Page 55 of Warped

Chapter Twenty-three

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I negotiated the traffic toward Grand Central Station.

The place where I’d left a suitcase of my belongings wasn’t in the station, as security didn’t allow lockers there anymore, but in a building close by. I rented long term luggage storage there, in case I ended up in a situation where I’d need some emergency supplies. Just like I did now.

My head pounded from the knock I had taken, but I didn’t care. That frustrating fog had lifted, and I knew who I was again. I remembered the man who had shot me, and how I ended up in the water.

As far as I could tell, we had several options. We killed both Vee’s father, and Tony, before they could get to us. Or else we took off, changed our identities, and became new people. As far as I could tell, the only reason Vee was dragging her feet on the leaving part was because of her sister.

“You know,” I said, staring at the road ahead, mainly because I didn’t want to see her reaction. “We could always just leave. Your sister doesn’t want you to be responsible for her, and you said yourself that she turns eighteen in a couple of days, so you won’t be legally responsible for her either. She wants to live her own life, so why don’t you let her, and we can go on to live ours.”

I risked a glance across to where she sat in the passenger seat, looking forward, her jaw rigid.

“This isn’t only about Nicole,” Vee said eventually. “I’d believed my father would be punished for what he made me do to my mother by spending the rest of his life behind bars. But now he’s going to be out again—if he isn’t already—and he’s going to carry on as though nothing happened. Where’s his punishment for what he did to us? I can’t let him get away with it.”

“So you want to go after him?”

She nodded. “I don’t have any choice. I can’t live knowing he’s out there, carrying on with his life while my mother is dead and my sister hates me.”

“It would be dangerous, you know that. It would mean seeking him out on his own territory. He’d keep himself surrounded by his own men—the same men who came in shooting up Tony’s place the other day.”

“I know that, but what choice do I have? If I run, I’ll spend the rest of my life looking over my shoulder.”

“If you don’t, you might die.”

Her lips thinned. “What do I have to live for?”

I tried not to experience a pang of pain at her words. “You have me.”

“But I still have to learn to live with myself, with what I did. I’m not sure I know how to do that, especially if he’s free. Maybe I thought that with him in prison, it would bring me some kind of closure to the whole thing. I guess I’d hoped Nicole and I would be able to build some bridges. I can’t see that happening with our father out and carrying on as though it never happened.”

“It’ll get easier over time.”

She glanced at me, and I saw the pain in her eyes. “Will it? I’m not so sure. I don’t know if I can ever bring myself to live with this.”

“Then what’s the alternative?” I asked softly. “I don’t want this to turn into a suicide mission.”

She gave a sigh that twisted my gut, and turned to face out of the passenger window. She hadn’t answered my question. Did she really not want to live? It was stupid of me to feel hurt by her response. What she’d gone through and the damage that had caused had happened long before I’d met her. But the idea of living in a world without her in it almost broke me. For the first time in my life, I’d opened myself up to someone, only to discover I wasn’t enough to make her want to keep going.

I glanced back over at her. Her normally caramel complexion had drained of color.

“Hey, are you—” I started, but she shook her head.

“Stop the car.”

I pulled over, receiving blasts of horns from behind at my sudden stop. I’d barely made it to the curb when she slung open the door and leaned out and vomited on the road.

“Are you okay?”

I found her a tissue in the glove compartment and handed it to her to wipe her mouth.

“Yeah, sorry,” she said. “I must have picked up a bug a couple of days ago. Then with all the stress … I guess my body just isn’t reacting well to it.”

“I guess not.”

A small bottle of water was also in the compartment. I didn’t know how old it was, but I figured it was better than nothing, so I twisted off the lid and handed the bottle to Vee.

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