Ghost Hold by Ripley Patton

Author:Ripley Patton [Patton, Ripley]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Ripley Patton
Published: 2013-09-27T04:00:00+00:00

21

ASKING THE OTHER OLIVIA

Passion let me cry it out. She sat on the edge of my bed, her hand on my back. She didn’t ask why I was crying. She didn’t really need to. I cried, snot running down my face, until my pillow was soaked and my insides had turned into a puddle of nothing. Even when my dad had died, I hadn’t cried like that, because he hadn’t hurt me by choice. He might have been gone, but I knew he still loved me, and that he would have stayed if he could have.

But this. This was Marcus downstairs, still existing and choosing to hurt me and leave me. It was me upstairs, still wanting him, except now that want was an open wound I kept touching every few moments, just to see if the pain was still there, just to see if I could feel the part of me that belonged to him, even though I didn’t want it to anymore.

When I was all cried out, I sat up, and Passion handed me a box of tissues to wipe the raccoon makeup off my cheeks.

“We broke up,” I said, saying the words more for myself than for her.

“That sucks,” Passion said. “Do you want to talk about it?”

“Not really.” I glanced at The Other Olivia leaning against the wall. All this time I’d thought that Marcus cared about it because he cared about me. Turns out we were both just two more weapons in his arsenal. “I’d just like to be by myself for a while, if that’s okay.”

“Yeah, sure,” she said. “We’ve still got a couple of hours before the car comes.”

The car. Which was coming at six for the dinner party at the James’ house. The same party that had started the fight between Marcus and I. Ha, I’d like to see him convince Passion not to go.

“I just need a few minutes,” I said.

“No problem,” she said, getting up and slipping out of the room.

The first thing I did was lock the bedroom door. Then I looked up to find the camera staring back at me from the corner of the room. Someone was on duty up in the security suite, and I wanted some fucking privacy.

I grabbed The Other Olivia and carried it into the bathroom, shutting and locking the door behind me. Once safely inside, I leaned it against the bathroom wall, sat down on the toilet seat, and stared at it. It did not belong to Marcus. It belonged to me. I got to say how it was used and what was done with it. If he’d wanted to use it as a tool against the CAMFers and The Hold, he could have asked me. Instead, he hadn’t even bothered telling me.

Considering it had been through a house fire, it was still in decent shape. The frame was scorched some, and the canvas had a few small singe marks at the edges, but a slight trim and reframing and it would look as good as new.

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