Page 131 of Ransom
Blair, looking completely unconcerned, just stares at me. Her shirt is littered with black marks, and the bottom has a big hole, revealing a bit of her stomach.
"You're crazy," I whisper, staring at the skin revealed by that hole.
She hums and rises to her feet. I do the same since I don't want to be on my knees in front of her, staring up at her.
"Maybe," she finally says. "But it seems to me you're someone who wants to protect people. You wouldn't have put out that flame if you weren't. So maybe you're not a murderer. You're just a stupid kid who made one little mistake that had big consequences. You just had some bad fucking luck."
I welcome it when it comes, that wave of red-hot anger. "You did that shit on purpose? You're fucking certifiable."
Desperate for a fight, wishing she were a boy so I could punch her and start one, I end up standing there, clenching and unclenching my hands.
And Blair-fucking-McKenna just turns and walks away, back up the stairs to the apartment above the shop. Back home.
Leaving me feeling like a bomb just detonated at my feet.
Leaving me raw and exposed.
Blinking away the memory, I lean my shoulder against the window, my chest a foot from hers, and give her the truth. "That's the day I stopped wanting to die."
41
BLAIR
Istand at the window, his words echoing in my mind. The city lights blur as tears fill my eyes. I'm so stinking raw tonight. Every feeling is too close to the surface.
"I always wondered if you were..." The word catches in my throat. "If you were suicidal back then."
"Would it have changed anything if you'd known?" Ransom's voice is calm and steady. Loud enough for me to hear, but not loud enough to bother the kids. This subject isn't for their ears.
"I didn't know how to talk about it. I didn't know what to say." That was pretty common back then. It's not that I didn't have things to say, but I'd figured out by then that saying the wrong thing was sometimes worse than saying nothing at all.
"I wouldn't have talked to you anyway." He tips his chin until his temple rests on the cold glass. "I was done talking. They made me do counseling after the fire, but—" He pauses. "It was just words. Empty words that couldn't change the way I felt."
I turn to face him. "But me lighting my shirt on fire did?"
"More than a year of therapy ever could." A sad smile crosses his face. "You were the first person who showed me that I wasn't all bad. I couldn't see it before."
"I wasn't trying to fix you." The memory of that night floods back—the smell of gasoline and oil in the garage, the heat of the flame against my stomach. I'd held the shirt away from my skin –I wasn't an idiot–, but I still got burned. My stomach was red, nothing bad really, but I was a little sad when the marks disappeared. I like tangible reminders of moments in my life. Scars matter. But the physical ones are easier to heal from. "You were being obtuse. I just wanted you to see how wrong you were."
That familiar half-smile creeps up. "You scared the hell out of me." His hand finds mine, gently tugging my arms uncrossed. "You could have been seriously hurt, Blair."
I shrug, enjoying the warmth of his hand around mine. Something about the feel of his skin, his touch, steadies me. It’s something to hold onto when everything else is too overwhelming. "I knew how to stop, drop, and roll. Seemed worth the risk to get through that thick skull of yours."
His eyes trace over my face. "You weren't as expressive back then. What you were feeling always felt a little like a mystery I had to solve."
"I didn't understand what I was feeling most of the time." I lean back against the window. "Everything just felt... the same. One big jumble of sensations I couldn't sort out."
"But now?"
"Life happened. I grew up." My fingers trace patterns on the cold glass. "Somewhere along the way, I learned to separate the happy from the sad from the mad. To put names to all the things going on in my head."
Back in school, that blank face was armor. Better than showing the wrong thing, better than the stares when my reactions didn't match what everyone expected. The testing was endless—not Autism, not ADD, not any of the things they could put a neat label on. Just Blair being Blair, marching to her owndrum. Usually by myself. At least until Dad moved us to Badger Falls. I didn't change overnight, but people were a lot more accepting of my particular brand of weird.
"You know what's funny?" I turn back to him. "These days, I don't have to think about it anymore. The right expression just... happens. The feelings make sense."
"I could always see what you were thinking." Ransom's voice drops lower. "The way your eyes would narrow just a fraction when you were annoyed. How your lips would twitch before you smiled. That little crease between your brows when you were frustrated."
Heat crawls up my neck. He always made me feel seen, even back then. "You noticed all that?"
