She tapes the gauze down, and I flex my fingers slowly.
“Bianca can close,” Rogue says. “You don’t have to go back out there.”
“I have to.”
Rogue has known me for three years, and she has the good sense not to argue with me. So she puts the first aid kit away and stands up.
“For what it’s worth,” she says, pausing at the door. “They all looked gutted. Even the scary one.”
I don’t ask which one she means by that. I don’t want to think about it.
“Please tell Bianca I’m coming back,” I say.
Rogue gives me one last look and goes back into the front of the bar, while I sit in the back room for another minute. I press my hand flat against my thigh, and I let myself feel the pain for sixty seconds. All of it. The cut, the mess, the pain on Vero’s face, the words I said and the ones I didn’t. I let it be as bad as it actually is instead of pretending it’s nothing. One minute is all I am giving it tonight. Then I stand up, take a deep breath, and go back to help put the bar back together.
Bianca doesn’t say anything when I take my spot beside her; she simply slides down to give me room. The music is still going, someone has righted the overturned table, and the glass has been swept up. The people who stayed have gone back to their drinks.
I pour a drink for a woman at the end of the bar who has been waiting patiently.
“Sorry about that,” I say.
She wraps both hands around the glass. “Honey,” she says. “Is he okay?”
I open my mouth.
“He loves you,” she adds. “You could see it from across the room. It’s just not...” She stops. “Sorry. None of my business.”
“It’s fine,” I say.
She’s right,it’s not her business.
Love can’t look like that. It cannot cost someone else’s face or my boss’s bar. Loving someone is not the same as letting them take up all the space inside and consume you.
Vero
The view from the Asylum roof is nice. I don’t know why I haven’t come up here before. From here I can see the entire island, and I am never coming down. Maybe I should just live here.
Everything is my fault.
Kayla is hurt, and the way her voice sounded when she said, “Get the fuck out of my life,”will bounce through my head forever. It’s not the first time someone has spoken those words to me—well, not the exact words, but in the end they all leave.
She also said she would never want me to leave, not for any reason. I know she meant that too. The confusing part is, my paper-cut princess doesn’t say things she doesn’t mean, so which one is true? She also told me I heal a part of her soul.
I sit on the edge of the roof and look down at the three waiting men below me.
Clay is pissed, standing with his arms crossed. Brawley is conflicted, and I know him well enough to know he is considering climbing up here to get me, but he will wait long enough to see if he can talk me into coming down. Ares just stands there with his hands in his pockets.
“Vero, get down here now,” Clay yells, as if that would actually work.
“Nope,” I say with a smile. “But thanks for the suggestion, I will forward it on to management.”
“It’s not a fucking suggestion,” he grits out.
“Sounded like one to me. It was very suggestion-like.”
It’s never a good sign when Brawley doesn’t say anything; it normally means he has decided something and is waiting for the right moment. I love him more than anything in this world, but he is not coming up here and I’m not going down.
“If you fall off that roof,” Clay says, “I will kill you myself.”