Page 91 of Snake

Where the fuck had she gotten the idea she could trust him?

Dropping to a crouch, she put Charlize in a bright green exercise ball and set her rolling across the floor. When she stood again, she found Cox’s gaze and smiled softly.

Her hand came up to cup his cheek. “I’ll ask Adrienne to run the errands without me,” she said. “I’ll stay close.”

He wanted to tell her she didn’t need to watch him like a toddler. He wasn’t going to off himself, and none of the many things he was furious about had a form he could fight.

He wanted to tell her to go and do whatever she needed or wanted to do.

He wanted to tell her to go back to Indianapolis and live her life, to free herself from him while he was already so buried in rage and loss he couldn’t feel anything else.

But the thought of her being away from him, leaving him alone with this spider’s nest of fury and hurt, carved out a crater in his belly.

So instead of telling her he didn’t need her, he bent over and set his head on her slim shoulder.

Her hands came up, slipped through his hair, and held him to her, and Cox found a full breath.

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~oOo~

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Cox woke up well before dawn and knew at once sleep was gone for the night. Autumn lay beside him, on her side facing him, her small, pretty hand with its pearl-pink nails resting on his chest. If he was in reach of her these days, she was touching him—rubbing his back, stroking his hair, holding his hand, resting on him as they slept. He wasn’t sure if she was comforting him or herself. Or maybe she was afraid he’d shrivel up and disappear if she wasn’t holding on.

That last one felt closest to true.

Lying on his back, looking up at the grey-dark ceiling where moonlight made monsters of the trees outside his window, Cox felt the rage in his belly roar to fullness. It sent flames licking through his veins, turned his stomach to poison, made his heart a fist. He’d lived most of his life with anger throbbing a bassline beneath the score of his days, but this rage was different. This wasn’t a throbbing ache, it was a screaming agony. It was being burned from the inside out, and it was steadily growing, devouring more of him each day. Soon there would be nothing left.

He could not deal with this. He had to get away from it.

Moving carefully, Cox slipped from the bed, lifting Autumn’s hand and setting it gently on the mattress. She sighed deeply but didn’t wake. Continuing with the same watchful quiet, he pulled his jeans and boots on, found a t-shirt in the basket of clothes Autumn had washed the day before, and left the room. He grabbed his keys from the wooden box on the kitchen counter where he kept his pocket shit.

Both his phones sat in that box as well. Cox considered them for a moment but left them where they were. He left the house.

At the garage, he rolled his Breakout to the street and mounted and fired it up there. It was still loud, but it wasn’t ten feet from his bedroom window, and with the AC on, maybe she’d sleep through it.

In the hours before sunrise on the day of his mother’s funeral, Cox rode out of Signal Bend. He had no idea where he was going and no interest in considering the question. Away. He was going away from everything—a family he’d lost, a past that tormented him, a life he hated, and a future he couldn’t imagine.

He was going away, and right now that was all he cared to know.

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~oOo~

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He rode for hours, over every twisty road he knew and a few he discovered along the way. He rode in the dark, in the grey light of dawn, and into a bright, cloudless summer day. He ran low on gas and stopped to fill the Breakout’s tank and drain his own, and after a cup of watery, burnt gas-station coffee, he got back on the road.

He still had no destination in mind, and he was vaguely aware that if his journey were plotted on a map it would look like a skein of yarn after a litter of kittens had been at it. His progress on the road was no more a straight line than the progress of any thought in his head for the past week or more. But he didn’t feel better, so he kept riding. The sun traveled through the sky on its daily commute, and Cox rode on.

He found himself back in Signal Bend without aiming for it; the snarl of yarn had simply led him home eventually. When he registered where he was, the first switch of reality flipped on and he got his bearings. Up ahead was Marie’s, and nearby the church; he could see the full parking lot, and he knew what that meant.

Cox checked his watch: it was almost four in the afternoon. He’d been riding for half a day. Autumn had scheduled his mother’s funeral for three o’clock.

He’d missed his mother’s funeral.

Her second one, anyway.

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