Page 79 of The Darkest Parts of Me

Tasha doesn’t look at all convinced, but she grasps my hand. “Will you tell me what happened, eventually? I’m not gonna lie, you both are kind of freaking me out.”

I scoot closer and wrap my arm around her shoulder. “I know it doesn’t make sense, but I will. Someday, I will, I promise.” She leans her head against mine. “Thank you for being the greatest friend anyone could ever ask for.”

She chuckles softly. “Same.” After a moment, she lifts her head and pats me on the leg. “Now, if you are going to say goodbye to Renn, then you better get in the shower before you do.”

I grab my pillow and throw it at her, missing her by an inch as she sprints to the door. “Are you saying I smell?”

“Maybe just a little, but your hair has definitely seen better days,” she says with a wink.

“Hey!” I throw another pillow at her, but she has already closed the door behind her. I know she isn’t wrong about my appearance, so I search the closet to find something to wear, trying to distract myself from thinking that this could be the last time I will ever see Renn.

The last time I may ever see those vibrant green eyes and handsome face. I don’t want to think about never hearing his entrancing voice or infectious deep laugh—that smile. It is going to kill me to do it, but I have to see him one last time.

CHAPTER THIRTY

Renn

Istare at the door longer than I care to admit, and it takes all I have left in me to venture back outside to retrieve Locke’s body. It’s nothing short of horrific, pulling Colin’s literal dead weight across the slick ground. I haul it to a spot I deem far enough and check his pockets for anything useful—in which I discover a communication device that will hopefully help me find more info on how he found me and what he’s been up to. I bring the rest of the liquid termite and pour it over him. His clothes and flesh dissolve away even more so in the rain; the remnants of his skin and bones soak into the ground, washing away. I hold it in for as long as I can, but I finally vomit behind a tree, taking a good long while before I trek back through slushy mud to the house.

I don’t bother to remove my clothes as I step into the shower, tracking in even more mud throughout the house, but I don’t have the slightest desire to care. Eventually, I pull my soaked clothes off my body, letting them splat onto the floor. I watch the river of blood and mud flow into the drain, slipping away like the terrible night never happened. I don’t know how long I stand underneath the shower head, but it’s long enough that the water starts to turn cold.

Shy is lying on the bed when I walk up into the loft, whining sadly when she sees me. I rub her ears gently before slipping on some dry clothes, then lie down on top of the bed, letting my legs hang off the side. The exhaustion overpowers all my other senses as I fall asleep quickly, only to be riddled with dreams of Maven’s screams echoing through the forest. A new nightmare of torture that makes me wish I would have made Colin’s suffering last longer for what he did to her.

When I wake the next morning, my limbs are aching in places I forgot I had muscle, and I don’t feel rested in the faintest. Shy, on the other hand, acts like it’s any other morning, and I envy her immensely.

I need to leave this place. This beautiful place in the universe that turned into a haven the moment Maven stepped into my life. A painful twinge sparks in my chest. The last twelve hours have been nothing short of chaos, but what I can’t get over was how Maven responded to everything. After all the things I confessed to her, after everything she had seen, she was most concerned about me. If I thought I was unworthy of her before, it was an understatement now.

I notice as I sit up that there is actual daylight streaming in through the windows. The storm has finally passed, but I still feel it to some degree raging in my heart. The light is welcomed, but it reveals just how much mud I dragged throughout the house. It also reveals all the blood, which I know is mostly my own, but seeing it in the light of day makes it seem real. I pull up my shirt to check the wound, and it has healed, but the skin is still tender, and I know it will scar. The one on my arm is completely gone.

“Well, this will be quite an exciting day, won't it?” I say to Shy as she jumps off the bed, heading down the stairs like she’s done hundreds of times. I want to simply revert back to the way things were just a day ago. But things will never be the same.

Maven has already experienced enough heartache and trauma in her life, and now this mess is piled on top of it. I reluctantly gather up rags, fill a bucket with warm water, and start scrubbing the hardwood floor. After my hands are worn raw, the floors are finally clean. There’s one spot near the stairs that is still slightly darker, but what does it matter? It’s not like I’m going to be around to see it. I move on to the next task at hand.

While I have Locke’s comm device, I’m not so sure if I should try to use it. I worry it may have some kind of tracker that if activated would cause someone else to come looking. But his ship has to be somewhere close, and right now, it’s the only way I’ll be able to get off this planet. Once I do locate it, it may take me a few days to deactivate the location tracking. My plan is simple enough, but even as I set out to find the vessel, I still feel that pull to her, like I’m a satellite caught in orbit, and the only way to free myself would be to shatter completely, letting pieces of my heart scatter into space.

I don’t bother checking the time before I make the decision to drive to her house. I found Locke’s ship relatively easily. It was well hidden, about three miles into the forest, but Locke and I were both trained at the academy, so I knew what to look for.

The rain has stopped, but it doesn’t keep the air from being icy. Even with my jacket and beanie, it’s so frigid that I’m surprised there’s still no snow. My breath fogs around me as I walk out the door to my motorbike.

I’ll get back to Locke’s ship eventually. It’s in rough shape, and as I looked through his supplies, I found he was low in almost everything—fuel, food. It didn’t seem to be a stable conquest. It caused me to wonder if he may have been on a solo mission, giving me a little spark of hope that perhaps his plans were spoiled in my absence. That was the dream, the whole reason I did what I did in the first place. I’m not sure I’m ready to accept that it could’ve all been for nothing. I climb onto my bike full of dread, second guessing if I should take the truck instead, but this is probably the last time I’ll ever be able to ride it.

I always thought that dying in the void of space, starving slowly and alone, had been the lowest moment of my life, but the thought of Maven no longer being a part of it . . . there are no words; it feels just as it had in those dark moments in the abyss. It feels like dying, but I need to see her one last time. I’m already miserable, so why not punish myself more? I don’t see a soul as I speed through the dark gray, blacks, and greens of the freshly drenched forest, the roadway shiny and reflective as it whirls past me.

My heart relaxes a bit when I see Tasha’s car in the driveway. At least Maven hasn’t been here alone. I softly rap on the door and hold my breath, hearing the floorboards creak on the other side.

“Renn!” Tasha’s wide eyes tell me enough as she opens the door and steps outside, closing it softly behind her. “Well, you’re certainly very brave to show up here.” Her face is a mixture of sadness and something else I can’t place. I’ve never seen her look at me the way she is now, but I might call it anger. “She’s asleep, by the way. But even if she wasn’t, I don't think she’s ready to talk to you.”

I nod, biting my lip as I stare at my shoes. “Yeah, I wouldn’t want to talk to me either if I were in her place right now.”

Tasha glares at me—actually glares at me. It shocks me, but I deserve it, so I say nothing. “Renn, what the hell happened?”

I clear my throat. “What did she tell you?”

She narrows her gaze on me. “Not much. Only that you two got into a fight and she still won’t tell me anything more. However . . . I know it was more than just a fight.” Her glare intensifies. “So, are you going to tell me what really happened?”

I’m rendered speechless for a few beats. “It’s complicated.”

Tasha’s eyebrows furrow as she crosses her arms in front of her. “Really?”

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