feel like I was turning my back on him. But I couldn’t help him if I didn’t know how to help myself. “I’m sorry.”

“Isn’t there anything I can—”

“Please go, Griffin.”

*

I didn’t take off the engagement ring. I wore it all the time. I thought about taking it off sometimes. To wash the dishes. To sleep. To cut up chicken breast. But I didn’t (no matter unsanitary it was), because it felt as though I would never put it back on if I took it off. Like it would be a step, and it was a step I didn’t want to make.

I did have a lot of things I had to get in order. I had to get another car, considering that I’d abandoned my old one in the D’atri parking lot a month ago. I had all kinds of things to take care of with the college, squaring away my graduation. I had to get my fall schedule worked out. I had to deal with my living situation.

I was glad to find that my apartment had been relieved of both the body of Naomi and the couch she’d died on. I wasn’t sure if Op Wraith had cleaned up or if Griffin and Silas had somehow done it. Whatever the case, I didn’t have any issues with that, or with the law.

I didn’t end up making a fake headstone for my father.

There were too many questions that had to be answered, and I didn’t have the right kind of responses.

Instead, I took to engaging in a practice I’d learned from Griffin. I had a cluster of candles, and I lit them each night, one for all the people who had died. Both the ones I’d loved, and the ones I’d killed.

I spent a moment remembering them each day.

Thinking about Naomi, Stacy, Jack, the girl in the hotel room, and the other people who’d been casualties was easy enough. I remembered them alive, and I remembered who they’d been and why they were wonderful.

The others were harder.

My father... I didn’t like to think about him alive. He’d betrayed me. He’d never been a good father to me. I could think of years of missed birthdays and vacations. Of his repeated abandonment. Or I could think of the way he was happy to sell my services as an assassin to Op Wraith in exchange for reinstatement in his position of power and money. I could think about his cruelty towards Griffin. I didn’t like thinking about any of that.

But I didn’t like thinking about the way it felt to have that knife sink into his skin either.

I decided that things I didn’t like to think about were the things I had to think about.

So I spent each night, staring into candles and thinking of the awful things that I’d done.

And they were so awful that it didn’t quite seem enough.

I upped the amount I lit the candles. I did it in the morning. I did it the evening.

Two times a day to remember the way Marcel had sobbed and screamed. Two times a day to remember the way I’d shot Wolfman over and over again. Two times a day to remember the way I’d laughed at Marcel’s pain. Two times a day to remember that I’d killed my own father.