One Step Too Far (Frankie Elkin #2)(103)

I start to tremble then. I shake and I shake. I think of too many things. Past and present. Dreams and terrors. The things I still want. The things I can never have.

The water goes from hot to lukewarm to cold, and I never want to feel like I’m freezing again. It gives me the incentive to pull myself together and turn off the nozzle.

Towel dry. My own threadbare T-shirt, feeling like a long-lost lover against my skin.

I am okay.

I can handle this.

I will make it to the other side.

I finish drying my hair and go to bed.





CHAPTER 42





My body is desperate for sleep. My brain will have nothing to do with it. I sink into the broken-down motel mattress. I pull the covers up tight and close my eyes.

And the kaleidoscope begins. Too many images. Blood and bullets. Pine trees and flashing knives. From an urban liquor store where Paul has died in my arms for the past ten years, to the deep woods where Bob perished just days ago. Location doesn’t matter. Time doesn’t matter.

My psyche has had enough. Each death is a loss. Each trauma a toll. Is there really a way to measure such things? The death of the man who loved me but I left is two times worse than a gregarious Bigfoot hunter getting cut down before my eyes? While watching a tree man slice into Miggy’s chest is half as awful, and cradling a dying Boston gangster I never really knew is a quarter?

It’s all macabre math. At a certain point, the spirit rebels against such horrors.

I give up on rest after an hour. Fucking squirrel brain, I think bitterly. Goddamn fate. Stupid life choices.

But mostly, I hurt.

And I can’t bear to sleep in this kind of pain.

I pull my jeans and tennis shoes back on. I turn my back on the free room Luciana has graciously granted me and the bottled water she left next to my bed. People are kind. People are terrible. People hurt my head.

I grab the motel room key and walk out the door.

I wander down the sidewalk toward the picturesque part of Ramsey. Sun is starting to set. Tourists are out en masse. Happy couples, distracted families, laughing friends. So much energy. So much life.

I could stand in the middle of it forever and none of it would touch me.

This is my gift, this is my curse. I joined seven people I never knew, and within a matter of days, I learned, loved, and lost. And yet I’m a loner, belonging to no one.

I’m like a schizophrenic introvert. Does such a thing exist?

I find myself standing outside the steak house where Luciana, Bob, and I first shared dinner. There’s a line of people out the door, in various stages of staring at their phones as they wait for their tables.

I want to scream at them to look up. I want to grab them by their shoulders and demand they not take a ridiculously huge and scrumptious plate of food for granted. I want to fall to my knees and beg them to remember this moment, when nothing in their body ached and their biggest worry was what to order for dinner.

I want a drink.

It comes out of nowhere. It comes from deep inside.

I stand on the sidewalk, hands fisted at my sides, and fight the impulse.

This is the irony of the disease—to pass on a drink at death’s door, only to succumb once I’m still breathing. But this is the nature of me. I don’t need a drink to die. But it often feels like I need a drink to live.

Mostly, I need a drink to escape being me.

I turn away from the steak house. I shuffle down Main Street, each footstep more painful than the last. It takes me a while to realize people are staring at me. That my black eye and limping gait aren’t exactly subtle. When the fifth family veers wide and tucks their children closer to them, I give up and head back to the motel. Screw happy, well-adjusted people. I can wallow on my own.

I can’t. The motel room is too empty, the bed too daunting. I need to settle. I still don’t know how.

I pay a visit to the registration desk. It’s manned by a pimply-faced young man whom I’m already guessing graduated from the local high school and is very sorry to still be living here.

“Hey,” I manage.

“Hey,” he repeats, though his eyes are wide at my straight-out-of-hell appearance.

“I’m looking for a laundromat.”

“Okay.”

“Walking distance. Well, short walking distance.” I glance down at my throbbing ankle.

“You’re one of them.”

“Who them?”

“The group. You went into the mountains looking for the dead dude. Except then more dead dudes happened.” Pimply Face’s eyes widen further. “I shouldn’ta said that.”

“You’re not wrong. Yeah, I’m a member of that party. And I inherited everyone’s packs, which is to say, a shitload of dirty clothes. We’re talking sweat-soaked, dirt-covered, and blood-spattered.”

My instincts are correct. Gore is totally this guy’s vibe.

“Well, you know, given the circumstances, I could make an exception . . .”

I nod encouragingly.

“We don’t normally let guests use the motel’s machines. But we got a coupla commercial-grade washer and dryers in the basement.”

I nod again.

“You wanna, you know, gather up what you need to wash? Then I could personally show you the machines, get you set up.”

And this kid could get an inside scoop on what has to be the hottest story in town.