Page 13 of Fuse

Why haven’t I made a single dent in the hides of these cocksuckers?

Why haven’t I made a difference at all?

Why?

My psyche has no answer but helpless rage, merciless frustration, and more of the blue inferno that blazes through my bloodstream. Before I can generate a thought to control it, that same fire is carving apart the boulder in front of me, and Mom’s shrieks are slicing the air around me, joined by Chase’s countering shouts. Then Foley’s bellowing again too, and Wade is putting in his two cents, followed by Fershan’s strident shouts and Joany’s gentle chides…

But I don’t hear her. The one voice I need. The logic in my chaos. The hope in my heartbreak.

Fuck.

My heart is breaking.

And though I fight the rift, it widens. Beckoning with a blackness she’ll never understand—nor do I ever want her to—though I need her to help heal it. To help close it back up so I can turn away and move on…

But when a slender hand squeezes my shoulder, it’s not hers. The scent is way off. Though other elements sometimes get mixed in, that clean core of my Emma, rain and wind and sea, stays the same.

I tilt my head, recognizing the blended colors of a bare and mottled head, before meeting the direct attention of a clear green gaze.

Angelique says nothing.

And because of that, says everything.

I am your friend now. And I understand now. Perhaps more than ever.

“Three-Twenty-Three.” I let the syllables rivet themselves to the air like the profanity they should be. “Alpha Three-Twenty-Three, damn it. Damn it.”

“I know.” She releases my shoulder. Extends her arm to rub my upper back instead.

“How can there be that many?” I turn all the way toward her, needing to get the ugliness of it out, even if just through the virulence in my posture and the agony in my stare. “How can there be that goddamned many without the world knowing about it? Without us doing more to stop it?”

“I do not know. I am sorry. So sorry. I hurt for them too. I hurt for all of us.”

I’m comforted, at least a little, to hear the desperation in her voice. Then to see the defeat and horror in her eyes as I hug her close. When I release her, I feel a little better. Somehow we’ve managed to slog through the murk of our souls and past the ugliness of our history to lend commiseration to each other.

But commiseration is far from completion, and no matter what peace we can make with each other, Angelique will always be part of the biggest mistake of my past, not the light of my future. There’s only one woman on earth good enough for that designation, and I pivot as I seek her with a gaze starved too long of her strength, her hope, her beauty.

The search doesn’t take long. If she were a flower, I’d find her in the middle of a giant meadow from a hundred miles away.

At once, despite every shit factor of this situation, I smile.

Only to see that in reaching for the flower, I’ve also grabbed a bee.

Except instead of fuzzy bee legs, this ball of nectar has smooth, curvy, creamy limbs that consume my desire, haunt my fantasies, and turn moments like this into acute lessons in torture.

Definitely torture.

As she flicks that figurative stinger with one exquisite spin, embedding the fucker deep with the awkward dip of her shoulders and the nervous jab she takes at her hair with one hand. Then the other.

Shit.

Then the way she heads straight for the path back down to the house without looking back, even once.

Hell.

Then as I recognize, courtesy of the censuring stare emanating from my own mother, that letting my ex-girlfriend “comfort” me, even during this bizarre fiasco of a memorial service, was a choice as wise as greasing Randall Getty’s skateboard ramp.

And that’s not even the most slippery part of the equation.