“Dean, why don’t you want to know things like that about me?” a less-than-thrilled voice squeaks.
I ignore Dean’s answer as Amber looks at me as if understanding my need to get inside her head. “I . . .” she starts, then pauses, her voice conflicted. Her fingers nervously rip at the edge of a napkin as she shrugs. “I write.”
“Like, you’re writing a book?” I slide back into the booth, true curiosity taking over.
“No,” she says with a half smile. “But I could. That’s for sure.” I see memories moving behind her eyes, her expression once again somewhere distant. “I . . . write in a journal. My thoughts, how my day went, what I ate. Dumb shit like that.” She shrugs again. “It’s stupid, but I started keeping one the day after my parents died.”
Confused, I tilt my head. “Why do you think it’s stupid?”
Her fingers continue their assault on the napkin. “I don’t know. It just is. Most of the foster parents I wound up with thought it was, so it must be, right?”
“Wait. What?” I hope I misunderstood her. When she doesn’t immediately respond, I feel my jaw set in anger, fury slicing through my chest. I stare at her, trying hard as fuck to tame my sudden need to find out who those people were, show up at their houses, and beat them to a bloody death. “They told you it was stupid to write in a journal?”
“Yeah. Well, all except for Cathy and Mark. They encouraged it, but the rest of them thought it was childish.”
Sick bastards. Now I’m determined to find out a few addresses. “What do you think about writing?”
“I just told you what I thought about it,” she says, her tone edgy.
Here’s where the average person might back off and tread the rough waters in a raging sea. I’m nowhere close to average. I’m beginning to see that Amber needs a hard kick in her ass to get her talking. Really talking.
“You told me what those assholes thought about it, not what you think about it.” I cross my arms. “I’m calling your bluff.”
Challenge knifes her eyes. “What the hell’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means that’s twice today I’m not buying your shit.”
Her luscious, pink bow of a mouth drops open.
I try not to picture it wrapped around my cock as I go in for the kill. “It means that you have a brain and can think for yourself. You don’t seem to have a problem voicing your opinion, so I’m finding it hard to believe you honestly think that writing in a journal is stupid. You said you started writing down your thoughts the day after your parents died. There’s a reason for that. There’s still a reason you use it as a way to dump out everything diseasing that pretty head of yours.”
I pause, watching the fight deflate from her shoulders. At this, I lean across the table, making sure my tone holds the gentleness I know she needs to hear. “It means that I want you to admit that you know you need to write. Admit that at this point in your life, it’s the only way you’re surviving what happened.”
“The paper listens to me better than any therapist ever has,” she whispers, pain spilling across her face. “There’s no . . . no . . . right or wrong about how I feel on any given day.” Her attention’s focused on the shredded napkin in her trembling hands, her lips beginning to quiver as her eyes threaten tears.
My heart takes a nosedive, nearly gutting me wide open as the realization that she’s never spoken to anyone about this hits me. Hard. It’s been hours since I smoked a bowl and days since I killed a few shots of tequila, yet I feel drunk, completely fucking high. I may not be in her every waking thought the way she is mine, but right now, Amber’s giving me something greater than that . . . She’s allowing me to enter her empty heart, guiding me through her bent past.
Maybe, just maybe, she’ll let me be a small part of her future.
She moves her eyes to mine, her voice lost, broken. “It is a lifeline for me. I write without the fear of being judged. Without feeling like a freak who was birthed from a fucked-up three-ring circus. I can turn that hideous day into whatever I want without being told I’m irrational or that I need to find a way to move past what happened. I can write for a minute, or I can write for hours. There’s no uppity asshole watching a clock, making sure I’m not taking up too much of his time. I get to choose how many breaths I waste on my parents’ lack of being able to handle . . . life.” She lets out a sad laugh, wiping tears from her cheeks with a tiny piece of what remains of her napkin. “But who am I to judge what they could handle, right? I don’t handle anything the way society says I should.”
“Fuck society and what they think,” I say, the response automatic.
That earns me a hint of a smile. Yeah, there she is. The soft girl, beaming as bright as the sun, who I know exists under a blackened sky of a past she had no control over.
Amber swings her misty eyes to the waitress, who I’d failed to notice has approached the table.
“You two need anything else?” The woman swipes her pomegranate bangs away from her forehead as she sets my burger in front of me.
I glance at Amber, and she shakes her head. I unwillingly bring my attention back to the waitress. “Nah, we’re good. Thanks.”
Red drops the check, and I stare at the burger. If I take even a small bite, I’m gonna hurl. “I need you to eat some of this.”
Amber looks at me as if I’m fucking crazy.
I let out a groan. “I lied about being hungry.”