A Moment Read Online Free PDF Page A

lurks behind the mask he wears. Something ugly, and I’m not sure I want any part of it.
     
    But still, I don’t leave.
     
    “What do you do for a living, Ryan?”
     
    Blinking, as if coming back to himself, he shakes his head. “Fighter. I fight.”
     
    “For money? Like MMA?”
     
    Staring at me while he drinks, I feel helpless. Like a rat caught in a snake’s sights. How could Alex live with someone like this? He’s too good, too nice. Ryan is wrong in the head. I’m not sure how, but I sense it. This huge yawning chasm of wrongness that swallows up anything it comes in touch with.
     
    Leaning forward, he shows me his fist. My immediate response is to pull away, scared for a split second that he intends to crash it into my nose. He doesn’t blink or act surprised, just stares at me while he holds out his fist.
     
    It’s his stillness that finally causes me to look down.
     
    A silvery network of scars crisscrosses each knuckle bone.
     
    Some are really thick and jagged. I touch one with the tip of my finger. He slams his eyelids shut as if he doesn’t know what to do or how to respond to me.
     
    “They look like they hurt,” I breathe, suddenly feeling a ridiculous need to kiss it and tell him it’ll be all right.
     
    I’m in my junior year of nursing school. I know these injuries would have been devastating when he’d received them.
     
    He pulls his hand back, and I feel a strange sense of loss. Like he’s opened himself to me in a way he never has with another.
     
    “They didn’t.”
     
    Swallowing hard, I start looking for Alex. “How many of those have you had to drink?”
     
    Looking at his glass, he scrunches his forehead. “Not enough.”
     
    “Maybe you should stop.” I’m not used to telling people what to do, it isn’t something I’m comfortable doing, but my gut is telling me that Ryan is headed down a bad path-- one that leads to rancid livers if you’re lucky and death if you aren’t.
     
    “Don’t worry, angel, I only drink once a year.” He taps the table forcefully with his finger, startling me and making me jerk in response. “I fucking hate Valentine’s Day,” he snarls.
     
    My mouth pulls down into a frown, empathy for him chokes me. “What girl screwed you up, Ryan?”
     
    His lips twitch until finally he busts out in a deep belly laugh, knuckling tears out of his eyes.
     
    “Girl!?” He laughs harder, but never explains himself.
     
    ***
     
    Ryan
     

     
    Fuck me.
     
    I meet a girl and terrify her out of her mind.
     
    I see it in her eyes. The way she’d looked at me in the bar.
     
    God she smelled so good.
     
    So I drank and drank, trying to drown out the demons, the voices that singsonged in my head. So good, so good, so fucking good .
     
    I hate myself.
     
    Hate everything about me. I want to hit something. Hurt something.
     
    Alex and Liliana are sitting in the living room. My living room. I hear them whispering low. They think I don’t know what’s going on, and maybe I don’t.
     
    I feel so out of it. My brain is fuzzy, fried-- like I’ve been sitting out in the sun too long. In the bathtub, the water’s running on high heat, and my clothes are still on.
     
    The water hurts. Hurts so bad, it’s so damn hot and I know I shouldn’t be sitting here like this. I’ll burn. But it’s not taking the dirty off.
     
    So I keep turning it hotter, my fingers are blistered.
     
    Why isn’t it working?
     
    This is the night, fifteen years ago, my entire world changed.
     
    When will it stop?
     
    At this point, I don’t think it ever will.
     
    Everything inside me is like an exposed nerve. Fucking breathe on me and it brings it all back. They had no idea when I enlisted into the Marines what a nutcase I already was. Because I can lie.
     
    I can smile and pretend and say all the right things.
     
    No one knows. Not really.
     
    Alex knows more than most, but even he doesn’t know everything.
     
    And when I’d gotten a gun in my