Volition (31 page)

Then, I laughed to myself. Jesse hated me, but he couldn’t help it. If we didn’t love each other, we wouldn’t hate each other.

“Fine,” he said shortly. He started to walk away.

“Fine.”

I followed him three steps behind, not wanting to create the illusion that we were on the same page because we weren’t. His car was parked down the road from the house, so I followed him through the night until we got there. I was still covered in mud, and I was about to get it all over everything.

I was always making a mess of my life.

He unlocked his car from the driver’s side and pulled a tarp from the backseat. He handed it to me wordlessly before he got in and started it.

I chewed on my lip as I realized he was either a serial killer, or he knew I was going to come with him. I pulled on the door handle and spread it over the passenger seat before I got in.

Our song was playing, and he didn’t bother to change it.

I’d never been to Jesse’s house before, if that was where we were going. I knew it wasn’t going to be pretty. He didn’t have a trust fund or a rich family to send him wherever he wanted.

I suddenly felt like the bratty rich girl that I was. I wasn’t like the belles I’d grown up with, but I was one of them all the same because of our heritage. Our horrible, glamorized family names were rooted in old Southern hatred that made us something now even though we’d done nothing to deserve it. Or had we? Maybe the evil ran in our blood, and mine was just closer to the surface.

Jesse drove through the night, and I couldn’t see past his headlights on the road.

Eventually, the paved road turned into dirt, and the car bumped along until we reached a run-down tiny cottage. It was the size of the garden house that held all the tools at the edge of our property, and it needed a new paint job. One of the shutters on the front window was half-hanging off, and it gave me the chills. It wasn’t like Jesse to leave things undone. He was a perfectionist. Why wouldn’t he fix something like that?

“Get out,” was all he said.

I pushed the door open to follow him as the driver’s side landed shut with an abrupt smack.

“Get in.” He stomped up the porch and held the screen door open for me.

So, I did.

Now

INSTEAD OF COMMITTING a homicide, I take the next right and turn off into the parking lot of a grocery store. I don’t want to sit in this car and be a danger to myself or anyone else right now, so I pull the keys from the ignition and force myself out.

I don’t bother to lock it behind me as I shove the keys into my pocket with my phone. I’m entirely overdressed for the grocery store, so I draw a lot of attention. I’ve always drawn attention, like people know I’m not like them and they can’t help but stare to try to understand why. Catherine always tells me it’s because of my hair, and I think that’s part of it. The rest isn’t something you see with your eyes.

My heels click on the tile floor, and I feel like a velociraptor.

I’m not sure what to do in here, so I just walk while I absentmindedly pull my phone out to see who was calling.

Hayden.

Seventeen times.

Two from Catherine because I’m sure he called her.

I hit a contact and hold it up to my ear as it starts to ring.

“I hear our favorite villain is back in town,” Colin answers.

I pull a bag of gummy sharks off the shelf in the candy aisle.

“Come get me,” I say without prelude.

“Why?”

“Because,” I say as I rip the bag open with my teeth. I shove a shark in my mouth as I speak, “I can’t be here. I’m old me. I’m Rosemary.”

“If you were Rosemary, you’d be incoherent by now.”

“That’s not funny, Colin.”

“You made the reference to begin with.”

“I’m twenty-two now. She was twenty-three. It’s bound to happen soon.”

“We don’t live in that era anymore.”

“Lara would do it to me. You know she would. I can’t be around her.”

I know I’m being irrational, but Lara often compared me to Rosemary Kennedy when I was a child because of my erratic behavior, and I can’t help but wonder what would have happened if I were born a few decades earlier.

“I’m crazy, Colin,” I whisper as I stare straight ahead.

I eat a few more sharks as I sink down onto the floor of the aisle.

“You are. But Hayden is crazy in love with you, and if you don’t go back to him right now, he’s going to call in the National Guard.”

I sigh in the phone, irritated.

“You sound like Nick Carraway.”

“Where are you, Tate?” Colin asks me calmly, ignoring my comment.

“I don’t know.”

I look around me. People are edging their way by and giving me concerned glares, but no one wants to bother me because I exude insanity.

“I’m sitting on the floor of a supermarket, eating gummy sharks.”

I can hear him laugh on the other end, and then there’s a struggle as Catherine tries to pull the phone away from him. She’s upset that I’ve called him, but she doesn’t understand me when I’m like this.

“I’ve got it,” he says to her.

I know he’s put his hand over the receiving end based on how muffled his voice is.

“Okay, Amy,” he says as he comes back to me.

I roll my eyes as I take in his
Gone Girl
reference. I’m crazier than Amy and Rosemary put together, and that scares me.

“Get up off the floor. One step at a time.”

I pull another bag of sharks off the shelf and pull myself together as I scrape my way off the floor. Lara would be disgusted by the fact that I was sitting on this floor, so I have the urge to roll around on it to infect myself with more germs, but I resist.

“Colin, please,” I urge him, “I can’t do this. Everything here reminds me of the horrible person that I was.”

I put the sharks on the conveyor belt and wait for my turn.

“That I am,” I correct myself. “It reminds me of Jesse because he’s here somewhere.”

“You gave him up, Tate. It was the right thing to do. Now, you have Hayden. You deserve someone who will actually love you, not someone who will just make you burn inside and not in a good way.”

I know he’s right, but I roll my eyes anyway.

“How do I do this?”

“First, you go back there and silently battle Lara because you don’t have a choice. Get through the wedding. Talk to Hayden. I love you, but I’m not the one you need to be talking to.”

I pull at the back of my phone case and hand the cashier my credit card as she looks at my purchase, me, and back at the sharks.

I shrug at her and answer Colin, “He won’t get it like you do.”

“You’re right. He won’t get it exactly the way I do because he hasn’t grown up with you. But he’ll get it all the same.”

I take my sharks and my receipt, and I walk back into the brutal sunlight to the rental car. I want to stomp my foot and run away, but I’ve done that already in several capacities, and it always brings me back to the same place. It’s like a choose-your-own-adventure story that never ends until you pick the right path.

“Fine.”

I wish I had more to say to him, but he’s wiser than I am. He’s more rational, whereas I’m a hurricane. I’m ruled by my feelings instead of embracing them.

“Good girl. And, Tate? Don’t kill anyone on the way home.”

I unlock the door and plop myself in the driver’s seat as I continue to eat the sharks like they’re the only thing keeping me alive. I don’t hang up the phone, but I put it on speakerphone in the cup holder as I start the car.

“Colin?” I say as I click my seat belt into place. “Stay on the line.”

I can see his concerned expression all the way in New York. He knows how volatile I can be.

“Yes.”

I need to know that I’m not alone because my mind is a dangerous place to be without company.

Now

“OKAY,” I TELL Colin as I pull up to the house, “I’m hanging up now.”

He wishes me good luck, and then I’m on my own again.

I bite the head off another shark, and I’m blithely aware that I might need to throw up involuntarily if I keep eating these at the rate that I am. I might throw up anyway, so I keep chewing.

I get out of the car after I pulled up to the confused valets, but before I can hand them the keys, Hayden is rushing down the stairs, looking darker than I’ve ever seen him.

He grabs the keys from my outstretched hand and slides into the driver’s seat, all in one fluid motion that’s usually reserved for the likes of James Bond. I know I’m supposed to get in the car with him, but I can’t help that I feel like a child who’s about to be chastised.

I toss the valet a couple of gummy sharks as I walk around the back of the car to get in the passenger seat. Hayden doesn’t say a word, but as soon as I’ve clicked my seat belt into place, he’s speeding off.

They must think we’re crazy.

Oh, wait, we are.

“Shark?” I hold my hand out to offer one to him, and he doesn’t even look at me. I think that’s worse than if he had accepted it.

A muscle in his jaw twitches, and suddenly, I can’t eat any more of these things, or they really will start to come back up.

I’ve done a bad thing.

I’ve done a really, really bad thing.

Scratch that. I’ve done a lot of horrible things in my life, possible murder included, and this might be the worst.

“Hayden, will you please talk to me?”

Another jaw twitch, but no words.

“Fine.”

I slide down in my seat and cross my arms, sighing like a five-year-old—except that I can’t stand for him to be mad at me because it’s worse than when anyone else is mad at me. It’s even worse than Catherine, and I can’t stand it when there’s any kind of conflict between us. With everyone else, I crave it. I want them to hate me. I want them dripping in delicious anger directed at me. With Catherine, Colin, and Hayden, it makes me feel like there are ants underneath my skin.

Normally, I’m fickle. I’m so very, very fickle, and I tire of people too quickly. The ease with which I dismiss them should frighten me, but it doesn’t. I’m only vaguely alarmed, and even that’s a mild response.

I’m complacent in a car with the man I love and an exorbitant amount of candy.

He still hasn’t said anything to me. He’s just speeding along the road, and I don’t think either of us has any idea where he’s going. From the second we met, he’s known that I’m strange, but now, he’s seen a glimpse of how I act in this setting. He hasn’t seen this before.

That’s the thing about perception because he’s different, too. Ever since I learned about the death-date tattoo and then our nap in his coffin, it’s been different. He still has his god-like good looks, only now he’s like a villain and a hero all in one. It’s divine, and everything I’ve ever wanted but didn’t know how to get until now. I thought he was simple. I could have dealt with simple because to me, the majority of people in life are simple. Predictable. Easy to deal with, easy to manipulate. I thought he was untortured. Tortured people can’t be together unless it’s the right brand, or else they end up like Zelda and F. Scott.

I guess we’re about to find out if our dark and twisty tortured capacities are the same.

I consider throwing the bag of candy out the window, but that’s littering.

Oh.

I do have some kind of conscience.

Old Tate would have lit them on fire and thrown them out without a thought.

“I’m sorry,” I say before I can stop myself because I’m not used to actually feeling it. I can count the times I’ve apologized to anyone and meant it on one hand, and this one weighs more heavily than all of them combined.

Hayden shuts his eyes for a moment, and I can tell he’s wrestling with himself with what to say. Then, he does something that I thought only someone like me or Colin would.

We’re off on a side road that’s never busy, except for the railroad crossing. He drives past all the warnings and the barriers that come down when a train is on its way and parks on the tracks.

“What are you doing?”

He locks the doors, so I can’t get out even if I wanted to.

“Light yourself on fire, Tate? Is that what it feels like to be with me?”