Chapter 16
Matt
I woke up with an IV attached to my arm, dripping fuck knows what. Alison stood by the window, and in the far background, I swore I could hear Liam talking.
“He’s awake.” My mother cooed, quickly running to my side.
“What’s all this?” I asked, referring to the whole entourage parked in my house.
“You scared the shit out of us,” Alison said as an explanation that was supposed to make sense.
“You’ve been out for a week,” Max said, noticing the confusion on my face. “Turns out the bullet was leaking poison into you. Aside from the blood you lost, exerting yourself, which earned you a transfusion. The docs had you on antibiotics and some other crap to bring you back.”
“Where’s Francesca?”
“Francesca?” Alison asked, trying to read my face for what I meant.
Was it all me hallucinating? It couldn’t have been. She was here, I was sure. My soul was a little more at ease for some fucked up reason, so I was sure she had been here.
“How did you find me?”
“You texted me some jargon, and I knew something was off,” Max replied.
I let those words sink in for a minute, my eyes darting all around for evidence that I hadn’t dreamt of her presence.
Before anyone could hold me back, I pulled the IV out of my arm, ready to march through this place to find a trace of her.
They all protested as I stood up, their words merging together as I roamed my own home for a sign of her. But what I found was a lot more disturbing.
She’d wiped her whole existence from our home. Everything that belonged to her was gone, and looking at this deserted space was just like twisting the handle of the knife buried in my heart.
I ignored them all as I frantically made my way from one room to the next, not stopping to feel if I was in pain or not. There’d be time for that later.
Leave tomorrow for tomorrow.
For some fucked up reason, I was searching for something she might have left behind. Anything that proved she was real. That she had been here, living with me in a heavenly life I just had to fuck up.
There was nothing. Even the wreckage of her wrath had been tidied and cleaned.
With each drawer I opened, with each pillow I lifted and came out empty, my chest deflated, a raw sense of emptiness taking over like poison in my veins.
At least the other one had me out for the count and not feeling like I did right now. Like my life had ended, but I was still required to live it.
I could have done things differently.
I could have given up my seat so she could have hers. I could have killed everyone in that damn Commission that dared to vote against her. But no. Instead, I fucked up the only thing I wanted in life.
Suddenly I found myself in the bathroom, looking inside the damn rubbish bin and finding her toothbrush tossed inside.
I picked it up like a damn prized possession and placed it back in the cup on the vanity, right alongside mine.
I smiled at the two inanimate objects leaning against each other like a fucking lunatic.
The smile vanished just as fast as it came, and before I could swallow the feeling of abandonment, I was punching the mirror into pieces.