The Healing (The Things We Can't Change Book 3) (20 page)

My fists clench in annoyance. “Tossing a lamp won’t help me whatsoever. Except lose me a lamp.”

“Oh, really?” There’s a challenge in Zeke’s eyes as he leans forward, just a bit. “Doormat.
Doormat.
”

It’s the oldest trick in the book but I fall for it instantly. I snatch the lamp out of Zeke’s hands and next thing I know, it’s flying out the window. It hits the driveway and predictably shatters, exploding everywhere. Zeke watches with a silly little boy grin on his face, hanging over the edge of the balcony for a better view.

I cringe when I hear it break and for a moment, all I feel is dread as I imagine what Clarissa will say when she gets home. But then, as I look tentatively over the balcony at the shattered remains of the lamp, wondering if that’s how I look on the inside, something incredible happens. Something rises up inside me, something big and pushy and strong and demanding to be let loose.

As I stare at the lamp—or what’s left of it—with vindictive pleasure, I finally realize what it is; anger. Hatred. Loathing.

Fury.

Zeke is right. What Tony did to me was—is—terrible. And while I have cried buckets about it, despaired and wallowed and hid from it all, the closest I ever got to getting mad at Tony was when he was trying to kill me in the bathroom. And even then, it was just words. Always words and thoughts.

Maybe Zeke has a point. Maybe I need to be mad at Tony. And actually
act
on it. To
do
something. I’ve thought and cried all of this to death. Maybe my problem is action—or lack thereof.

Either way, something fiery and red hot is coursing through my veins, demanding something of me. Do I quell or encourage it?

I don’t hesitate.

I whirl around from the balcony and walk over to the big, decorative mirror hanging over my bed, a huge thing with a colorful zebra and cheetah print frame around it, at least a thirty-six inch long piece of glass. It takes a few yanks, but I finally get it off the wall, staggering under its weight for a moment before I finally catch my balance.

Zeke is watching me as I half-drag the thing toward the balcony, a wary expression in his eyes, though I can see the excited look behind it. “Breaking a mirror is seven years of bad luck,” he points out as I slide onto the balcony.

“If the fucking universe,” I say with a grunt, struggling to lift the mirror so I can get it above the balcony railing. Zeke doesn’t offer to help and I’m grateful. I want to do this first one on my own. “Thinks it can throw anything worse at me than what I’ve already experienced, I’d like to see it. Bring it the hell on.”

Zeke’s eyes widen for just a moment, and then he laughs, turning to brace himself against the railing and face our front yard and Riverside Drive beyond it. “You hear that, world?” he shouts,
really
loud. “Evie Parker says fuck you!”

“Not the world,” I huff out, puffing and panting as I fight with the mirror. Sweat drips down my spine but finally I have it balanced on the railing. I face Zeke, ignoring the fact that my face is beat red from the heat. “Fuck Tony.”

And then I push the mirror off the side, leaning far over the balcony to watch it fall with bated breath. It lands with a spectacular crash, exactly what I had wanted when I picked the mirror as my first thing. Zeke whoops and we grin at each other stupidly, like a pair of five-year-olds scribbling on the walls with crayons.

“That was awesome,” Zeke says, and we turn together and survey the room. “What next?”

I take in the bed, the desk I never liked, the nightstands with drawers filled with memorabilia from happier days with Tony, back when I treasured his notes and the stupid strip of pictures from mall and movie photo booths. The room where all I had left, all he hadn’t yet taken from me, was finally stripped away, leaving nothing behind, just a shell of a person in an abused body. And suddenly, I’m furious and I can’t stand the sight of any of it.

“Everything,” I say, and start for the first nightstand. “Everything goes.”

And boy, does it go in style. After the first two nightstands crash onto the driveway and land with giant
CRACK
noises, the pond crew circles the house to make sure no one is dying. Laughing uncontrollably, Zeke and I yell that we’re spring cleaning and they shake their heads at us. They leave us in peace when I offer to buy them pizzas for lunch.

It’s sweaty, grueling work with the balcony doors hanging wide open, but that doesn’t stop us. Just because I’ve always meant to move my books to my office, we tear them out and drop the book cases out the window too. The room is no cleaner despite being half empty, because all we pulled out has been haphazardly tossed onto the floor.

I’m slick, dripping and covered in sweat, but I feel amazing. Vibrantly angry, but really alive for the first time in a long time. It’s like I can’t stop the anger now that I’ve let it out, and everything has to leave. I hate how the furniture is all white, perfect and unmarked, mocking me with its innocent look. I liked it once, but Zeke is right. It’s tainted, and I’ve changed from the girl who loved this room, and since it was stolen from me, it’s time I take it back.

Zeke and I are breathing as though we’ve run several miles by the time we have one thing left in the room; the bed. It’s stripped bare, pillows and blankets tossed, but it still is taunting me, still a reminder of that awful night. Stained and marked, though it’s invisible, just like with me.
But you can be cleaned,
I tell myself vehemently.
You
can!
Some things can’t be cleaned, though.
And I know the bed has to go.

I walk over to it and begin shoving at the awkward queen mattress. Zeke goes to the other side and pauses to look at me.

“Are you sure about this one?”

I take just a moment to give him a hard look, telling him with my eyes exactly what I feel: I’ve never felt so sure about anything in my entire life. It seems to come across clearly, because he doesn’t offer any further comments.

It’s hard and awkward, but we get the mattress and the box spring to the balcony. We can’t lift them and end up just kicking out most of the wooden balcony railing because, hell, I decide I’ve never liked the old fashioned pattern and it was old and rickety and needed replaced anyway.

Finally we’ve moved onto the bed frame, and at first it’s too big to fit through the smaller balcony entrance with the four-posters on it. Zeke leaves for a moment and returns with a fireplace poker, a thick one from downstairs, and we knock the tips of the posts off, baseball bat style. Then we turn the frame on its side and shove and pull it out to the balcony, where Zeke balances the front and sends me to the back so I can do the final shove. I wait for him to give me the nod, and then push it with all my strength, sending it flying off the edge of the house.

I watch it go down and feel a surge of pleasure as it crashes, the delicate frame snapping in several places, irreparable. And yet I also feel… relief. Defiance. It shouldn’t be that important, but Zeke was right. Being mad helps. And as I act on my anger, purging things from the time in my life when Tony was around and the center of my days, throw away everything that has such ugly memories, I can feel a small thread snapping.

A tie from me to Tony is loosening—one bridge, at least, burned. I fight back, and feel the smallest bit of Tony’s control over me being shredded to pieces, like everything outside my balcony window.

It’s a small start, but
oh
.

It feels
good.

Ezekiel

62

I sleep in on Saturday for what feels like the first time in weeks. I wake up but stay in bed, staring at the ceiling. I have to work at the club tonight, but just an event that’s scheduled late in the evening, although it’s nearly three and I have to be there at six.

Still, I enjoy the quiet, the stillness of the house. I can hear rustling and the gentle
clink
of a spoon downstairs from my dad, undoubtedly sitting at the table with his coffee as he reads his newspaper. I gaze at my cracked, faded ceiling, comparing it to the pristine white stucco of Evie’s mansion.

It’s strange whenever I think of how well she and I understand each other, how we’ve connected, when our backgrounds are so very different. Yet our problems and our losses are what brought us together. People say there is no peace in poverty, but there seems to be no rest for the rich either.

I remember the way she looked yesterday as we trashed everything in her room, the kid-like grin on her face as we tossed everything out the window. At the same time though, I’m shuddering at what she revealed to me and at what Tony did.

Rape.

Bad enough as an act, but in your own bedroom? So that the memories just stay there, always ready to jump out at you? To claw you back down just as you try and stand. No wonder she was cutting, I mean,
shit.

But getting mad seemed to help her. She was smiling by the time we finished, a light in her eyes that hadn’t been there before. I dare to hope it really did help her conquer that fear at least a little bit. I wanted her to get all that crap out of there and no longer think of it as
her
room. She has ten bedrooms, for pete’s sake. She needed to cut the ties with that one and start with something totally new, a clean slate.

She wasn’t the only one who had felt satisfaction at slinging a bunch of crap out the window. She wasn’t the only one with a vendetta against Tony Stull. I’d only meant to help Evie—and succeeded a little—but it had been calming to me as well. Rage had coursed through my body too, and instead of pushing it away, I’d just allowed myself to feel a small measure of it.

I imagined all that stuff was falling on Tony, breaking
his
body,
his
legs, so he could see how it felt. Bastard. I still don’t know whether I should beat myself up over that or not, for allowing myself to experience anything at all. Luckily, I feel back under control today.

But then… I’m really not. At least, not where Evie Parker is concerned. But then again, have I ever really had much control around her? It’s not just run of the mill stuff, either. Sure, I’m in lust with her. The unusual eyes, the small curvy figure, and goddamn, that
hair
. But it doesn’t stop at just lust, and that’s the worst part.

I
care
about her. I care whether she’s happy, whether she’s crying, sad or angry, and I care if she ever gets over all her problems and realizes all the things that she
can
change about her life that she thinks she can’t. I’m not in so much denial that I can’t acknowledge the fact, but it stays tightly buried and suppressed.

She’s accused me of being incapable of empathy or sympathy, but the truth is, I feel
too
much empathy for her and it scares me. I don’t know what to do with it, what to make of it. I just want to help her heal and move past this dark time in her life, not form an everlasting bond with her. And I sure as hell don’t want to fall in love with her.

I’d be especially stupid to allow that to happen, because all my life, it’s been pounded into me over and over: what you care for gets taken. Always.

And I can’t let that happen to Evie. Maybe we need a little distance. I find myself glad that it’s the weekend and we can take a small break from each other. I need to be sure to keep the focus on her, on her problems, and not on mine. I’ve already told her too much, and I like everything exactly as it is. I don’t want her to go on a quest to ‘fix’ me. Even if she did, I still wouldn’t be able to hold onto the people I love, and I don’t think I can handle the loss of anyone else, not ever again.

There’s the added fact that if I were ever to let Evie in, of all people, I don’t think I could ever push her back out again. So it’s best to stay closed up in the first place.

With all those final, morose thoughts, I throw the blankets off and head to the bathroom to shower.

Of course I should have realized that with the way Evie and I are always predestined to meet and throw each other’s lives in disarray, I would see her tonight at the event. It’s a twenty-fifth wedding anniversary party and one minute the hall is full of total strangers, and the next I’m exiting the kitchen doors and almost run over Evie.

“Shit,” I mutter, experience and reflex helping to keep my tray balanced. Then I look at Evie with raised eyebrows. “Couldn’t stand to be away from my company for just a day?” I battle back a feeling of pleasure at seeing her. No emotions.
Distance
, I tell myself.

“Ha-ha,” she says dryly. “That was exactly it.”

I check her over quickly to distract myself from the light in her eyes at my appearance, and I’m pleased with what I see. Eyes still pretty bright, her shoulders more erect than they have been since her dad died. It doesn’t escape my notice, though, that she’s wearing a long sleeved shirt even in the warm summer night. It’s to cover up her scars, which I know aren’t pretty, having seen them yesterday.