Chapter 39
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Nyx
Hurts Like Hell – Tommy Profitt, Fleurie
Iwake up already knowing.
Something is terribly wrong. I just know. It's so deep inside my body that I jump out of bed with an ache weighing me down. Achilles isn't here. The sheets are already cold where he should be. He's not a morning person, and that adds to the dread I’m feeling.
"Achilles?" I call out from upstairs.
There's a breeze running through the house.
"Achilles?" A little louder as I run down the stairs in nothing but his t-shirt and some cotton panties.
My heart races, my throat tightening.
"Achilles, answer me."
The front door is closed, and there's no one there. Where’s this breeze coming from? I check the kitchen, but there's nothing. That's when something inside me tells me the cold is coming from the door leading to the garage.
"Seriously!" I shout breathlessly. "Where are you?"
I don’t jog anymore. I sprint toward the garage on the opposite side of the house. There's a man in the doorway, broad shoulders, tall, chestnut hair.
"Wren?"
He turns around, and in the split second that he's not hiding the inside of the garage with his body, I see him. The love of my life. Hanging from the ceiling.
"Nyx, don't look." He's on me in a millisecond, but I avoid him, pushing past, escaping his hold.
I’ve seen it in films. Read it in books. But nothing…absolutely nothing could ever come close to what I’m feeling. No one can prepare you. It all happens so fast. In a flash of moments I refuse to understand.
"No," I choke out. "No, no, no. Achilles…"
I feel heavy, almost numb from complete disbelief.
"Don't let her in!" someone shouts.
Chris. His voice makes it feel too real, and it stops my brain from forming any logical excuse as to what’s happening.
I can't see him well. I need to see him, but Wren is too quick. I'm caught at the waist before I can enter the room properly.
"Achilles. Let me see him… Let me see him!" My scream is as loud as they come. "Achilles!"
Wren picks me up as I drag my nails through his forearm.
"I'm so sorry, Nyx. I'm so sorry," he repeats. He's holding me with all his might, and I'm nothing in his arms as he drags me away.
I hear a deafening thump.
A manic screech tears through my throat.
From the depths of my heart, I spill my pain. A hysteria like never before comes over me. I'm choking on a torturous agony that seems unending.
Wren doesn't put me down. He takes me up the stairs as I keep fighting him, calling Achilles's name in vain.
"It's impossible!" I scream, thrashing in his hold. "Impossible. Impossible." I repeat the word, but it loses its strength. My voice is raw, my brain going numb. "It's impossible. I love him. Please, I love him." As if that’s the science of it all. I love him so he can’t die.
I'm sitting on my bed, with Wren sitting beside me.
"I'm so sorry," he repeats in a broken voice.
I can feel my entire being shattering, my soul separating from my body. Every second, one more piece becomes dust as Achilles's presence disappears from my world.
"This isn't real," I say on repeat, the room blurring. "This isn't real."
I always imagined unbearable pain to come with a thousand gestures. Hands in my hair, flying arms, pacing and looking everywhere for a solution.
There's nothing. It's inside, tearing me apart, but my body is frozen in time, my hands on the bed, my gaze ahead on our bedroom door as my vision narrows.
"Tell me this isn't real," I plead with Wren. "Please, I'm begging you."
Any second now, Achilles is going to walk up the stairs. It wasn’t him in there. It was some man who tried to break into the house, and my psycho of a boyfriend killed him.
But the hair…the body type.
Any second now, I’m going to be told this is a bad joke. I’m going to be so fucking mad at him for scaring me like that.
Any second now, he’s going to come through that door, wink at me, and give me some bubblegum to calm me down.
"Nyx…" A quiet sob escapes Wren’s mouth, and that's when it hits me.
He's gone.
Achilles Duval left us like he always thought he would. He couldn't take the pain anymore, so he stopped it the only way he knew how.
And I'm left behind, carrying my sorrow and his. Our souls are woven so tightly that there's nothing but destruction inside me. In all the places where his love touched mine, there's an unfathomable emptiness I’ll never recover from.