Page 32 of Wicked Riddles & Bitter Heartbeats

Chapter Fourteen

Atticus

“We’re going to Hartford?” Lilah asks when I merge onto the highway.

“Directly to the hotel the conference is at; unless you need to make a stop?”

“Nope, no stop needed.” She grins at me, then fiddles with the radio. Hideous pop music pumps through the speakers and I cringe as she leans back, planning to leave it.

“Please tell me you’re joking.”

She gasps. “How dare you?”

“This is awful.”

“It’sfun.”

“It’s awful,” I repeat.

“Would you rather me put on that awful screamy stuff?”

I huff out a laugh. “Definitely not.”

“The Beatles then?”

“No.”

“Don’t keep me in suspense, Atty. What do you listen to?”

“Debussy, Bocelli, Lang Lang.”

She gapes at me. “Are you speaking English?”

“Just put on whatever you want,” I mutter, with full intentions of broadening her musical horizons another time. No kitten of mine is going to listen to radio trash.

The ride is relatively smooth, except for hitting a few bouts of traffic through the Boston tunnels. If I were a typical person, I’d avoid them after what happened to me. Traumatic memories and all. A pang hits my chest when we drive by the spot my parents died, but it’s easily brushed away. We stop at one rest stop for snacks, but otherwise, the ride is easy.

I appreciate that being around Lilah doesn’t take a lot of energy or put me on edge. I’ve spent most of my conscious life trying to fit in. I’ve always known I was different from other people. No one ever understood me. People avoided me. Looked at me like I was diseased. It was all very confusing and fucked me up until the night my parents died. Everything came together then. Everything made sense. When I woke up the next day, it was like I was looking through a new set of eyes. I finally got it.

I wasn’t the same. I was different.

But if I wanted to get by in life, I had to pretend.

I’d been taught about pretending and imagination—I certainly had one. I could vividly paint pictures in my head of blood and cutting open flesh, something that washes a calmness over me like nothing else. And my memory helped. I saw things and could remember them in specific detail. So I started studying people. I knew I’d never make it in the world if I didn’t fit in.

Thanks to that fateful night my parents died and the years I’d spent watching my father kiss ass to clients and bark out his fakelaugh, it didn’t take much. Everyone loved my father. Pretending worked for him. I just didn’t understand why until they died… And so I turned into a twisted version of him.

But it’s nice that I don’t have to pretend around Lilah. That I have someone here, with me, who can not only help keep me straight, but just be here. Sort of like Violet, but different. Better.

Violet and I were toxic for each other. We were a whirlwind ready to turn into a tornado. Had we spent more time together, it would have been disastrous. I’m not sure I’d be a free man today had she not left me. I try to keep those thoughts in my head when I think of her and what she’s doing… why she left.

I don’t crave human contact like others. I don’t want emotional connections in the same way they do, but I do want it. Just a little. It’s why Violet’s memory has always stuck with me. It’s why I still see my mother’s laughing eyes. It’s why I will never let my kitten go.

Fuck. Maybe I do have mommy problems. And all this time, I thought I was safe from that. Even after all the shit that happened with my sick foster mother… Interesting. So very interesting that I’m still learning things about myself today, and twenty-seven years old.

“Are we almost there? I have to pee.”

We make a quick stop at a gas station so Lilah can use the restroom, even though the hotel is ten minutes away. She wants snacks too, so I hand her my credit card. I fill up the car while we’re here. A red caravan pulls up to the pump on the other side of mine. Two adults are in the front, while through the tinted windows, I make out smaller figures in the back. Two or three of them, bouncing around.

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