Page 30 of Dominion
“Girl, this isn’t coffee,” he said, standing up and walking toward the sink. “This is a fucking milkshake.”
“I like it.” I shrugged. “Doesn’t mean that you will too.”
His hand shook as he lowered my half drank coffee cup inside the sink, opening the tap and washing it out. “This has like three percent coffee and ninety-seven percent milk and some other sweet sugary thing.”
“Maybe.” I grinned at his back. “Want me to make you a black coffee?”
“Hell no.” He shuddered. “Seeing,no, tasting how you drink your coffee, I’m afraid my black coffee would end up with half a cup of sugar.”
“I wouldn’t do that to you.”
“No.” He shook his head, closing the tap. “I’ll make it myself.”
My shoulders shook slowly, the silent laughter rocking through my body. God, I needed this. The look on his face was priceless and if I had my phone with me, I would’ve taken a picture. It would’ve lasted longer.
He started opening the cupboards, looking for what I assume would be cups. “Last one on the right,” I said, saving him thetrouble. The sound of the cupboard opening and closing filled the momentary silence in the kitchen until he turned on the kettle to boil the water. “Are you sure you know what you’re doing?”
“Shush,” he murmured, trying to locate the coffee. This time, I didn’t help him. It was amusing, watching a grown-ass biker man, fully covered in tattoos, trying to find his way around the kitchen. You didn’t have to be telepathic to see that he had no idea how anything worked in here. “I can do this,” he whispered, almost as if he was talking to himself. I leaned back against the backrest, crossing my arms over my chest. “A-ha,” he exclaimed, finally locating the plain coffee Zoe kept in the cupboard below the sink. “I found it!”
I pressed my elbow on the surface of the table, while my hand supported my head as I looked at him, trying to suppress my laughter.
“Two spoons… no, no, that’s not right,” he pondered. “It’s three spoons. Yes, three spoons. Atlas said three.” He kept on talking to himself, keeping his back to me. “But maybe it was two… Dammit.” The way he slowly turned was comical to say the least, and the pleading look in his eyes came at the same time as the kettle started whistling, indicating that the water was boiled enough. “Sky?—”
And to think that I was the one who didn’t know her way around the kitchen. He was worse than me.
“How many spoons should I add?”
I lost it.
My entire body shook as I laughed and laughed and laughed, until it wasn’t laughter anymore that came from me, but heart-wrenching sobs, destroying my entire body. My vision blurred, my eyes filled with tears and slowly cascading down my cheeks. I couldn’t control my breathing nor my body, and the shaking only became worse and worse and worse.
I didn’t notice the moment Indigo dropped to his knees in front of me. I didn’t notice when he turned my chair so that I was facing him fully. I also failed to notice the newcomer, standing at the entrance to the kitchen.
Voices rose above me, but my ears failed to catch the words clearly. Somebody yelled out as I hunched down, pressing my chest to my knees.
Everything kept rushing to the front. Every bad decision, everything that had happened over the last couple of years. The misery, the pain, the love, the losses… Like a ticking time bomb waiting to explode, it detonated inside my chest, making it hard to breathe, hard to live, hard to do anything at all. My tears kept on rushing out, pushing one after another, as if they were racing to see which one would run down first. A strong set of hands landed on my shoulders, pulling me up and into an embrace stronger than my body was right now.
My eyes were shut closed, my mind a thousand miles away, but this time I didn’t miss the way the body that carried me moved, or the soft dip mere seconds later. My sense of orientation told me I wasn’t inside the kitchen anymore, but as I slowly opened my eyes, I noticed the familiar beige couches inside the living room and the television that should’ve been replaced at least five years ago.
The ink on the neck of the person who carried me was what I noticed second, the familiar feather spanning from the side of his neck and disappearing toward the nape of his neck, half of it hidden by the T-shirt he wore. My muscles tensed, clarity slowly coming back as well as the ability to hear what was being said. With my face tightly pressed to his chest, Ash didn’t see the moment my eyes opened, but he felt the tensing of my muscles.
“Come back to me, Sky.” He rocked me, sitting on the couch. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry for lashing out. Just come back.” The words only made me cry more.
He was apologizing to me? He had nothing to be sorry about. Nothing at all. Yet here we were, with me in his lap, and those strong arms of his tightly wrapped around me, trying to soothe me when it should’ve been the other way around.
I immediately missed the numbness from earlier because living with it was easier than living with all this guilt. My heart was like a vault of miserable things I’d managed to collect throughout my short life, and the lid… The lid couldn’t be closed anymore. They were spilling out and out and out, right in front of my feet, piling up into the tower of despair, of everything bad that followed me everywhere I went.
I cried for all the people I loved and every single one I lost. I cried for me, for the war brewing inside me. I had no idea what to do, how to feel, what to say. No matter what I did, no matter what I said, nothing would ever work. Nothing would ever be the same.
I missed the tranquility the pills brought. The emptiness that followed and the high that lifted me far away from this terrible, terrible place.
“I’m so sorry,” I hiccupped, clutching his T-Shirt in my shaky hands, as if I could burrow inside of him and live there. “I’m sorry for everything.”
“It wasn’t your fault, Moonshine. I’m sorry, too. I’m sorry for snapping at you, for being an ass when it wasn’t your fault.”
“But if it wasn’t?—”
“No.” He tightened his hold on me. “That wasn’t your fault. We should’ve listened to you. We should’ve paid more attention. We failed you as well.”
