Page 76 of Peaceful Chaos

The Root of All Evil

Sin

"I'm gettinga strong sense of deja vu here," Jen says as she checks Jenna's vital signs.

I take a deep breath and release a ragged exhale. There's a foreign feeling taking root in my chest. Guilt. It's a new one for me. Before I left Devil's Crossing, my world was small and centered on surviving one day to the next. In order to function, I shut down the part of myself capable of feeling bad for the things I did. Rather, the things I was forced to do. But with closing off the bad, I also shut out all the good.

When I let Raven in she brought with her every feeling I'd closed myself off to. I can't have one without the other. I wouldn't change it, but sometimes it's a struggle.

Images of Jess detoxing on the floor of the bathroom enter my mind, followed by the last time I saw her dead in the trunk of Damien's car. So much has happened in the last several months that it slips my mind there's a member of their original group who will always be missing.

"I know saying I'm sorry won't bring Jess back, but I am," I tell her.

Jen and I don't talk much. I appreciate the friendship she has with Raven. I like that Raven's world is growing every day. But I haven't forged much of a connection outside of what she means to Raven.

She moves away from Jenna and watches me. "You know that what happened to Jess wasn't your fault."

"I treated her like shit. Used her to push Raven away. Maybe if she hadn't met me she'd still be here with the rest of you instead of rotting somewhere in a shallow grave."

Jen flinches at my graphic depiction of her friend's fate. I expect her to drop it and move away from me, as most people do when my mood turns dark. They say proximity breeds familiarity though, so I guess I'm less frightening to her now.

"Jess was on a downward spiral long before she ever met you. The drugs weren't a new thing for her. Neither was hooking up with a random guy to try to catch Ford's attention. Don't take that on your shoulders."

I smirk at her. "So what you're telling me is that it's really Ford's fault."

"Now you're catching on," Shane says from the doorway. "When in doubt blame it on Ford. Especially if it's about a woman."

Ford alerts us to his presence by slapping Shane on the back of his head. "Don't be a dick, bro. I never slept with Jess."

"And that was her problem," Jen interrupts. "She was obsessed with you, and she did everything she could to get your attention. It's also not your fault she grew addicted to the attention and the drugs."

I clear my throat, bringing their attention back to me. "It's still my fault for taking advantage of what she offered."

Raven slips into the room and ducks under my arm. "I don't see how any of this is relevant. Yeah, you were a dick to her, and she was creeping on Ford. Neither of those things put a bullet in her head. My father did that."

With my free arm, I point at Jenna. "She's why it's relevant. She's another woman I used in order to cope with life."

"Yeah, and she used you in the exact same way," Raven dismisses.

Tessa squeezes into the room, carefully avoiding standing next to Ford. "Are we having a party in here with stalker girl?" Her smirk fades. "I'm going to be really honest with you," she says looking at me.

I gulp, because she too had a bit of a tail spin after we hooked up.

"Don't give me that look," she snaps.

"What look?" I ask, confused. There's a lot of truth being spilled, and it's making my head swim. I also forgot how sound carries in this part of the converted warehouse. Jen and I might as well have broadcast our entire conversation.

Tessa waves her hand in my direction bringing my attention back to her. "The look that says you damaged me in some way. You didn't. I'm a grown-ass woman, and I can fuck up my life all on my own. And, Raven's right."

"Thank you!" Raven fist pumps, then lets it fall. "But … what am I right about?"

"That we used him," she says to Raven, then turns her attention back to me. "I'm sorry for that. I know you used me too, but of the two of us, I sense you are more broken than I am. I used you to get a reaction from him." She jerks her chin toward Ford, and he stiffens.

"It was a shitty thing for me to do. Sometimes the pain and the longing are too much to deal with."

He glares at her. There's anger and hurt in his eyes, but then it cools as he shoves his emotions deep down. "You pushed me away," his voice is flat, like this conversation has been had between them many times before.

Tessa nods. "I did, but I guess I didn't expect it to work." She sighs and shifts uncomfortably from foot to foot. "That's a discussion for another time. But, what I'm trying to say is that what I did," she points at Jenna, "what she is doing isn't about you, Sin. Jess too for that matter. Some women wield sex as a weapon. Sometimes it's against others, but mostly it's against ourselves. We create a narrative telling ourselves we don't deserve to be loved, then we prove it by finding men incapable of loving us. And the fallout, for me at least, wasn't that you rejected me. I didn't treat you like a person, so there was never an emotional component to what happened between us."

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