Bride

He is being kinder to her than to himself, and hopes she can never realize it.

There was never a bed in this apartment. I was happy in the closet, and whenever Serena stayed over, she made do on the couch. For the first time in my life, though, I wish I’d done the Human thing and bought something soft to fall on.

As it is, I settle for sliding to the floor and spending way too long with my forehead on my knees, trying to regain my bearings.

Baby’s first heartbreak, I guess.

Whatever this pitiful, soul-rending feeling inside me is, it seems too dense to be borne. Because Lowe is right: I’ve spent years being at home nowhere, and my best friend disappeared after the worst argument of our lives—yes, probably voluntarily, and probably because she doesn’t give a fuck about me, not nearly as much as I do about her. I’m no stranger to pain, to loneliness, to disappointment, but this. This pressure inside me, it’s not solvable. The weight of it, how does one bear it?

I find no answer by pressing my fingers to my eyes until I see stars.

My shower takes five minutes. I valiantly try to scrape the rejection and humiliation off my skin, but fail. I barely have time to find a change of clothes before the buzzer rings, and Mick’s voice informs me that Lowe asked him to come get me. A heartbeat later I’m sliding into the passenger seat of his car. “How are you, Misery?”

“Good.” I try for a small smile. “You?”

“I’ve been better.”

“I’m sorry.” I give him a cursory look. Then another. Maybe taking care of someone else’s distress will alleviate mine. “Is there anything I can do?”

“No.”

I go back to focusing on the streetlights and wait impatiently for Mick to finish puttering around and start the car, but I don’t know why. I have no reason to be impatient, because I have nowhere to be. No place to call mine.

“Have you talked with Ana recently?” I ask. If Lowe sends me elsewhere, I likely won’t see her again. I guess I’ve grown overly attached to her, too, because my heart squeezes even tighter.

“No,” Mick says. “But I think it’s for the best.”

I lean my temple against the window. My head pounds with a dull kind of ache. “Why is that?”

“It’s complicated.”

I huff out a sour laugh, and my breath mists the glass. The same fucking words as Lowe’s. What a cunning way to get out of telling the truth. “You Weres sure love to say—” A bug prickles my skin, and I swat it away. But when I turn around, what I find is not something I can make sense of.

Mick.

Holding a small syringe.

Injecting it in my arm.

I look up at his face, trying to parse what is happening. “I’m sorry, Misery,” he says. His voice is soft and his eyes are sad, down-tilted in a way that makes my battered chest hurt even more.

Why? I ask.

Or I don’t. The word doesn’t make it out, because I’m tired, and my limbs are heavy, and my eyelids so laden with iron that the darkness behind them feels too sweet to—