Hush

Shelby’s family lived two hours outside of the city. None of them had driver’s licenses yet, but Shelby’s father was teaching her. Orion didn’t know how well that was going.

Neither Jaclyn nor Orion had someone to teach them.

Being in the car with April had told Orion everything she needed to know about her skills as a driver. As it was, she was almost certain April had managed to talk her way into the license, because there was no way her driving skills got her there. Maybe she flashed some cleavage and dished out some compliments.

Unless she wanted to rely on someone else to drive her, Orion couldn’t go visit Shelby. And she didn’t want to. That trip with Maddox had been a one-off, total desperation type of situation. He was not her chauffeur. He was not her anything.

Shelby’s parents had seemed nice enough, but they made it as clear as they could that they did not want to be around Jaclyn and Orion. In their eyes, Shelby was still their innocent little girl, and they didn’t want her corrupted.

Or maybe they just wanted to rid themselves of all the reminders of what Shelby had been through, what she still carried with her.

Orion understood that. If she could give herself a lobotomy, she would.

Orion had tried to keep up with Shelby as well as she could, but she got tired of the effort. Got a little angry at Shelby for constantly demanding their attention when she had two parents to give that to her in excess.

They were all navigating their new normal, this new world, and they needed to do it without depending on each other.

A part of Orion desperately wanted to keep in touch. That was her secret. If she could buy them a house to live in as deranged spinsters for the rest of their lives, she would. She missed them as much as she hated to be around them. Needed them as much as she convinced herself she needed no one. It didn’t matter to her that they couldn’t heal with each other reminding them of their wounds. She was one seeping, infected fucking sore, and it wasn’t going to change.

She didn’t want it to change. She didn’t want it to scab over, to itch, to fade away.

She wanted to hold on to it all, every detail, every cut, so she could recreate it on those who hurt her, unleash the rage that engulfed her.

But she didn’t want to bring the other two into her warped and dark world. She didn’t want anyone peeking around in there, because they were trying to heal in their own ways, and it was selfish and destructive of Orion to try and drag them down with her. To try and bring them along on her conquest for blood, down into the pit she was building, furnishing, and decorating with depraved and homicidal plans.

She wasn’t going to lie to herself, she had wanted them with her on this. She’d wanted partners, someone to share the load with. Share the fear with. Someone who would understand the visceral need to inflict pain on those who harmed them.

Though it helped that she was plenty used to not having any partners. She was alone. A loner. And the sooner she got used to that, the better.

That didn’t mean she was going to abandon Jaclyn. She was a lot like Orion—her family had been trash before all of this, and that was the one thing in this ugly world that hadn’t changed. The trailer trash stayed the same throughout the years. They were like mountains, unyielding, unmoving. Anyone Jaclyn might have in this world would only want to drain her dry and discard her. They only had each other.

So, Orion was carrying a bottle of Tito’s as a peace offering. Orion hadn’t touched a drop of hard liquor since she’d gotten out. She was too afraid of what it might do to her. Addiction lurked in her blood, it whispered to her, the thought of something making everything easier, simpler.

Orion understood why Jaclyn liked it. It was the easier way out, to drink away the pain, to not have to confront the ugly parts of yourself. Or to make the ugly parts seem more beautiful.

Orion decided she would try it for the night. One last effort to abandon her plans. To give herself a chance of living a life without violence. She didn’t have high hopes, but she was going to try. And she couldn’t handle the quiet in her apartment for one second longer.

Plus, she could go for trying some new junk food and watching movies she hadn’t seen yet.

That was what she figured when she hadn’t heard from Jaclyn these past few days, that she was neck deep in her “catch up on her lost years” phase she was still going through.