Page 65 of The Darkest Parts of Me

“This won’t hurt. Just hold still for a moment.” The device itself is small, so I hope it won’t scare her. Maven doesn’t even blink as I scan the device over her, the results quickly read back that she miraculously has no concussion or any other internal physical damage.

She remains unfazed as I pull up the tin, gently moving her damp hair to the side so I can apply the healing ointment to the gash near her temple. “Does that feel better?” She nods again, still looking toward the flames. “I’ll get a shower started for you,” I say, not expecting a response as I head to the bathroom. I make sure the water isn’t too cold or too hot so it doesn’t shock her system. Then I lay out clean towels and place her bag on the counter, all the while, Maven still sits in silence. It’s unnerving, but I know at some point, the shock will fade, and whatever happens after, I need to be here for her, if only to explain everything.

I take her hand in mine, guiding her toward the bathroom, and once inside, without a word, she robotically begins to remove her clothes.

“I’ll be out here whenever you’re ready. Take your time.”

Then I shut the door softly. I don’t want to intrude on her privacy, but I linger near the door for a minute or two, making sure she actually makes it into the shower. Once she does, the pain hits. Like my brain switched the off button as soon as I knew she was okay. I stumble, gripping the wall as the pain in my side overpowers me. I place a hand over it, only to pull it back and see my blood coating my fingers. The ointment I added a few moments ago clearly wasn’t enough. It’s probably going to take the rest of the salve to heal a wound this deep and severe. Practically collapsing onto the couch, I scoop out a generous amount and apply a thick layer over my side as well as onto the deep cut on my arm. It takes several minutes to feel it working, but it does the job well enough.

I know I’m not handling this situation as best as I can, but I honestly don’t know what to do. There’s no “standard procedure” for this. For starters, I just killed a man in front of her. If she doesn’t already have enough of a reason to be completely freaked out—I don’t know what will happen once she knows the whole truth.

I can still hear the shower running, so I walk over to a chair at the small kitchen table and practically fall into it. Shy comes over and rests a head on my knee. “Good girl, Shy. Good girl,” I say, rubbing her head for a moment until she walks over to the fire to get warm.

I push the palms of my hands into my eyes. This has been the worst night of my life, and it’s only going to get worse. I know the sounds of her screams will haunt me for the rest of eternity. For a moment, she was balancing between life and death, a dangerous game that I forced her into. Maven is my one and only good dream, a light in my life that has given me hope, but now I’ve pulled her into my nightmares.

I feel like I’m going to shatter. I know what I have to do because there’s only one thing I can do. Leave. And I need to leave not just this town, but this planet, because I clearly don’t have the strength to stay away from her, and I won’t let her get hurt again. It’s the only way to keep her safe, because the thought of her in danger . . . it isn’t going to happen again.

Even now, with Colin dead, there’s no way to know what havoc has been conspiring over the last six years. Maybe he was alone, or maybe someone will come looking for him, and that thought makes the fear pulsing through me all-consuming.

After all we’ve been through, the good and the bad, she deserves to know everything, and after she knows, I’ll leave with a promise that she will never have to see me again. I hope that promise will ease her enough to forget about this night, forget about me, and move on.

I go to the kitchen sink to try to wipe off at least some of the blood and mud before I feel too dizzy from blood loss, forcing me to sit at the table. I bury my face in my hands, letting out a shaky breath. If fate is real, then it played me. It brought me here to find her, then ripped it all away. I had one last little piece inside me that was worth saving, and now it will be gone too. This will break me, completely, but I have to leave this place. It has to be done, if only to save the life of the woman I love.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

Maven

One moment I’m lying in freezing mud, the next, I’m standing under a stream of hot water raining from the shower head above me. My body locks up for a couple of seconds in fear, going back to that moment when I came to—when I was trying to find the gun but couldn’t.

When that man raised that gun and pointed it at Renn’s chest, I knew I had failed. It makes me sick to my stomach. Every second mattered in that moment, and I panicked. I take a few deep breaths, inhaling the steam. It calms me enough to realize I’m safe now, but not enough to process it all yet.

Those sights and sounds will live with me forever. I stand under the water for a long while, numb to everything, and gradually wash the mud out of my hair, scrubbing my body, hoping it will erase the horrible events of the night, but it doesn’t in the slightest.

When I emerge from the shower, my bag is already here. I don’t remember how I ended up in the shower in the first place, let alone grabbing my bag. As I trace back my steps through the haze, I recall Renn turning the shower on. Standing in front of the mirror, I wipe away the steam sticking to the surface to study my face, grazing my fingers across my forehead where the cut was just moments before. Now, the skin is smooth and unharmed, like it never happened at all. That ointment—the same one he used for my knee on the retreat.

I look unscathed, but inside, my bones ache . . . my soul feels broken. My mind is clouded in a heavy fog as I stare at my reflection, trying to put the events together in my mind, piece by piece, but nothing makes sense, and the confusion grips me tightly. Tears well up in my eyes, but I hold them back. I won’t cry—not yet anyway.

I move in slow motion, pulling a pair of leggings and a sweater out of my bag, and once I brush out my damp hair, I nervously reach for the door knob, not fully sure what will be waiting for me on the other side. My hands tremble slightly, but this is Renn, and I still trust him. I don’t know if that makes me a fool, but it’s him, and he’s all I can count on at the moment. I can feel, deep within me, that the next moments are going to change everything we know forever.

Sometimes these life-altering moments come without warning, catching us off guard. Other times it’s a reaction deep within, as if our very essence senses a shift in the air. I have now experienced both.

When I tiptoe into the kitchen, I find Renn sitting at the table, elbows resting on top—his hands shielding his face. Shy comes trotting over to me. She’s filthy and damp, but seems to be okay. Renn is also still covered in mud, and there’s a cakey texture on his skin. Then I notice all the blood. There’s some on his hands, his face, and I smell the iron tinge of it in the air. For some reason I think back to that day when my mom bandaged his arm, when I touched his blood washing out the cloth. How strange to think that was only a few months ago. Now both of us have had each other’s blood on our hands, but I never would have thought it would ever be for something as horrific as this. I spy the dark red stain on his shirt, but he doesn’t seem to be in any pain. He must have healed the wound like the one on my head with the ointment, the moment of him rubbing it gently into my skin strangely comes back. There’s a metal box sitting on the table in front of him with the lid open. As I inch closer, he doesn’t pull his hands away from his face as I steal a glance at the objects inside, all of them foreign to me.

“Renn?” I say, my voice shaking.

He doesn’t move, he’s almost too still, as if he’s a statue, the mud beginning to dry on his skin like clay. I must have been in the shower longer than I’d realized. Shy walks back over to the hearth and lies down in front of the crackling fire. I watch her and the flames for a moment until I can’t take the silence anymore.

“Renn.” I will myself to sound steady and say it a bit louder this time.

He looks up, locking his eyes on mine, and what I behold in those pools of green and gray is devastating. It makes my breath hitch.

“Are you okay?” he asks, scanning my face.

I’m not “okay” in the slightest, but I know what he means.

“I’m fine,” I say as I take him in fully, his battered but strong body sitting before me.

His shirt is ripped along the collar, he has another small dark stain on his arm, and he has cuts along his cheekbone and eyebrow. He stands, taking a few steps toward me, but keeps his distance, like he can’t get too close, and this sudden wall between us troubles me more than I expect.

---