Rule

Ayden and I were settling into a new routine and we both adored Cora.  It was nice to be living in a house rather than an apartment and as each day went by it got a little easier to breathe around the hole in my chest where my heart had once been.  It had only been two weeks but it felt like a lifespan we had been apart.  This time faking it to make it was so much harder, maybe because I knew for real it was the end but there was no fake smiling, no pretending to glide through life.  I was struggling and I was struggling hard.  I missed him.  I loved him.  I couldn’t have him and it was killing me in an entirely different way than when I had loved him from afar without him knowing it.  Cora was back to keeping all talk of work and the guys at bay but every now and then she would let something about him slip and every time it felt like a shard of glass in an open wound.  It should have made me feel better that he didn’t sound like he was doing much better than me but it didn’t.  We both deserved happiness, it just sucked that we couldn’t seem to find it together.

It was a couple days before Saint Patrick’s Day which not only fell on a weekend this year but also happened to be Rule’s birthday.  The girls had decided that instead of sitting around being sullen and grousing about things that we needed to go out and have fun.  I didn’t want to go, I mean I really didn’t want to go and not only because my face wasn’t entirely pretty again but because I didn’t think I could handle being in a crowd just yet.  I was pretty sure it was going to be an awful time and that I was going to have zero fun but because I loved them I let them bagger me into agreeing to go and to my surprise after a few martinis at an out of the way lounge Cora knew about I relaxed and actually having a good time, strike that it was a fantastic time that I totally needed.  Getting up for school the next morning was awful and I was tempted to skip but I had missed so much because of the attack that I couldn’t afford to.

I was standing in front of the mirror doing my hair and trying in vain to cover up the yellowish remnant of my black eye when I had a startling revelation.  Loving Rule had never been easy, it was always hard and painful and the payoff had been years coming, but I had never decided he wasn’t worth it.  To me loving him had never been a choice, it was just something I had decided was inevitable, just like I had decided him ever coming to care about me was never going to happen.  Last night I had been so sure I wouldn’t have any fun, that going out was going to be miserable and awful but after doing it I had a blast and it was totally worth the risk and harassing I had suffered to get me to go.  I had done what I swore I never would, I had walked away because there was no guarantee in the end, no guaranteed happy ending for us.

I set my curling iron down on the sink and stared at myself in the mirror all the sadness and missing part of myself clear in the reflection staring back at me.  Rule was the one thing I had always wanted and when it got hard to hold onto him I had just let go rather than fight to keep ahold of him and that wasn’t right.  I deserved love but I also deserved him and whatever form that his love came in.  Rule wasn’t a normal guy, there was never going to be hearts and flowers or poetry flowing with words that made me blush, what there was always going to be was give and take, ups and downs and a passion that burned both of us to the core.  When he asked me at the hospital ‘what if” my answer should have been if you’re asking you already do because I knew it now, could see it as clearly as I could see my own face in the mirror, Rule loved me he just didn’t know that’s what it was.  Neither one of us really had shining examples of healthy loving relationships to draw from but the second he had told me he wanted to try I should have known he was falling in love with me.  He never tried for anyone.

Someone knocked on the bathroom door and Ayden popped her head in the room.  “We have to head out soon are you almost ready?”

Considering I only had the right side of my head curled I think the answer was obvious.  I turned to her with huge eyes.  “We need to go dress shopping after school.”

She propped a hip in the doorway and lifted a dark eyebrow at me.  “Any particular reason why?”

“Rule’s birthday is this weekend.”

“Cora might’ve mentioned that.”

“He’s gotta be having a birthday party.”

“She might’ve mentioned something about that as well.”

“Well we have to go.”

“Why?  I thought you were done with all that noise or is this martinis from last night talking?”

I shook my head and picked the curling iron back up.  “I have to give him a present.”

“Oh yeah?  What if he’s there with someone?”

I cut her a look.  That possibility hadn’t even occurred to me.  “Is that likely?”

She muttered something under her breath and brushed her long bangs out of her face.  “No.  Cora said he’s been pretty much a hermit since you guys split, that and his temper is on fire so everyone that doesn’t want to be flayed alive is pretty much staying the hell out of his way.  What are you pla

“The only thing I think he wants.”

She snickered.  “More jewelry for his face?”

I laughed a little.  “No…me.  I think the only thing he really wants is me.  We were both just too messed up to realize it.”

She rubbed her hands together.  “Well it should be interesting either way.”

Interesting didn’t even begin to cover it but my new leaf was all about self-gratification and Rule was ultimately what I wanted to be gratified.  I could only hope he hadn’t gone so far down the tu

Chapter 17

Rule

“Hey dude, happy birthday.”  I traced a finger over the horseshoe on the headstone that I insisted on being there and cleared away the emotion that was clogging my throat.  I didn’t come here enough but every year on our birthday I made sure to stop by and let Remy know I was thinking about him.  It was hard, being reminded once a year that he wouldn’t be turning twenty-three right alongside me, that I was getting older and he was stuck in time at twenty, his life cut way too short.  “I’m pretty pissed off at you right now.  My life is all upside down and I can’t seem to find my footing and all the stupid shit I normally do to ignore the hurt and confusion just doesn’t hold any appeal.  I don’t understand why you didn’t just talk to me, why you used Shaw the way you did and I really don’t get how you just let me act like a total asshole to her for years and years knowing she had feelings for me.  Well here’s a newsflash bro, I have feelings for her too and now things are so jacked up I can’t see any way to make it right.  Everyone always gave me hell for being difficult, for being temperamental and complicated, turns out you had more going on under the surface than Rome and I could ever imagine and yet you were still the favorite.  Isn’t that just a kick in the balls?”  For the second time in a few short weeks I felt tears well up in my eyes.  “Shaw kept your secret.  All this time, even when things got intense between us she kept your secret.  She loves you but she loves me too and I just didn’t know what to do with it so I got mad and I shut her out and as a result she got hurt and wouldn’t let me back in when that’s all I wanted.  It sucks, love sucks and I feel like if you were here none of this would have ever happened in the first place so you suck too.”

There was no answer, just the sound of my shallow breathing and the wind moving the trees.  I felt really alone for the first time in a long time and the loss of my twin was really pressing down heavily on me.  The last month and a half had been rough; everything with Shaw had left me strung up and stripped bare.  My normal response to that overwhelming flood of emotion would have been to drink my liver into submission and screw any and every girl that looked my way.  Neither of those things had been on my agenda, booze wasn’t enough to make my conscious stop screaming at me that I should have tried harder, should have handled my shock and anger better and the idea of taking anyone to bed that wasn’t Shaw made everything I had below the belt freeze up.  I was working a ton, trying to keep tabs on the situation with Gabe through Mark and Alex because I was determined to keep him away from her permanently even if she didn’t know I was doing it and I was spending a lot of time with the boys licking my wounds.  Even though she had been so upset with me for trying to change to be better for her, I think I had affected some major changes on my own despite myself and that wasn’t bad.  I was allowing myself to feel everything and while the feelings tied up in the failure of my relationship with Shaw burned at least I was processing them and not drowning them in bad habits.