Page 23 of Little Bird
I bring the gun up and shoot three more times, each bullet going through the same hole, and can’t help but smile to myself. Maybe this was a good idea after all. I like that it’s easy for me and that I’m good at it.
I like that Taryn Matthews is standing behind me watching me nail that same hole again and again. No pun intended.
I pull off the earmuffs I put on to protect my hearing and turn around, ready to brag about how good I am, but find Taryn looking distinctly unimpressed.
“What?” I ask, my heart stuttering a bit. “I just hit the same spot six times in a row.”
She turns bored eyes on me and shakes her head. “So I saw. But you said you were going to teach me. And this is not that.”
I snort. “You didn’t actually believe that, did you? I just said that so we could get away from everyone else.”
Her look turns to suspicion. “Is that so? Why would you do a thing like that?”
“Because I didn’t want to talk to them anymore. Obviously.”
She walks up to me, her steps slow and measured, and stops when she’s close enough for me to be able to smell her. Looking up, she tips her head slightly. “And why would you want to stop talking to them? Obviously.”
For a moment, I can’t breathe. She’s too fucking close, her face on the edge of laughter, and I can feel her energy poking at me, like she’s looking for a way in. Looking for an opening that will allow her under my skin again. And God, I want to let her do exactly that. It’s been so long since I felt any warmth for another person, or like anyone wanted to know what I was actually thinking.
So long since I believed anyone actually cared.
And this girl is the one who taught me that I could trust again. She was there in the middle of the night when I needed someone to talk to me, there when I was in a dark spiral that was going to take me down. She never stopped holding my hand, never stopped stepping into the void to protect me from my own memories.
The instinct to draw her into me, breathe her in and let her fix everything, is so strong it almost knocks me down.
But that’s exactly what makes her so dangerous. She forces those tiny fingers into the cracks in my soul and pulls them open, exposing the softest, most unprotected parts of me. Spreads the broken pieces of my heart out to the sun and tries to stitch them back together. But I don’t know how long she’s going to be here, or if I can trust her.
And I can’t let her dig into my mind if she’s just going to disappear again.
I can’t afford to be that vulnerable.
“Because I don’t want them getting the idea that you’re here to stay,” I say coldly.
Her eyes shutter and a mask comes down, and part of my heart breaks at the sight. The other part says that’s exactly what needs to happen, because it protects us both.
I’m so busy thinking about that, though, that I stop paying attention, and am caught completely off-guard when she reaches out and snags the gun neatly out of my hands.
“Well then I guess you better get to teaching me, or I’ll go out there and start making friends,” she says simply. “That girl Sammy already invited me to her house. And if she’s your stepcousin, I’m guessing she has some entertaining stories to tell.”
I grab for the gun, horrified, but she keeps it just out of reach, her face calm.
“Teach me,” she says. “Or I’m going to go out there and start talking.”
Well, fuck.
The problem is, I’m not sure I have much choice here. I don’t want to teach her how to shoot. But I’ve known Taryn long enough to know that if I don’t do what she wants, she’ll go out of her way to make trouble for me. And granted, talking to my friends isn’t the worst thing in the world. But she knows a lot of things about me that they don’t.
And the thought of them knowing some of that... Knowing how damaged I actually am, when I’m being honest...
No. I can’t have that. I’ve spent too long building a reputation as someone who has it all handled.
I make another grab for the gun, then one more, but Taryn is quicker than I remember and all I get is a handful of her T-shirt. It’s too big for her and when I pull it, it ends up coming down off one shoulder, exposing a bra strap. She shrieks like I’ve just attacked her—which, okay, I did—and I lunge for her face, slapping a hand over her mouth.
“Sh!” I hiss. “Sam is going to think I’m trying to kill you or something!”
I don’t expect the laughter that comes bubbling up out of my throat, but this is all so familiar that I can’t help it. I’ve shushed her because we were going to get in trouble over something more times than I can count, and usually it was a failure. Because her laughter is so big that it can’t be shushed.
And when she starts laughing now, the sound leaking out around my hand, I realize that she hasn’t lost that part of herself.
