Chapter 1 #3
“Fuck. I got it.” I raised my head to meet his dark eyes and agreed, knowing I had nowhere to run. His eyes were anything but dark, the same damning hazel green I inherited. “Observe, track, tail, steal, distract her till you’ve got shit done. You’ve made me practice plenty before.”
“That’s why you’re my girl!” Papa stepped forward and grabbed my face on both sides, kissing my forehead.
I ignored the muddled smell of cigars on his breath, the deep need for a cigarette of my own scratching at my throat.
He squeezed my shoulder harder than necessary and tilted his head, lips near my ear.
“Now put that fucking jacket on and get back over to Q’s funeral. Be a member of this family, da?”
My eyes closed with relief when his nails eased off my burning shoulder blade. He smacked my cheek lightly with his palm and dropped his hand.
“Don’t mess this up for me,” Papa said, his eyes mirroring the seriousness of his voice.
He walked away after that, not a care for the disrespected tomb of the man we were standing on. He dragged his feet and knocked a flag from the Fourth of July down to the grass. I was sure Papa noticed the mark on the stone that wrote him as an old, respected sheriff to Coven.
My stare shot bullets in the back of my father’s head as he walked away. I focused in hard on that nasty bald spot on the back of his head, using it as my fake target for the finger guns I wanted to be real.
I loved him. I hated him. I wanted to be him. I wanted to run from him.
He taught me young how to do more than fuck over others. Papa wanted to be in everyone’s head, in their quaking souls until their dying breath.
And you know what? I deserved better.
The jacket in my hands could have been a cement brick. I’d wanted this jacket since I was young. I wanted to be someone who made something of myself in the eyes of my family. This jacket meant I was going to make exactly that come true if I played my cards right.
Then, everything changed when I had Estelle. Now, I found myself trapped under thirty pounds of wet sand, struggling to get free from Earth’s death-like grasp tugging me down.
The Q’s gold stitching was fading. I’d seen Uncle Dominik wear this jacket countless times. It was one of my first memories—Dominik carrying me around in his jacket during the winter to keep me warm in the barn where the old horse stayed.
I gazed off after my father again. This time, I returned my eagle eyes to Estelle and watched her hug my mother’s neck as the jacket sleeves closed around my arms. I finished slipping it on and closed my eyes as the warmth in my chest grew under the jacket’s protection.
My sunglasses fell to cover my eyes. I lowered my head and crawled the zipper up my chest. It smelled of him, of cigars, booze, and barnyard, but still the same ritualistic sage that made my head spin.
I leaned back against the fence again and squeezed my eyes shut, accepting the protection of my sunglasses.
I should have told him I loved him once more. He deserved to know he was the father I never had. Dominik Quintana was everything I needed in my life to remain sane.
And then, he was gone.
The iron gate was chipped with untouched rust. It dug into the palms of my hands as I spun away from the eyes of my family members. My jaw slacked, shoulders falling as I desperately clung to the metal bars to keep myself from falling apart.
He was gone.
The only person I could ever count on had been brutally murdered. I couldn’t fathom a world without him there to protect me, to save me.
Breathe. They’re watching. Just breathe.
He was the last of us, of the sane ones. Now he’s gone, I’ll hug insanity every morning instead of him. My child will grow up without a paternal role model. She’ll never know how that man saved her life when I was close to ending both of ours.
My chin raised enough to stare at the train tracks. They were only a few yards away. I’d learned a thing or two about trains and death in the past—maybe I’d ave them the funeral costs and let them put me in the ground beside him.
I couldn’t do this.
I couldn’t let my humanity crumble away as everyone else’s had. We were monsters. We battled nothing but the sun peeking through the constant overcast. Why did Dominik leave me here to die alone, at the hands of my own family?
“Eleanor, honey.”
My grandmother’s hands gently touched my shoulders, sliding down to rub the leather covering my arms. Her frail arms hugged me tight over my elbows, keeping me from stabbing my chest with the points of the iron tips any further.
“You were born to wear those stars,” she whispered in my ear. “You will do great things for this family. I am beyond proud of you, child.”
My heart shattered as my knees gave out. I wasn’t as strong as she thought. I couldn’t become the monsters lurking within my childhood. Every judgmental eye weighed on me as I plummeted into the mud and arched my back to hug the jacket closer to me.
I tried to scream, but the bubble I was strangling inside never popped, all attempts at sound trapped in my throat. I was forced to understand what drowning on land felt like. I was a fish without water.
No air. Drowning on land.
How had my life come to this? I lost everything. My boyfriend, my spot at the top of the social pyramid, my daughter, and now my uncle? The first and last man to ever love me. The only man to ever see the real me after I shattered like a record falling from my bedroom walls.
I fucking deserved better than this shit.