Chapter 12
For more than five hours, Arianna had ridden alongside Luke, and he had not spoken a single word to her. They had not stopped to eat at a diner and they had not shared a motel bed together. Instead, they’d traveled in silence without even stopping to visit the drive-thru window of a fast-food restaurant. When finally they’d reached her trailer park, Luke returned her just beyond her doorstep, hungry and enervated, and had refused to meet her eyes with his. Their silence was not for lack of subjects to discuss. They’d experienced a traumatic incident, had committed murders. He’d seen her powers displayed in a most violent manner. And unlike their uncommunicative trip after their night together in the motel, she was certain Luke’s reticence had nothing to do with sex or insecurities; it ran far deeper than that.
Once she was inside her trailer, she dashed past the living-room area, thankful that her mother wasn’t home to ask frivolous questions about her trip. She had not cried yet, but knew that one look at her mother, one attempt at speaking to her, would have granted her some sort of unspoken mother-daughter permission to cry. She did not cry often, and feared that if she started, a great floodgate within her would break and she would not soon stop. Yet, it seemed unavoidable.
Stopping at the bathroom to splash cool water on her face, she felt her throat constrict, felt a lump swell in her throat. She swallowed hard against it, an act she was all too familiar with, and choked back the tears that threatened. The events of the last few weeks, all the death and destruction that surrounded her, all of it fell upon her with crushing heaviness. She felt her chest rise and fall against the seemingly insurmountable weight of it and clutched her head with both hands. She was responsible for all of it, she was the source. Her friend had died because of her. The man in the alley, though he had attacked her and Stephanie, had died at her hands. And now, two more men could be added as casualties. Of course, they had been shooting at her and Luke and would not have mourned her death, but celebrated it. Nevertheless, she was not comfortable with killing. She was not experienced at it as they were. They had burned Lily to death. No matter how enraged she’d been at them, how angry she remained, and no matter how much she tried to justify their deaths, it all came back to her. The men would have never been hunting Lily had she never been friends with her in the first place. She was the Sola. She was the one issued a death warrant by Howard Kane and his people. She wondered how many others had lost their lives in his quest to slay her.
The thought of more acquaintances, more innocent people whose only crime had been associating with her, losing their lives, sent a shiver of revulsion through her body. Bile rose in the back of her throat and she dropped to her knees before the toilet as sickness threatened. When several moments had passed and she was confident the need to vomit had passed, she stood and stripped her clothes off, the need to shower overwhelming. She turned the water on and stepped behind the shower curtain. Standing beneath the spray, she was reminded of Luke’s comment about their motel shower’s water pressure, how it had been better than the one at his house. She had agreed, and he had been right, the motel shower had been better than his and hers, as well. Everything had been better at the motel.
With a meager mist of water cascading down her body, a chill settled over her, and the heaviness in her chest was immediately replaced with emptiness. She reached out and turned the temperature control knob to the left, making the water hotter, in an attempt to rid her body of the chill that felt as though it had seeped into her very core. But even as the water flowed over her, it did little to warm her.
She wrapped her arms around her waist not only to warm herself, but to physically hold herself together. She leaned her forehead against the cool vinyl of the shower inlay and replayed the entire drive in her head. Her memory revealed the scene at Lily’s house as it had unfolded. Luke’s face looped in her mind again and again like a film reel, the look of shock and horror after he’d wielded the pickax, his look of repulsion when she had not been merciful with the man who’d intended to murder her, who had murdered Lily, and had chosen instead to use her powers in front of him. She rubbed at her eyes, tried to rid her mind of Luke’s look of disgust at her. All the while, tears began to mingle with the water that fell down her face.
Salty droplets streamed down her cheeks as she agonized over what had happened, and how things had changed. She doubled over, her body racked with sobs, and yielded to pain of the raw and ragged hole that had been punched in her chest since her powers had been revealed; since she’d learned she was the Sola.
The Sola; the name made her knees weak, made her cry even harder. She found the title absurd, her role the stuff of science-fiction novels. Yet, no matter how much her brain wrestled with and resisted her designation, a deep-seated sensation persisted, one that confirmed all she wished to deny, one that resonated with certainty.
The realization was a harsh truth. She released her grip on her waist and straightened her posture. Several deep breaths did little to alleviate her profound sadness, but helped take the edge off of it long enough to halt her tears. She washed her hair and scrubbed her body, allowing to the clusters of bubbles and lather to slide off her body and down the drain. Cleansed, she turned the water off and stepped from the shower.
As she dressed, other issues arose in her mind. Chief among them was the fact that she would see Luke the next day at school. She had no idea what to expect from him, no way to anticipate what his attitude would be. She wondered whether he would continue to ignore her. She supposed she’d find out in the coming hours.
The thought of him disregarding her sent a pang of sadness through her once again. She’d barely managed to stave off tears during the long car ride home, and then it had been just the two of them. At Herald Falls High School, Luke was her only real friend. Without him to ally herself with, she would be utterly alone.
She smiled sadly at the irony of her aloneness and her title as the Sola. After all, the Sola had been prophesied as the one who walked alone, and she had been alone her whole life. She was a walking example of a self-fulfilling prophecy.
But loneliness was not the only concern that plagued her. Numerous questions nagged as well. She wondered whether anyone had seen Luke’s truck parked on Lily’s street. His truck did not exactly fit with the vehicles that typically lined the wealthy neighborhood in Rockdale. Surely, someone had noticed his rusted, out-of-place truck. And if the truck had been noticed and coincided with the sound of shots being fired, eventually, Luke would be implicated. She guessed the police had paid a visit to the Andrews’ residence and had found the two bodies in the backyard. Luke had handled the pickax with his bare hands, had undoubtedly left behind fingerprints. His truck, paired with forensic evidence, would all but seal his fate.
The very real possibility of Luke going to prison, of another life being destroyed because of her, left her breathless. She combed her hair quickly and strode down the hallway, fully intending to hop on her motorcycle and ride, ride as long and as far as it took her to organize her thoughts. She was about to open the front door when it dawned on her that her bike was not beyond it, chained to a post on the front porch, that it remained in Luke’s garage. Her temples began to throb and she contemplated punching the flimsy front door to punctuate her frustration. She was stranded, left only with her thoughts and devoid of any type of outlet.
Dark Reality 7-Book Boxed Set Page 42
