Jerking my head back, I gagged in his direction, almost literally vomiting on him. “She’s fuckable, not datable. There’s a huge difference. I’m tired of fucking women that I have to hide who I really am and what horror lives inside me.  I want someone to know me, just fucking understand me, and God…Dylan, I can swear when she looks at me, I think maybe…I don’t know, that maybe she does.  The only thing I know right now, is that when she’s near me, I don’t think of the blood that’s been spilled in a classroom, but the rush of pulse from the flush of her cheeks when I look at her.”

“What’s that even fucking mean?” He asked.

I ignored the question. “She said I had PTSD.”

“You do, Kade, face up to it.  Get fucking help.  I miss my brother.”

“I want her,” I growled again, as if I was sporting to have a tantrum.

Dylan leaned forward, talking low, eyes shifting behind me to see the door. “You didn’t see her when she first came here, mate. She could barely walk straight. Bree had a fat lip and a bruise across her face, but Lainey… Lainey needed a hospital and wouldn’t go to one, and it didn’t seem like it was because she was afraid of doctors, Kade. I think she’s afraid of the police.  I think something is wrong…the way Bree talks about her…did you know Bree and Lainey’s brother were engaged…” he whispered.  He pointed his finger at me. “I’m not going to let you hurt her, because the only reason Bree is here is because Lainey is here, and I’m not ready to give Bree up yet, mate.”

“Dylan, don’t go getting your silk panties in a twist, yeah? I know she has some sort of wooly situation she’s hiding from, but I want her and I have no clue how to deal with any of these feelings.  If anyone is going to be getting hurt, it’s going to be me.”

“You’re a real dick sometimes. You’re just going to bring her down,” he whispered, shaking his head.

“Hey, I lived through attempted murder and a massacre, cut me some slack. Aren’t I supposed to get like a ‘get out of jail’ card for it, or some sort of sympathy card?” I smiled pathetically.

His eyes widened from the carefree lightness of my plea, “Kade, you’re cracking jokes about it?  This girl is really changing you, isn’t she?”

“She’s so different.  She doesn’t have to get naked to get a man’s attention. She just has to walk in a room, glide in with her watery movements, and when she speaks, it’s of substance. You fucking want, no…you need to listen.  She’s profound.  It’s ruthless on my soul.  She is a woman who still blushes when a man looks at her. She’s not a child, you know she’s lived some sort of difficult life and the mystery of her is breaking me.  I want her to crack and break in my hands. I want to open her up and gut her.”

“Never thought I’d see the day,” my brother whispered, smiling.

“The memory of her taste has me crazy,” I added.  Every detail of that kiss was still felt; I could still smell her, feel her and taste her.  God, thinking about it made my cock ache for her.

“Taste?” He asked.

“I fucking kissed her.”

“So what do you want me to do?”  He asked, leaning forward.

“Tell me I should try, and that I might be able to be good enough for someone...”

“Kade, man, that’s every one’s fear.  But, if this woman is getting you to come out of your self, then I’m all for it, just don’t hurt her.  Stop scaring her and tell her everything.  Talk to her, talk to me, talk to someone.  Please try, because God, Kade, I bloody miss my brother.  I can see it, you know, these past few months.  This girl is changing you.  She’s bringing you back from the dead, Kade.”

The thought brought me to my knees.  Metaphorically, my brother would call me a pussy if I did that in front of him.  Doesn’t count that I had to strain to hold myself up with my arms.  Doesn’t matter, because he was right.

“And Kade?”

“Yeah?”

“Don’t take this the wrong way, but when you talk about her and what she does to your insides, mate, it sounds a lot like falling in love with someone.”

“I don’t know if I’ll be capable of love, ever.  Or trust.  I’m panicking from hearing all the noise outside in the bar and I’m counting heads and windows.  In my head, I’m going through all the different scenarios of someone coming in with a gun and how I would get to her and how I could save her, how I’d save everyone.”

“That’s what you do?  You count heads and windows and constantly plan escapes?  Lainey kind of talked to me the other day about PTSD and coping mechanisms, but I didn’t believe her fully.  You never once let me help you.  You never once let me in.  I have no idea what you went through unless I read about it in the bloody paper.”

“You remember the sort of day it was, don’t you?” I whispered.

Dylan slumped against the wall heavily and nodded.

I ran my hand down my face and gave a dark chuckle.  “It was one of those beautiful days, not average for Britain, strange it wasn’t rainy.  I was with Thomas before first hour in our little hiding spot, getting in our last drags off our Marlboros before we headed inside.  Lizbeth had just gone in. She was always afraid of being late.  She gave me a snog.  I had no idea that it would be the last time I would ever kiss her.”

My legs gave out and I just dropped down heavily to the floor.  Dylan followed along and leaned his back up against his desk.  I thoughtlessly played with the cuff of my jeans.  “I had no idea that my world was going to shatter so completely when I stepped into that classroom.  So many people asked me if there were any warning signs before it happened, any clue in the few minutes before when we were sneaking our smokes, but there were none, not then.  The fucking warning signs had come all before throughout all the years and months I’d known him.  I knew Thomas better than anyone did.  I knew him better than those analysts who tried to profile him did, I knew him better than his parents, and teachers.  I knew when I stepped foot in there what he was capable of.  I just didn’t choose to believe it.”

Dylan thudded his head against the desk, eyes rising to the ceiling, “I can remember the gunshots. We thought someone lit fireworks off in the main hall.  But they had us evacuating immediately after.  I knew it was bad.  I knew it was bad the minute all the classrooms were emptied but yours.  And we saw the bullet holes as they blasted through the window.”

I tried to even out my breathing, I didn’t need a full on panic attack right there in front of Dylan.  “Not even two minutes after he walked in, he was standing in front of the class aiming, his black duffel bag full of guns at his feet.  I was the first one, did you know that?”

Dylan’s face went ash.

“Over everyone’s screams, he eloquently explained why he chose to fire on me first, two nonfatal shots.  He said, and I’m quoting here, ‘I need you to be able to watch it to the very end, Kade.  You stay until the end, watch me kill everyone, then you get to die.’”

Shaking the visions from my head, I stood up.  My palms were sweating and my head felt light.  I needed to see Lainey.  I needed to see her calm face. I lumbered to the door and stopped shy of the threshold, clamping my hands on the top of the doorframe.  “Back then, my biggest problem was trying to talk Lizbeth into showing me her tits.  It all changed when my best friend aimed that barrel of the gun at me, and pulled the trigger without blinking.  He had a goddamn smile on his face, Dylan. I relive that scene everyday.  I relive the entire scene of him picking off all of my friends one by one, shooting kids hiding under desks, hiding behind other dead kids, and…oh God, Mrs. Turner.  He executed them all; the whole time laughing and bloody singing a sick twisted song, then came back to me.    But, when I look at Lainey, for a minute, I can think of something else.”

Leaving my brother to mull over my past on the floor of his office, I made my way into the bar to look for my obsession.  Lainey was standing behind the bar pouring a beer. Bree said something to her and she laughed, smiled, eyes dancing.  My God, she was pretty already, but when she smiled like that, she was the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen.

Chapter 9

Fran graciously sat me down and broke the delicate news to me that our relationship was not proceeding at the speed he liked, and that we would be better suited as friends.  Valiantly (you can’t see me, but I’m laughing here) he expressed his extreme guilt for going home with Natalie the night I left to have coffee with Kade.  He believed she was the speed–relationship wise-he needed.  Eh.  Gotta give him props for honesty, right?  I was still wondering where in the world he got off thinking we were in a relationship when I blatantly told him I was NOT in one of those WITH HIM.  Two make-out sessions does not a relationship make, this wasn’t high school.