The Healing (The Things We Can't Change Book 3) (23 page)

I snort as we reach the landing. “Let her wallow in her own filth? She deserves it.”

Evie purses her lips against a smile as she pushes open the door of the bedroom she’s apparently picked out. “Perhaps. I don’t know if this is just a phase, or something that I should really be concerned about. I guess she’s on a timer and under observance while I decide how serious it really is. Although, I’m not exactly in a position to be fixing anyone else. I’m trying to hold myself together.”

We’re both trying to hold her together, I reflect as I walk into the new room and look around critically. “It’s huge,” I tell Evie.

She shrugs. “It’s the second master bedroom. There are two here for some reason. I picked this one because the bathroom is attached, and it’s also the farthest from Clarissa’s room. And it faces the back of the house, west, so I’ll get to see the gazebo and also the sunset. I like that.”

A second master bedroom. How… useful
, I think to myself, shaking my head. “Well, let’s get started then. Plenty of wall to paint, it’ll take us all day to get the first coat on.”

“Give me just a second.” Evie disappears from the room, and I lean to one side and see her enter a room across the hall and toss her notebook on a desk in there before she returns, joining me as I kneel on the sheet covering the floor where the painting supplies have been piled.

Evie clears her throat loudly, and I look up at her with my eyebrows raised. “Is this the part where I tell you I’ve never painted a wall before in my life?” she asks, her hands folded primly over her lap as she watches me open the paint cans.

I groan. “Seriously?”

“Seriously. Clarissa would hire people for the remodels, and my old room was that color for a really long time. I never had the opportunity. But I want to learn. I want to do this myself.”

I can understand that. It’s a new room, a new chapter in her life, and she wants a hand in building this haven for herself, because I know that’s what this is supposed to turn into. Safety.

I sigh, grab a roller and stick it in her hand, and begin a lecture on Painting 101.

By lunchtime, we’ve covered the room in the first coat, though since Evie chose a forest green color, it will probably need three coats to completely cover well. My shoulders and the new blister on the inside of my thumb protest the idea. A glimpse into the cavernous bathroom also sends a twinge through all my newly awakened painting muscles, but Evie says she doesn’t know what color to paint it yet and so she may end up having to paint it herself after school starts. Thank goodness.

We’re both starving by now, and Evie disappears downstairs to call in an order for Chinese food. I lay on the floor in the middle of the room, tired because I didn’t sleep well all weekend. And then it hits me like a bolt of lightning; the notebook.

I jump up off the floor and creep across the hall and into the room. It must be one of the offices Evie has mentioned, because there are empty floor-to-ceiling bookshelves against one wall and a big, professional looking desk in front of them with a Mac laptop sitting on top of it, along with the notebook. With a surreptitious look out in the hallway and a pause to see if I can hear Evie coming up the stairs, I flip open the cover of the notebook.

It’s blank. My eyes narrow as I take in the empty first page, the neat blue and red lines. With another pause to listen, I pick it up and flip through the pages. It’s empty; the whole thing is blank, and—but no. I quickly flip back a little to the lone page that has something written on it in loopy, swirly script that perfectly fits Evie, though this was clearly scrawled quickly.

We all have darkness inside of us. Some of us go our whole lives without discovering it, tapping into it, exploring it. We remain blissfully innocent and unaware of it. Some of us are able to find it, usually by accident, and we fight our battle with it, face it at every turn and defeat it. Some of us seek it out for just that purpose, because we’re strong enough to acknowledge it willingly, and know we can emerge victorious.

But some of us are consumed by it. We can’t shake it. We find it and it swallows us, pulls us in like quicksand and there’s no hope for escape. It turns us into someone we don’t recognize, makes us sink to depths we didn’t realize we were capable of.

And still others get it pulled out of them by someone else. Someone forces them to face their darkness before they are ready, and then leaves them to fight the battle alone.

My darkness was pulled out of me, and now I am drowning in it.

It’s winning. I don’t know how to stop it.

Dark words, and yet I understand completely. Evie is right. Sometimes the dark things in life hit us full-force before we’re ready to handle them. But still, I’m shuddering at her last few lines, and I wish I could make it all go away for her, tell her exactly how she can defeat it. But I’m at a loss of how, because I’m still trying to keep my own darkness from consuming me.

I turn the page because there’s one more line on the next sheet, though it’s with a wary sense of foreboding.

Why won’t he let me GO?

It’s pressed deep into the page, the imprints deep on a dozen of the next pages, clearly written with a heavy, frustrated hand, underlined so hard that a bit of the page is ripped, the
go
sloppy and outside of the lines as if her despair had taken over as she wrote it. I remember our talk yesterday, how she tried to explain how Tony still had a hold over her somehow, and I wonder if talking about it did more harm than good.

This issue seems almost worse than the cutting, because to me it’s so irrational. Tony is gone, and to me, it seems like Evie should be rejoicing, living her life to the fullest as she celebrates being out from under his thumb. And yet here she is, wallowing, unable to even paint her toenails a color that she likes. It’s confusing and weird and feels stupid, but I know it’s serious to her.

“What are you doing?”

I jerk my head up and meet Evie’s accusing eyes. She’s standing in the doorway, frozen with her phone clutched in her hand.

“Nothing,” I say quickly, snapping the notebook shut. “I… I was just…”

She charges forward and snatches the notebook out of my hand, clutching it to her chest. “This is
private
,” she says, and her voice is pitchy and uneven with anger. Her violet eyes are hard and pin me with enough force that even I feel a little like wilting underneath it.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to pry-” I begin, but she cuts me off.

“Clearly, you did,” she snaps. “Or else you wouldn’t have come creeping in here and opened it. This has nothing to do with you.”

“You’re right, it doesn’t,” I shoot back, because now my temper is getting the best of me. “It has everything to do with you, though, and the problems that you
asked
me to help you with.”

“That doesn’t give you an excuse to go through my things!” Evie is shouting now, trembling with rage. She points toward the door with a shaking hand. “Get out! Get out of my house!”

However irrational I might find it, I think it’s best to cater to her rage at the moment and give her some time by herself. I know I shouldn’t have done it, and her feeling of being violated, at least, is justified.

“Fine,” I bite out, and stalk from the room, keeping my eyes locked with hers as I walk past. I’ve only made it a few steps into the hallway before the door slams behind me with an earsplitting bang.

I leave the house with my own temper burning just as hotly, though I’m distracted from the realization that I’m actually feeling something as I think about Evie. One thing is clear; if Evie can’t decide when the time is right to be free of Tony’s control, then someone else needs to decide for her.

I’ve just decided that person is me, and the time is right now.

Ezekiel

65

When Evie opens the front door to me the next morning, I fully expect her to slam it shut on me, especially once I catch a glimpse of the look on her face. But she doesn’t. She stares at me for a long moment, then crosses her arms and sneers.

“Come to do some more snooping around?” she asks coldly.

I wince. I deserve that, and I spent most of yesterday thinking about how pissed I would be if the situations were reversed, and reminding myself as I walked here that she had every right to be mad.

“No. And… I’m sorry. Curiosity killed the cat and all that.”

She doesn’t move, doesn’t give an inch, and I fight down a little bit of irritation and try to inject some genuine apology into my voice, along with a good deal of cajoling.

“Really, Evie. I’m sorry. I should never have pried, and I know I’d be just as pissed if the situations were reversed. I promise to never do it again, not ever. You have my word. Scouts honor.” I hold up the scouts sign, and Evie’s lips quiver betrayingly.

“The idea of you as a Boy Scout is ludicrous,” she tells me, and I can’t disagree.

“Never really had any interest in being one, so I guess it’s just as well,” I agree, and then gesture toward the house. “So, am I allowed to come in? Or still banned for life?”

Evie hesitates, but finally steps aside so I can enter the house. “I still need you to do the heavy lifting,” she grumbles, and I take the excuse for what it is, an
I’m sorry for losing it
in return for my own apology.

I glance at my phone as I follow her up the stairs, and then slip it carefully back in my pocket. T-minus six hours until Operation Get Away from Tony Stull commences. I don’t really know how I’m going to focus on our work for so long, but I give it my best effort and by the time three o’clock hits, the second coat of paint is on the walls and the edging is done as well, performed by my own steady artist’s hand.

Evie and I stand back and survey the room, clearly giving ourselves mental pats on the back.

“It looks good,” I say, examining it all critically. “Maybe a few spots need another coat, but I really like this color. It’ll be a nice… escape for you.”

“I hope so,” Evie agrees, tossing the last roller into our big trash bag and tying the top. “I love the color. I still like bright stuff, but I guess I was looking for something a little more calming.”

She tries to heave the bag over her shoulder but I quickly swoop in and grab it from her, since it’s nearly as big as she is.

“I’ve got it. And it’s definitely calming. Have you thought about what else you’re going to do with it?”

Evie shrugs as we head downstairs. “A little. This weekend I’ll probably go out and look around. I was going to on Sunday, actually, but then I passed the dance studio and… yeah.”

She falls silent and I don’t push her. We stay silent as she leads the way through the house and to the dumpster outside the garage.

“Thanks,” Evie says as I toss the bag away. She holds a hand above her eyes to shield them from the bright sun, and looks up at me. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Actually,” I begin, and now that the moment is here, I’m feeling a little uncomfortable and wondering if it’s actually a good idea. “I have somewhere I want to take you.”

Total silence reigns as Evie stares at me in shock. I know exactly why, too. This is a new step in our relationship. It’s why I’m having second thoughts, why my heart is beating a little bit faster at the idea. Our moments have been constricted to the house, with the lone exception of taking her to the club and to Koby’s and the bridge afterward, and I’m still not sure if the resulting talk and aftermath of that was a good thing or not. New places meant new adventures and probably seeing new sides of each other, new secrets. And hell knows, with Evie and me, we had to pry the secrets away from each other with pliers.

“Go… where?” Evie finally asks.

I shrug, the all-over prickly feeling I always get when I’m doing something that smacks of sympathy and empathy for others—
caring
and
feeling
—coming over me. I tell myself sternly to get over it, because right now, this isn’t about me.

“It’s a… surprise.”

“A surprise,” she repeats blankly.

“Yeah.”
Muster up a little enthusiasm, for pete’s sake, Zeke
, I tell myself.
She’s going to think you want to take her off and kill her.
“It’s just something I think we need to do. Part of… the game.”

“The game?” She’s starting to sound like a parrot, repeating everything I say.

I’m not handling this smoothly in the least and I just want to drop it all. But I don’t. I plunge recklessly forward. To hell with it. All cards on the table.

“The Things We Can’t Change. What we’ve been talking about. Especially on Sunday. So in the interest of helping you heal until you can help yourself…” I trail off for a moment, and then finally ask, “Come on. Don’t you trust me?” It would be nice to know someone did, because I sure as hell don’t trust myself.

Evie regards me for a long moment. “You realize Aladdin asks Jasmine almost the exact same thing right before they get captured by the guards?”

Unfortunately for Evie—and also my reputation—I know
Aladdin
front to back because it was Cindy’s favorite.