I need to fight for myself, I know it. Can’t live for someone else. But the blow of losing her is heavy, and I’m fucking lost, too. Adrift.
Even drawing won’t help. I think about the drugs again, how they took the pain away.
Fuck, no.
“What the hell’s the matter with you?” Seth is muttering under his breath as he paces the length of my living room. “You didn’t show up at Damage for your training, didn’t show up at the gym, won’t answer your phone. I thought to check the hospitals to see if you were in an accident or something. What the fuck, Shane?”
I scowl into my glass of Jack and shrug.
“Your therapist says you’re doing better.”
She does, huh? Not what she told me last time. In fact she asked the exact same question as Seth.
‘What the fuck is going on?’
“Cassie,” Seth says, and I blink, looking around before I remember she isn’t here, and won’t be coming over. “So that’s the problem.”
“There ain’t no fucking problem, Seffers.”
“Fuck you.” He marches up to me and jabs a finger at me, getting in my space until I’m pressed back against the sofa. “Don’t lie to me. Not after everything we’ve been together.”
Whoa, he’s pissed.
“She told me I don’t get her.” I press the pencil tip into the paper until it snaps. “That I never said it back.”
“Never said back what?”
“That’s exactly what I asked.”
Seth straightens and rakes his fingers through his short hair. “Dammit. Then you probably weren’t listening, idiot. Women are like you and me. They want you to listen. To understand them.”
“What the fuck ever.” I throw the pencil against the wall, dump my drawing pad to the floor. “I was listening.”
“And then you have to tell them what you feel, fuckhead. They can’t read your mind. Tell them you want them, tell them how much they mean to you.”
Her mother told her she’s stupid not to go out and meet other guys. And I said her mother is nuts. She told her mother she wants to be with me.
She wants to be with me, and I told her… Nothing. I frown at my fingers, dirty with the graphite from the pencil.
Should I have said something? Isn’t it obvious how much I want her?
“Do you love her, cuz?”
“Yeah.” I push to my feet, wipe my hands on my pants and almost laugh at his shocked expression. “I… need her.”
“Have you told her?”
“No.”
“Then tell her.”
The tips of my ears burn. “Fuck, I don’t know, man…”
“Okay, cuz, listen.” Seth rubs a hand over his face. “Cassie came to me weeks ago, when you started having these flashbacks.”
“What for?”
“She came to ask me how to help you. If I knew what triggers you had, which I fucking didn’t. Anyway, she said, and I quote, ‘Tell me who hurt him, and I’ll hurt them back.’ Unquote.”