"Fuck you, Max."
I said it to the wall I was leaning on, because there was nobody else in the building to say it to who deserved it.
That was the thing I couldn't get past.
I'd had peace. Actual peace. For the first time in twenty years I'd had a bed that was mine and a door that locked and a job with a name attached to it, and people. Sherry on the fourth floor. Mercury swearing at me in a car. Bala trusting me with things he shouldn't have. My life had spent a month quietly assembling itself into something with a shape, something I could have pointed at and called mine.
And a certain Max Donman decided none of it was allowed to continue.
"Fuck you, Max." It came out cracked the second time and I let it. The words sat in the little stone room and didn't echo. The cool air didn't care.
Venna didn't say anything.
