burns and bullets

one - just a taste, please

One

just a taste, please

—

The doors opened with a mechanical sound. One step, another, another. A deep sigh. She opened her eyes, waiting for it to hit her, for memories to come flooding back and yet—

—nothing.

Not even for a second; not a moment of mourning the loss of whom she once loved.

She braced herself for the pain, something, anything. She braced herself for the guilt, even if it would only be inflicted by the fact that there was none.

Why did she even feel obligated to miss a creature like him? He had hurt her. He had mistreated her in so many ways. She had been glad when she got rid of him and yet she expected it.

(something—anything)

But she stood in the lobby and there was nothing, absolutely nothing.

It had barely been four years since she’d been here. The brown, wooden room, the windows showing the water and the city—

—the hotel hadn’t changed a bit.

Outside, college students tried really hard to seem deep and well-educated as they hurried along in the bright sunlight, bags close to their bodies as if someone could come and rip them away any minute, oversized glasses gliding down their noses.

Inside, Katherine Parker stood frozen, flanked by two lads in their mid-twenties, whereof one held her hand tightly and the other rubbed her back soothingly.

‘We can go to another hotel if you want,’ Louis offered kindly as he squeezed her shoulder. ‘You really don’t have to do this.’

She smiled. ‘It’s okay, really,’ she assured them. ‘He’s dead. He can’t get to me. As long as we aren’t staying in the suite he was in, I’m sure I’ll be perfectly fine.’

Harry raised his brows quizzically, but let her be. He knew Katherine. He knew the fake smile that lit up her eyes so brightly even though it wasn’t a real one. He knew she rather put her problems away in a box than to talk about them, afraid to be a burden. She locked it away and swallowed the key.

And so she put it in there, back in the box, where she had tried to hide it for four years. And it would stay there.

(or so she hoped)

She didn’t have to think about it; didn’t have to poison her mind with toxic memories of the past. She had put it away, she had fought it so hard she didn’t even know how not to. It hurt to let it in, it hurt to remember.

Their suite wasn’t the same they had four years ago. The interior looked the same though — a wooden floored, two bedroom one.

The walls of the main room were khaki colored and the floor was covered by a rug in the color of copper. A mahogany table was accompanied by four chairs, a white vase with two roses on top of it.

Katherine couldn’t help but throw a glance into the bathroom, where a floor tiled in earthy shades beckoned her to stand beneath the shower and let the hot water soothe her aching muscles. She sighed, knowing it would need to wait.

Barely ten minutes later, she settled on the wine-red couch, hands wrapped around a steaming cup of coffee Harry had made for her.

(he had raised his eyebrows when he saw the lacy black underwear peak from beneath her jeans, but hey, Katherine Parker wants to be sexy once in a while, let her be)

 ‘How long will you two be gone?’ she asked, taking a sip.

Harry shrugged. ‘We’ll leave early in the morning,’ he said. ‘I’m not really sure how long the observing will take. You know how it goes.’