Page 44 of The Sinner and the Gunslinger
Blinding pain radiates along my jaw. Stars burst behind my eyes.Holy fuck, I’m calling her Slugger from now on. Jesus Christ, that was some hit. I work my jaw, testing it. It’s gonna be sore for a while, but I’ve had worse. I think she held back.JesusChrist, I always knew she held back, but this is better than anything I envisioned.
My wildcat is strong.
“What was that for?” I rub my jaw.
She points in my face. “You’re fucking clueless. You know that? You just ran toward a fire without any preparation or forethought.”
She’s trembling—not anger. It’s fear. Panic. Her plump bottom lip wobbles. Her eyes are large and liquid. Her skin is colorless. I’ve never seen her so distraught. Not since... not since...
Promise?Her little voice cuts through the night.
Cross my heart.
Guilt hits me hard as I realize what’s happened. She still runs her nightly checks for fire hazards. She carries an extinguisher around. She growled at me for smoking near dead grass. She’s still afraid of fire, and I just ran toward it like the day I left her.
“I’m so sorry.” I raise my palms.
“You could have been...” She gestures to the smoking trash. “I thought it was...”
“Hey.” I pull her gently into my embrace. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking. I’m safe.”
She stiffens in my arms and then punches my chest. “I don’t care if you’re safe. I hate you.”
I tighten my embrace, squashing her, hoping my warmth will ground her.
“You don’t mean that, wildcat,” I murmur against her hair, loving that smell again. “Darlin’, you don’t hate me. And I don’t hate you.”
I can’t let her go. Her fruity shampoo is there, eliminating the smoke. She feels too good in my arms, and I think she feels the same because she’s not pushing me away. She’s also not hugging back.
“Just tell me why.” Her voice is small and muffled against my front. She’s ice in my arms.“I’m ready now.”
I glance at the bar door. Behind it is nothing but death. Suddenly, I feel like I’m swimming in a swamp. There’s no up. No down. Just never-ending viscous mud everywhere I turn. No matter what I’ve done, we keep returning to this shit. I’ve wasted most of my life trying to keep it from her. Even when I feared she was dead, even when I was a god in a godless city, a part of me hadn’t stopped hunting the demon... just in case.
All it got me was loneliness and time away from the one person who mattered anything to me.
“If I tell you...” I sigh. “If I tell you everything,thenyou’ll hate me.”
She’ll know all of it was for nothing.
She pulls back, and the ice melts from her eyes.
“Zeke,” she whispers. “What did you do?”
My thumb swipes a strand of hair from her flawless skin. She’s so fucking beautiful it pains me to look at her. The Reverend Mother said something about Beatific Vision, or was it people gazing upon God’s true face and going insane from being unable to handle the divine sight? That’s the edge I feel whenever I look at Leila—like my body can’t handle how stunning she is or how much she means to me.
I try to look away as though my eyes will burn, but I’m stuck because, without that fire, I’m cold. How did I ever have the strength to walk away from her?
What did I do?
“Not enough,” I answer.
It physically hurts to disengage from our embrace. I step back and look where the Mustang is a black shadow amongst the gray haze. Cisco wanted me to make amends with Leila. I tried to tell her everything before we left, but she kept freaking out. It’s either talk now or face the blood and death inside that bar.
I don’t think we’re in danger. Everything is dead in there. So we have time. If I don’t confess to her now, who knows when she’ll be ready to listen again?
My voice sounds foreign as I let it all out.
“When I found Snuggles in the group home fire, I realized something about the demon who killed my sister. It hissed the words ‘snuggle time’whenit killed her. I don’t think the fire demon had ever been after my sister.” I meet her shocked gaze. “It was after you—the one who was followed by fire all her life.”
