Page 304 of Vicious Saint
“Ask you what?”
“What we both know you’ve been wondering since I helped Carlo kill your attacker.”
Hendrix swallows. Loud. But sticks with silence. Proving her worry is most likely whether “help” has evernotbeen in front of “kill.”
I answer regardless, on the off chance her knowing the truth will keep the nightmares at bay.
“Never by my own hand.”
Hendrix cranes her neck to look at me, using a sigh of relief to carry away the heaviness in her eyes. “Really?”
“Don’t sound too proud, baby, I’ve blurred the lines many times.”
Especially with that piece of shit Luke.
Tomyrelief, her light expression doesn’t falter much.
“With who?”
I pin her with a “nice try” grin, then reply, “Why don’t you tell me about these nightmares? Hm?”
And just like that…she’s withdrawing again.
“You need to talk to me. It’s not good to hold shit in like this.”
“They’re just dreams, Saint, they mean nothing.”
“Then why do you keep asking if I’m me when you wake up?”
Hendrix stills, all the way down to her breaths.
“Point proven. Dreams can’t mean nothing if they have you questioning who I am.”
Panic grips her face when she looks at me. “That’s not how it is at all.”
“Then how the fuck is it?”
Pulling at the strings on the bottom of her T-Shirt, Hendrix mutters, “They’re a repeat of that night…except I’m the one with the gun ready to shoot.”
“You need to know I’d never let that happen. That I’d never let you carry the burden of taking someone’s life.”
“I do.”
“No…you don’t.” I laugh, but there’s not a drop of humor in it. “I would take a bullet to the skull fifty times over before allowing you to sacrifice the good in you.”
“Please don’t talk this way, it hurts to even imagine you gone.” She looks down. “Especially not now.”
Every atom inside me is screaming for me to drive my point home, but the logical decisions my father mentioned, they stuck with me enough to spare Hendrix anymore grief.
“Alright, change of plans.” I swing my legs over the bed, then jump to my feet and skip toward the mini fridge I had put in her room. “Therapy is about to be. In. Sesh.”
Hendrix laughs. “What are you doing you psycho? And for the love of God, please stop skipping like Theory.”
Whipping open the freezer, I pull out the big guns, in the form of my little Jimi Hendrix’s favorite snacky snack. “Then how’re you gonna get this?” I wiggle the pint of chocolate ice cream. “Hm?”
“Chocolate Therapy.” She shoots out her hand. “Fuck yes, give it to me.”
“Careful now, Jimi,” I warn. “There’s more than one way for me to interpret that.”
