Page 137 of My Lovely Tragedy
Forty-eight hours.
Over two thousand minutes.
“Brooklyn.” I blink. Everyone’s staring at me. Cobain and Dexter. Benji and Jack and Helena. The guys are staring at my necklace clasped in my fingers. Jack and Helena at my face before they turn to glance at each other. And I recognize that look. The uncertainty. That I’m going to ruin this for everyone.
“I’m fine.”
Benji turns to Helena. “Maybe a press conference isn’t the best thing for Brooklyn right now. He just got home two days ago, and he’s still exhausted.”
“Of course, we don’t want to make things worse for Mr. Crow.”
I rear back, affronted.Mr. Crow?What the fuck?I catch Cobain’s eyes, and he shrugs, twisting his lips and tilting his head to the side.
“But you have a show in four days, and word has already gotten out that he’s…” She glances at me out of the corner of her eye, “returned home.”
“Makes me sound like a fucking lost dog or some shit,” I mumble, mostly to myself, but Cobain catches it and barks out a laugh. When Jack shoots him a glare, he snaps his mouth shut and straightens, shoving his arms behind his back like a soldier at attention.
I flick a weak grin at him, and when Jack looks away, he smiles back, black, beady eyes dancing.
It feels so natural that a few seconds pass before I remember I really don’t feel like smiling, and I’m actually fucking petrified. It falls off my face in an instant, and the hornets swarm.
“It’s fine,” I cut Benji’s tangent off. It’s actually nice to hear them speaking up for me, despite knowing I’m lying to their faces.
They’re my family—and they are all I have left now and… I have to be okay with that.
“I’ll do it. Just get it over with.”
Helena turns to me. “Good. Because they’re outside waiting.”
“Right now?”
“Yes.”
I swallow. “I thought it wasn’t for an hour.”
“It’s been an hour, Mr. Crow.”
“You’re a fucking blanket of warmth, Helena,” Dexter snaps as he steps up to me and tugs my hands from the fuckingturtleneckthey put me in. “Quit pulling on it, man, you’re gonna stretch it out.”
“It’s fucking choking me,” I grumble, pulling at it again. “I wouldn’t be caught dead in something like this, and they’re gonna know that.” I jerk my head toward the front of the building, where the vultures apparently lie in wait.
“Yeah, but we gotta cover those up somehow.” He gestures toward the bruises encompassing my skin with a twirl of his finger. My shoulders hike toward my ears as I drag my hand over my jaw. My beard grazes over my skin, and the coarse scrape causes a bone-deep shiver to travel the length of my spine, where it burrows into my coccyx.
I follow the round curve of Dexter’s jaw, up to his ruddy hair, where it sits atop his head in a tight but messy knot. “Are you gonna explain them?” he asks. I fixate on the spiked earring dangling from the arch of his ear. “Or this.” His index finger grazes my key, and I jerk back, clutching it.
He lifts his hands in front of him in a placating gesture. “Sorry.” Air whistles heavily in my nostrils as dark spots dance in my peripheral. I step back until the backs of my knees bump into the coffee table. It screeches across the floor. Glass clinks and rattles. Something shatters.
Steel bites into my palm, the edges sharp. They remind me of Tobias’s teeth. I press harder. Scrunch my eyes shut. Trying to remember the imprint on my neck, across my trapezius. The blunt pressure, more of a dull throb that radiated hotly outward.Deeply.
I press my fingers to my neck, down the slope until I reach my Adam’s apple, following the ignited thrum.
“Perhaps he isn’t stable enough. Let me give Gregory a call.”
“He doesn’t need a fuckingshrink,Helena. Jesus.”
“Really? He isn’t exactly displaying stable behavior.”
“You’re our publicist, not our fucking family. You don’t know shit.”
