Come To Me (Owned Book 3) (28 page)

“Do you want to play charades or…” Lenny asked, attempting to break the tension.

“When Nox said she had a surprise, I didn’t know it would be of the living dead variety,” Zoe said coolly.

“I thought you would be more surprised, honestly,” I replied. When they’d arrived, Lissie had hugged me, handed me a weird pasta dish with marshmallows, and asked for a tour of the house. Nothing like when Eli had called me zombie.

“Nox told us a week ago,” Lissie said, a smile on her face. Even sitting across from the dead, nothing could dim the girl’s glow. I looked to Lenny, once again tempering the feeling we were dancing beside an iceberg. I wasn’t upset with her for sharing my secret and then keeping the fact from me; the cold truth was that I wasn’t even surprised. If it wasn’t pillow talk it didn’t pass our lips.

“I didn’t have much of a choice,” Lenny explained. “I mean Grace already knew and when I stopped returning their calls and texts for a month they thought I was going to kill myself.”

“Quite the opposite,” Zoe muttered.

“Zoe girl has been practicing what she would say ever since,” Lissie offered, smiling.

“Have not,” Zoe said icily. “So what, you guys are like a fairytale now? Barbie dream house complete with black eyes?” Hitting Lenny was not something I would ever forget, and it apparently wasn’t something Zoe was keen to let me forget. I leaned forward, setting aside the dessert so I could get closer to Zoe.

“You have to understand, Zoe—”

“I don’t really have to understand anything, Vic. I gave you a chance to explain yourself months ago, then you faked your death, nearly took Lenny to the grave along with you, and now you’re back pretending like everything is all Donna Reed.” Zoe cursed under her breath, kicked herself out of the chair, and stormed inside the house.

“I’m sorry…” Lissie attempted to say, but I put my hand up. She had nothing to be sorry about.

I
followed Zoe inside the house. Leaning against the kitchen island, she was angrily sipping water. I could see her lips moving, as if she was muttering to herself. I knew what that meant with Lenny; it meant get the fuck out and do not engage.

Like I was walking into a minefield, I stepped inside the kitchen.

“Where’s Thea?” I said, trying at small talk.

“With a fucking babysitter,” Zoe snapped, eyes locked on the stainless steel fridge. “Why, have plans to kidnap her or something?”

Sighing, I did a half-pushup against the island and spun around until I was sitting next to her. “We’ve never really talked about what I used to do for work, but you’ve been pulled into the shit because of it a lot.”

With a loud clang, Zoe set her glass down. She turned, eyebrow raised, waiting for me to elaborate.

“I can’t really explain it all over dinner,” I added.
I’ll be explaining it all to Lenny for years.

“Nice.” Zoe scoffed. She looked around the kitchen as if lost, then rounded on me. “Where the fuck is my coat in this goddamn fucking castle?” When I had nothing to offer (because I didn’t know, Lenny had designed the entire place), she brushed past me. “Whatever…I’ll buy a new one.”

“But listen.” I grabbed her arm lightly. “I
want
to explain. I want to tell you everything. And the important part is that it’s over.”

Her glare went from my hand to my eyes. “What were you, some kind of drug kingpin?”

“Not exactly.” I released my grip, thinking about her words. I didn’t think it really mattered what I did; what mattered were the consequences. I could tell her about GEM, but that wouldn’t suddenly make what I’d done null and void. Lenny and I were still trying to figure that out.

“You know, I had to accept a lot of things, Vic; Lissie and I both did.” Zoe folded her arms, glare harsh. “We had to accept that you were dead, but we also had to accept that our already messed up friend was going to be permanently fucked. We accepted it though, because that’s what friends do. When she left our house and went to Grace’s we didn’t get mad, we accepted it. When she stopped responding to our texts, we were prepared to accept the worst. You know what I won’t do? I won’t accept this.”

When Zoe finished talking, I let her words hang heavy around my neck. Like everything else in my new life, they weren’t something I could easily fix, but they were something that would be in the forefront of my mind from now on.

“Zoe…” I exhaled, looking around at my castle. Stainless steel was my only requirement, because of the germs, then Lenny went and had her field day. Everything was white, but there were splashes of color here and there. Isn’t there some saying about empty castles and kings? “You’re my closest friend.”

I watched as Zoe’s tongue moved around in her mouth, then she dropped her arms with a sigh. “I don’t know what the fuck I’m supposed to do with that information.” I shrugged, because I didn’t either. It just felt like something she needed to know.

“I’m your closest friend?” she asked. I nodded. “When is my birthday?”

“December second,” I replied instantly.

Her brow quirked. “You’ve never gotten me a present.”

“Birthday presents are fucking stupid.” Why should someone get a present for simply existing? Lenny and I still hadn’t come to an agreement on that. She thought existing was the biggest reason to get a present.

Zoe’s eyes narrowed. “Where was I born?”

“Missouri.”

“The town.”

“It doesn’t have a name.”

Zoe waved a hand, unimpressed. “You could have looked all of that up in the creepy way you do.”

I laughed. “Fine, ask me something I couldn’t have looked up.”

“Why did we choose the name Thea?”

“You tell everyone it was your grandmother’s name.” At my answer, Zoe gave me a tenuous smile. She patted me on the shoulder and started to walk back out to the patio. I wasn’t finished, though. “As a kid, Lissie had a doll named Thea. Before her parents divorced, when they fought, she would cling to Thea. They divorced, the house was sold, and Thea was lost. The first girl you loved was named Thea…around the time Lissie lost the doll. It was unrequited.”

Zoe spun around. “We’ve never told anyone that.”

“You guys talked about it, though, before the baby was born. We all went out, everyone was getting drunk. You and Lissie were together and weren’t drinking, out of solidarity for the baby’s mother even though she was—”

“States away, yeah, get to the point.”

“You didn’t think I was paying attention, but you guys started talking about names. Lissie joked about Thea, then it all came tumbling out. You both thought it was fate.”

“That is super fucking creepy, Vic.” I shrugged at her. I’d never had friends. I’d never had family. Lenny had called me creepy many times, whether jokingly or seriously I couldn’t always tell. Zoe had just called me creepy. Creepy has a lot of different definitions, but generally it means you’re an outsider, someone who doesn’t understand, impinging on a world that isn’t your own.

No one taught me how to love, but I did my best to do it anyway. Grabbing up our glasses, I put them in the sink so I could head upstairs. I wouldn’t waste any more of her time. They could have a girls night or some shit; they didn’t need the dead ruining the party. That was pretty fucking creepy.

“But also sweet, I guess.” I stopped, foot on the stair. My black hair fell over my face as I leaned forward, unsure if I should turn around. “It’s all over?” she asked. I craned my head slightly, just so I could see her expression. Zoe’s glower had only lighted a little, but there was the hint of a smile.

L
ater that night, after like fifty fucking rounds of charades, Lenny and I sat in bed about to watch a movie.

“So what is this? Am I going to like it?” We weren’t even five minutes into the show and people were already singing and dancing. I had a bad feeling about it. Still, she said it was one of her favorites, so I was willing to give it a try.

Even if that meant withstanding singing. And dancing.

“You said you were going to be honest.” Lenny huffed. Folding her arms and turning to me, she continued, “You said you wouldn’t lie or keep anything from me any more.”

“Okay…” I paused. “Well, to be honest, I really don’t think I’m going to like this. Do they dance the entire movie?”

Rolling her eyes, Lenny stood to her knees and made the cushions squish beneath her. “Vic, it’s been almost a month and you haven’t told me anything else.” I looked at the TV then back to Lenny, not sure which torture I would prefer. “Vic?” Lenny pressed. I thought about the iceberg, and then I thought about what it would take to turn the wheel so we could avoid it.

Well, here goes nothing. And everything.
“I was adopted at five.”

“I already knew that,” Lenny said, shifting so the blankets did a whirlpool around her knees.

“Before then I was raised by my mother. I never knew my birth father. My mother was addicted to meth. She kept the shit out all over the place. One time I tried to eat it, because I thought it was candy and I was hungry. She beat me, so I knew to leave the candy alone.”

“Oh, Vic…” Lenny fell back to the bed, placing her palm on my forearm. She was offering me comfort but I didn’t want it. I didn’t want anything except to get the shit I’d been shoving into a tiny box out of my brain.

“I would go days without eating. I survived on flour and water, on paper some days, but mostly on whatever I found in the trash. Mom only cleaned up her act when the welfare ladies stopped by. Of course I didn’t know what that was back then. I was just happy to get a bath and some food.” It was flowing out of the box, out of my brain, into the air, and disappearing.

“The only reason anyone found out about me was because of the fire. One day she got so high she forgot about the stove. She was cooking popcorn, a rare treat for me, and smoke started filling the house. I tried to wake her but she was passed out. I tried to drag her but she wouldn’t budge. It turned out she was dead. A neighbor saw the smoke and called the fire department.” I could feel Lenny next to me, waiting for her cue to do something, but at the moment all I needed was to finish the exorcism.

“I might have had to go back if not for the fact that she overdosed. Instead I went to the Walls, which was okay at first.” I stopped for a moment, thinking back to the day I’d arrived on the Wall’s front porch. Mr. Wall was a racist son of a bitch, but in the beginning he put a roof over my head and kept me fed. That was more than I’d ever known. I think maybe all the drinking fucked his liver and made him delusional.

I don’t know. I’d shoved all the bad shit into the same box as the good, so it got mixed together. Maybe Mr. Wall was good once, maybe my birth mom was good once, but they all got shoved into the same, shitty box and I couldn’t recall. Now that the box was open, perhaps a little light could shine in.

Lenny reached another hand toward me. “Vic—”

“I’m going to go get some popcorn.” I cut Lenny off and stood up. It was the first time in years I’d spoken about what had happened to me. I wasn’t ready for waterworks or pity, or whatever brand of sympathy she had prepared for me.

I’d survived. I was living. That was enough.

I made a detour into the bathroom, grabbing a tissue. I needed something to ball up and crush, something to destroy, since I was trying to stop punching walls. You know, evolving and shit. Staring into the mirror, I was comforted by the fact that my outward appearance remained unchanged.

As I threw away the tissue, something caught my eye. At first I dismissed it, but alarm bells rung in my head, the sound eerily like sailors screaming. I could practically feel the boat crash beneath my feet. Wood planks splintered, ice chipped my cheeks, and water filled my soles.

Bending over, I brushed aside the refuse. It was fucking gross going through my trash, but I had to know if what I saw was true.

“Fuck…” I pulled the stick out, stunned. In my hand was a positive pregnancy test.