Chapter 34
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
VALEN
I don’t sleep.
Every time I close my eyes, I’m eight years old again, sliding under a car that doesn’t belong to me, Terra’s venom-laced voice in my ear.
Good boy. Such a good boy.
The memory is sharper now than it was yesterday. I can smell the oil and gravel. Feel the metal against my back as I slide beneath the chassis. The wet hiss of fluid, and Terra’s arms around me after.
It was the only time she ever hugged me.
I’m sitting in a chair by the window as the sun rises. The same sun Clover is watching below me on the porch—I heard the soft murmur of her voice and Chief’s loud, barking tone earlier, and I haven’t been able to move away since.
The window is cold against my forehead, and my breath fogs the pane in slow, uneven bursts—proof that I’m alive even when everything inside me has died.
I should have left this town as soon as Clover got home.
Instead, I’ve been holed up in here all night, unable to do anything but swim in grief and guilt because I can’t be with her, but I can’t leave her either.
In the distance, a dog barks. Then another. The town’s stirring to life while I exist in this self-made purgatory.
Last night was the worst. She sat outside my door for over an hour, but I couldn’t make myself open it.
I’m a coward for not giving her the chance to hate me to my face, and Grant cursed at me for pushing her away, but I’m all but comatose.
My head throbs as though I’m just coming out of a three-day booze-fueled bender.
She made me a hero in her stories, but I was the villain all along.
“V.” Roman’s voice is accentuated by a sharp knock. “Open the door.”
I don’t move.
“I’m not leaving until you talk to me. And you know I’m too stubborn to bluff.”
He once sat outside a target’s apartment for seventy-two hours without a bathroom break because our intel said the guy would come home eventually, so I know he isn’t going anywhere now. Still, I close my eyes and wait him out.
“I swear to Christ, V. I’ll knock this goddamn door down if you don’t open it.” He must realize he left the key behind when he brought me food yesterday.
His body crashes into the door, and I sigh. Not wanting to be responsible for any more damage, I stand and cross the room. “What do you want?”
“Clover needs you, you fucking idiot.”
She doesn’t, but he’s not going to leave me alone either. It’s time for me to act.
“I’ll be down in thirty.”
“Valen—”
“Give me thirty fucking minutes.”
He mutters something I can’t hear. Whatever it is, he’s wrong. I know he is.
Clover may not need me to protect her body anymore, but I’ll protect her heart until my dying day—even if she ends up hating me for it. It’s the only way to make up for what I’ve done.
The decision crystallizes slowly, like ice forming on a window.
If I stay here, she’ll forgive me because she thinks it’s the right thing to do.
The best thing I can do for Clover—the only thing I have left to give her—is my absence.
It takes me ten minutes to pack my bag, strip the bed, and wipe down every surface I’ve touched.
Ten minutes to leave behind months of building a relationship that quickly became my new center of gravity.
Regardless of where we end up, Clover will always be my foundation.
My hand hovers over the door handle. I can’t catch my breath—each short pant burns, a wildfire exposing all my cracked beams. Leaving this room is a pain worse than death.
Fuck.
I can’t just leave her. Not after all the time Clover invested in the memory of me.
Clover’s faith in me kept her writing letters I never responded to.
A letter. Is that what she needs?
I imagine her reading my words, apologies with no sound, and I vanquish the thought before it even fully forms.
Writing her a letter would be the coward’s way out. She needs more from me. She needs me to absorb her pain, so I will.
Face-to-face.
I owe it to her to witness her pain—to look her in the eyes and see exactly what I’ve done.
So with a heavy heart and heavier feet, I carry myself down to the porch where she still sits.
She pops up as if she were waiting for me. The guarded love in her eyes destroys me. I broke the unwavering trust she once had in me.
I’m not sure where Chief has run off to, but I’m thankful for the privacy as I hand her my heart.
“What?” She stares at the duffel bag in my hand as though it’s attacking her. “Valen.” Tears slide down my face. “Don’t.” More tears well in hers. “Don’t do this.”
“I—” Speaking has never been more painful.
“Don’t fucking do this,” she growls. “You don’t get to do this to me. Do you hear me?” she shouts.
Yeah, Honeybee. I hear you. I’ve never heard you so clearly.
“I have to.” The words don’t even sound like my own.
They’re desperate and raw and so full of emotion it’s hard to swallow.
“What I’ve done is unforgivable, but forcing you to work through your feelings while staring at me every day is selfish, Clover.
You deserve to work through the betrayals of your life without me breathing down your neck. ”
“You don’t get to make that decision for me.” Her voice echoes off the empty street, and I almost cave. I almost reach for her.
But that would be selfish too.
“I—I’m sorry,” I choke out. Her chin trembles, and I’ve never hated myself more. “You—you’ve always been so good with your words, Clover. I’m better with actions.”
Her face pales, but I don’t allow my gaze to drift. I memorize her heartache. How it wrecks her beautiful eyes. The sounds she makes when she hiccups. This will all be the new reel in my mind that I call on anytime I’m tempted to reach for her.
“I can’t undo the past, Honeybee. But I can give you the only thing I have left to offer—peace. Space. Room to heal without looking at the face of the person who created your pain.”
Clover reaches out lightning-fast and holds on to my arm with both hands.
She uses her body weight to stop my retreat, and it’s as though I feel my muscles tearing, trying to stay with her.
When she digs in her heels and sits back with all her weight, I gently pry her fingers off me.
Each finger removed crushes the fragments of hope I had left.
I’m doing this for you, Honeybee. Please. Please believe that.
“Don’t do this, you fucking coward. Don’t leave me all alone in this pain,” she cries, and every shred of humanity I have is sucked away by the devil himself. “That’s not fair. It’s not fair,” she screams.
Sterling and Greyson crash through the front door with Wrecks whining at their side. They look as horrified by my actions as I am.
“It’s not fair,” she screams again. Greyson runs to her, and I think Sterling is ready to kill me. Good, they need to be on her side.
“I know,” I cry. “I know it’s not.” I fist my hair and look to the sky, to some God I hope exists, but there are no answers there.
“You fucking asshole.” Her voice is shattering what’s left of my soul when Chief steps outside with a look of sadness for her and nothing but disdain for me.
It’s what I deserve.
“Valen.” Sterling curses. I hear his feet on the steps, but I don’t look his way as I spin on my heel and rush down the driveway.
“How dare you?” Clover yells at my retreating form. “How fucking dare you play judge and jury in my fucking life? How—” She breaks then, and my soul leaves my lips on a wheeze. I’m barely standing by the time I reach the nondescript Honda. “How dare you.”
“I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry. I love you, Clover. I’ve loved you since before I knew what love was.” The words are wet and broken. “That’s why I’m choosing your happiness over my own. I’m sorry.” Opening my car door, I throw myself in.
Her sobs will live rent-free in my mind for the rest of my life.
The drive to Charlotte takes seven hours instead of five—mostly because I keep stopping for coffee or to throw up on the side of the highway.
Seven hours is a long time to drive with memories I can no longer outrun.
She’ll see. Eventually, she’ll see that I’m doing the right thing.
We both need time. And perhaps a fuck ton of therapy.
Every mile marker is another fragment of love and loss. So much loss that my entire body riots against it.
It’s too much all at once.
By the time I pull into my parking garage, I’m hollowed out. A shell of the man Happiness was turning me into.
I nod in greeting to the front desk employee on my way to the private elevator that will take me to the penthouse—the one Vivi helped me purchase when I returned from my private training with ex-special forces operatives because it had good security and a view of the city.
The one I’ve spent so few nights in, I still stub my toe on the fucked-up metal bedframe in my room.
It’s hard to feel grounded in a place that was never a home, simply a resting spot between missions.
I accused Clover of running from her fears with her coping mechanisms, but isn’t that what I’ve always done too? She was just running from danger while I was running to it.
Unlocking the door, I step inside and head straight for the primary bathroom, for the bottle of pills I always refill but never take.
Until now.
I need to rest without nightmares, without waking ten times a night to reach for her. And then, then I’ll start the process of beginning again.
Placing two pills into my mouth, I lower my lips to the faucet and suck in water. Then I walk on wooden legs to a bed I’ve only slept in a handful of times, and crash face-first across the center of it.
Cold infiltrates my senses first. Not the temperature—the apartment’s climate control keeps it at a perfect seventy degrees. But there’s a distinct kind of cold emptiness here I’ve never noticed before.
Because it’s not Happiness.
My body curls in on itself because everything hurts after sleeping for nearly two days straight. My life went up in flames, but this time, there’s nothing to numb the pain, so I roll out of bed and flip on the lights to see my life, my apartment as Clover would.