Reign and I were friends before I went to prison, but there’d always been something about her that had made me hesitate to go there with her.
A protective instinct that seemed to scream “stay back.”
It’d taken me a while in my teenage years to figure out exactly why, but once I did, I was thankful that my instinct had told me to stay far away from that avenue in our relationship.
I also disliked how I immediately thought “fuck.”
She was mentally ill.
Was it her fault that she acted like she did?
I didn’t know, but I sure the hell wasn’t going to start questioning it.
But I would question what in the hell she was doing here.
“Reign?” I frowned. “What are you doing here?”
She opened her mouth and then closed it.
A hand closed over my arm, and I looked over to find Melinda standing there, a hand on my elbow in a claiming measure.
I pulled away and moved closer to Reign and asked, “What are you doing here?”
She thrust out a box that had a letter taped to the top.
“I wanted to give you this,” she explained. “I’m leaving.”
I frowned. “Leaving where?”
I couldn’t tell you how many times I’d looked up Munchausen’s disorder. According to Google, it was a psychological disorder of some kind where you intentionally made up physical or mental symptoms to gain sympathy from others.
She needed help.
And sometimes she made these grand gestures to bring awareness to her sorry self, likely what she was doing now.
“Home,” she replied softly. “I’m going home.”
The way she said it, as if she looked forward to going ‘home,’ made me hesitate. “Do you need a ride?”
She smiled. “No. Not where I’m going.”
I knew she didn’t have a driver’s license anymore.
Not after she killed a couple, one of whom was pregnant.
Though the baby survived, the mother and the man had not.
It was devastating.
And I knew that Reign felt bad because I could see the pain in her eyes.
I took the box with the note on top, and was surprised by the weight.
The top of the box was folded in on itself, not taped closed, and the top read “FRAGILE.”
“What is it?” I asked, my frown deepening.
She smiled. “Bye, Copper.”
