Sanity - Kevin Day

Chapter Seven

NEIL

Neil couldn't stop thinking about both Kevin and Eris as he sat on his windowsill, a cigarette in hand.

He shouldn't have come here. He shouldn't have stayed once he heard about the district change and found out who the Moriyamas were. Andrew and Eris getting into his things should've been the last straw, even though neither had said anything about the contents of the binder.

Maybe they weren't smart enough to check the slips, or maybe they'd written it off as soon as they saw that it was practically a shrine to Riko and Kevin. But Neil couldn't just assume that they hadn't found the money, or that Eris's skills hadn't at least uncovered some of the hidden things like the coded children's rhyme.

For all he knew, they were waiting to throw it in his face later on.

Panic told him to go now. To never look back. But Neil couldn't move. A quieter voice kept him from getting up again. Neil still remembered Kevin's breakdown at Wymack's a month ago, how Eris had been there to comfort him. He thought back to the conversation Eris and him had just had.

She was far better at covering her emotions, but he could still sense the fear laced in her eyes while she spoke of never being able to leave the Cosa Nostra and how her father could kill her.

Both of their fear had cut Neil deep because he knew how it felt. He knew the fear, and he especially knew the fear of being killed by fathers.

Every day Neil woke up and relearned how to breathe. He gave himself two minutes every morning to calculate his chances of getting caught, weigh the benefits of staying wherever he was, and talk himself through his fear.

Did Kevin and Eris do the same? The dead look Kevin turned on Andrew and Eris today was the same look Neil saw in his reflection. It was the same look Eris had tried to cover when she got the call from her father when Neil had first arrived.

She would have succeeded if Neil hadn't been able to recognize that look after years of having the same one himself.

When Neil stopped acting, when he stopped worrying about who was watching, when he let go of the lies that kept him alive, that was the only expression he could make.

No matter how alike he and Kevin and he and Eris really were, the critical difference between them made Neil feel worlds away from all of this. Eris didn't have the same incessant need for survival that he did, how she arrived to the point of making peace with her own demise, Neil had no idea. While Kevin had Andrew and Eris to lean on, and Neil had no one at all to confide his hopelessness and loneliness in.

Whether Neil left today or tomorrow or next week, he'd leave alone. Two, five, ten years from now, if Neil was even still alive, he'd still be alone. He could be anyone, anywhere in the world, but he'd be alone until the day he died. He'd never trust anyone enough to let them in.

And that was why Neil couldn't go.

Even if everything in Neil screamed at him to run, Neil couldn't do it, not after seeing that little show between Kevin, Eris, and Andrew today. Maybe he was pathetic, or maybe he was too jealous to walk away. Maybe Neil just needed to understand.

Why did Kevin and Eris always get more? Kevin lived with an awful family, but he had a home and a reputation and a following. Eris had a bad past, but she had a foster brother that stuck with her through everything, a semi large fan base, and even a father that took her in.

Kevin grew up in the spotlight while Neil was left looking over his shoulder in a dozen countries around the world. Eris always had a safety net to fall back on, because she knew that no one could lay a finger on her while she was Cosa Nostra royalty while Neil knew that no one could protect him.