Page 71 of Dark Ink

“There wasn’t.”

I was exasperated as I struggled to get out from his hold. “Let go!”

“No.”

“Can’t you see that what you did was wrong?”

Rian startled me into pausing when he gripped my chin and pulled it so I faced him, so I couldn’t escape the intensity of his gaze.

“I would do anything for you, Eithne,” he said. “Whatever it takes.”

I laughed bitterly. “Like make me an accomplice to a crime?”

“That and anything else,” Rian said in a flat tone.

I sucked in a breath. “What does that mean?”

“Exactly what I said,” he answered. “If something is in your way, I’ll take care of it. You have a problem, I’ll fix it. I’m going to be there for you, no matter what…or who.”

Again that pit in my stomach. Again that fear that something wasn’t quite right.

“What does that mean, Rian?” I repeated, almost too afraid to.

“I have an art studio booked,” he said instead of answering. “I’d like to teach you a few things. Real art. Not that bullshite you’re learning on a computer.”

“I can’t,” I said, measuring each word. “I have to get back for Stewart. His AA meeting ends soon. I need to be there.”

I pressed my palms flat against his chest and pushed. This time he stepped back.

Rian’s face seemed to disappear into the shadows. “I told you that if there was problem, I’d solve it.”

This time I really was too frightened to ask what he meant. And I didn’t know if I wanted the answer to the most obvious question: what did you do?

“I need you to leave me alone,” I whispered. “We can’t keep doing this.”

“You don’t mean that. You’re just scared again. Crawling back into your shell again.”

I shook my head.

“I never should have stopped.”

“Stopped what?”

“Being scared,” I told him.

I moved to leave, to go find Stewart to make sure he was alright. Rian grabbed ahold of my wrist and I wrenched it free. Looking over my shoulder, I hissed, “Don’t fucking touch me. Don’t ever fucking touch me again. I—”

I was shocked by the state Rian was in. Maybe he’d been getting worse gradually over the months, so gradually that I hadn’t noticed. He was still so beautiful. But in that moment, all I could see was his pale skin and shadows around his hollowed eyes.

“Leave me alone, Rian,” I told him, pulling away.

What I meant was I didn’t want to see him like that. A stranger. An addict. A broken man with a sick obsession. I wanted to see him as I’d seen him just the day before. But I couldn’t tell him that. Because I wasn’t so sure anymore that that man existed. That he ever had. That I hadn’t just conjured him out of some unresolved fucking daddy issues. That I’d made an imaginary man out of a real one.

Maybe there was no other way to see him than as he was then. As I left him in the shadowed archway. As I walked away.

Eithne

I waited at home for Stewart till dark. Till the rain that had all day been threatening in the swollen bellies of the clouds began to fall. I was bathed in long shadows where I sat on the sunken edge of the bed, hands limp in my lap. I’d replaced all my exhaustion with anger enough to get up, to go out, to find my brother.

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