Page 60 of Pucked Around and Found Out

Some lessons take a long time to unlearn.

I reach into my pocket and pull out the ultrasound.

The parking lot light is weak, the kind of half-hearted yellow that does more to suggest illumination than provide it, but I don't need good light to see it. I know the shape of it. The tiny blur of it. The specific inadequacy of knowing that something real and irreversible is contained in that smear of gray and white and I have chosen, deliberately and repeatedly, to call it nothing.

A mistake.

A consequence.

Nothing more.

I said that to her face.

I watch myself say it again from the outside, the way you watch yourself do something inexcusable in a dream, present for all of it and powerless to stop it. The look on her face. The way she went pale and very still for exactly half a second before the anger came up and replaced it. I know that sequence. I've catalogued every expression Toren Kellar makes when something lands somewhere she didn't expect and I know the order they arrive in.

First the stillness. Then the fury. Then the thing underneath the fury that she tries to bury and almost manages.

I put that look on her face.

I fold the ultrasound back into my pocket. Carefully. Like it's something that needs to be handled with a specific kind of attention I have no intention of examining too closely.

My phone buzzes.

Cas.

I answer it because I have to and because standing in a dark parking lot on the coastal road, staring at nothing because her taillights have disappeared and she’s away from here… away from… me, is not a version of myself I'm willing to sit with any longer.

“Where are you?” His voice is measured. Cas always measures his voice when he's worried. It's one of the tells he thinks he's hidden and hasn't.

“The coastal road.”

A pause.

“Still?”

“Get everyone to the apartment.” I start walking toward my car. “An hour.”

“X—”

“An hour, Cas.” I keep my voice even. “She's coming with the files. I need you there and I need you thinking clearly so whatever you're about to say about tonight, save it. She’s on her way to get the files with Carnage and will meet us there.”

Another pause. Longer this time. I can hear him deciding.

“Carnage was shot three weeks ago,” he says finally.

I say nothing.

“He still came even after I warned him tonight what would happen if he didn’t stay away from her.”

“He wants her,” I say. Flat. Final.

“Xaden.” Just my name. The way he says it when he's set something down and he needs me to pick it up. “Did you kill him?”

I get in the car. I don't answer.

I hear the exhale on the other end of the line. “Jesus.”

“He's fine.”