Page 22 of Apex of the Curve

Chapter Six

Fenris…

My phone started buzzing across the table in front of me and I picked it up. It was a number I didn’t recognize.

“Hello?”

“Hi.” The voice was soft, feminine and held a strained quality to it. I didn’t like it, but I was thrilled because I knew instantly who it was.

“Aspen?” I asked, and Dump Truck and Little Bird exchanged a look.

“Yeah, um,” her voice cracked, “I think I need help.”

I sat up straighter and asked, “You at home?”

“Yeah.” She sounded mournful.

“Say no more, I’m on my way.”

I ended the call and got up, reaching for my wallet.

“I got it, go,” Dump Truck said, and he fixed me with a look that said he absolutely understood. I looked at Little Bird and she gave me a sympathetic nod.

“Thank you, brother.”

I went for the door and got on my bike. I was a good forty-five or fifty minutes from her place and remembered exactly how to get there like I’d dropped her off just yesterday instead of a couple of weeks ago.

When I pulled up to the curb in front of her house, the windows were dark, but the front porch light glowed dimly. I pulled off my lid, smoothed a hand over the top of my hair to tame any random frizz and marched up the front walk to her door. I knocked twice and held my breath.

She opened it and looked up at me with a tear-stained face, her makeup in muddy tracks down her cheeks.

“What’s wrong?” I asked, and she stared stricken for a few heartbeats as if trying to decide how much to tell me. Her expression crumbled, and she started to cry all over again and said to me, “I just don’t think I want to be alive anymore and I’m scared.”

“Oh, baby. Fuck,” I muttered, and I pulled her toward me. She crashed against me, sobbing heartbrokenly into my chest.

I stepped into her, over the threshold and kicked the door shut behind us and just let her cry.

I had no idea what the fuck had happened, but it said something to me that I, the fuckin’ guy she’d literally just met, was the only person she had that she could call at a time like this. I mean, that was something fucking tragic. Wasn’t it?

“I’m so sorry! I’m sorry!” she cried between her sobs, and I just clutched her tighter to me.

“It’s okay, I got yah. It’s alright now. You just let it out.” I didn’t know what else to say. What else to do. So, I just did what my mom had done for me when I was a kid. What I’d seen her do for my sister a thousand times. I gave her a safe place and permission to cry it out. Then I would ask some questions and figure out what needed doing to fix it, if there was even anything to fix. Sometimes with women, that wasn’t what they wanted. Or so my sister had told me, once upon a time.

Sometimes all they wanted was to cry and to vent.

I felt helpless in this situation, but I knew in the front of my head, that I wasn’t. I was doing exactly what I needed to be doing right this minute by just being here for her. It was my own thoughts and feelings that were racing, that were whispering I should go out and find a motherfucker and do harm. I wanted to hit something, someone, anyone. I wanted to rend flesh, and I knew it was an impotent rage that was stirring in the center of my chest. I was just angry for the sake of being angry because she hurt and there wasn’t anything I could do to stem the flow on it.

We ended up on the couch and she wept brokenly for what felt like an age and I just did what I could to hold her up.

She seemed so fragile; as thin as glass, and I worried gravely over what she’d said… about not wanting to be alive anymore. She was begging for help, crying out, and I was here, but I was no psychologist. I was a hammer where fine surgical instruments were required. I wasn’t cut out for this… but she’d called me and I wasn’t about to let her down.

I couldn’t save my sister, but maybe, just maybe, I could save Aspen. It was a unique set of circumstances and for me to know what I was up against; I would need to pull back some layers.

“How you doing?” I asked when she’d quieted down and settled.

“I honestly don’t know,” she whispered back dully.

“That’s alright,” I said and massaged up and down her arm with my hand.

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