Chapter 13 #2
Because storms didn’t scare me; losing her did, and I’d rather stand in a hurricane with her hand in mine than walk in sunshine alone.
I leaned back, rubbed the bridge of my nose, and stared up at the ceiling like it held answers God hadn’t texted me back about yet.
She tried to protect me by leaving.
I had never wanted to fight for a woman the way I wanted to fight for her, not since the last time life ripped someone I loved away from me, but this wasn’t that, and I’d break the world in half before I let it happen again.
A week later, IA stamped me again as “officially cleared.” Said I’d shown “restraint.”
Chambers slapped my back. “I knew you’d stand ten toes. You are the balance of the badge and the block.”
I nodded, but my gut stayed twisted. Restraint didn’t equal peace. Restraint just meant the war was waiting.
Then dispatch cracked alive in my ear.
Suspicious activity. Possible break-in. 7432 Gardenia. Back door open. Motion detected upstairs.
Jonay’s house.
The call cracked over dispatch like a curse, and I didn’t even breathe before I was moving, boots hitting pavement with Chambers right behind me, his camera already rolling. Proof. Insurance. Protection for men like me when we had to protect women like her in a world that didn’t protect either.
The night air was swollen, thick with storm clouds and silence that didn’t belong. Not the good kind either, the silence before a shot, the pause before sirens. Even the streetlights felt like they were holding their breath, blinking slowly and tiredly.
I hit the back gate, service weapon heavy in my palm, muzzle low but hungry. The door was open, the lock splintered like a tooth knocked out. That was enough to tell me we weren’t catching him leaving. We were catching him in the middle.
“Clear down here,” Chambers whispered behind me, voice taut, wire-thin.
I gave a single nod, chin sharp. Then I started climbing. Each step of those stairs sounded like a drumbeat in a funeral march. The walls stretched shadows across me like long fingers trying to drag me back down.
Creak. Rope against wood.
The sound froze me mid-step. Not loud, just enough to whisper trouble. Another sound followed: plastic, pills rattling in a bottle. My chest went still.
Cop mode. Breathe steady. Move cold.
Jonay’s bedroom door was cracked open, a thin line of black slicing the hallway. I eased up against the frame, inch by inch, gun high.
And then, his voice.
Kam.
Not hiding. Waiting.
Rope was coiled on the nightstand like a snake. Pill bottles scattered across the dresser, little orange soldiers of chaos. And in his hand: steel. A gun. He held it low, deliberate, like a man who’d been practicing the gesture in the dark for weeks.
When his eyes found mine, there wasn’t fear. Just obsession cracked wide open into madness.
“You don’t belong here,” he hissed, his lip curling. “She was mine first.”
That word—mine—slithered, slimy.
“Kam,” I said, voice low, even, iron-heavy. “Put the gun down. We can work through this.”
He laughed, hollow, mocking. “It’s always you, huh?
Mr. Perfect. Detective Pretty Boy. Even back in the academy…
I could never stand your golden boy ass.
You shine, Eli. Always smiling. Always trying to help me out like I was some fucking charity case.
You think I didn’t see it?” His hand trembled on the grip.
Something inside me pinched, an ugly twist of pity I didn’t want but couldn’t stop. His voice wasn’t just hate; it was hurt cracking open.
“Kam, listen—”
“No, you listen!” His voice broke, snapping sharply before sinking low again.
“You know how many fucking meds I had to take to even act halfway human? To drown out the voices screaming in my skull? To make me a decent person? And even then, they didn’t want me.
Failed piss test, false positive, gone. Dream over.
Meanwhile, you? You slide right in my spot.
Badge, respect, future. And then her. Jonay. ” His eyes flickered wildly.
I lifted my free hand just an inch, steady, palms out. “It doesn’t have to end like this. Put it down, Kam. Please.”
He shook his head, jaw tight, a bitter smile twisting.
“You can’t help me, Detective Perfect. I’m a lost cause.
And I’m just gonna keep coming for her. She’s the only person that ever loved me, and I treated her like shit because her jealous bitch of a cousin switched my fucking meds.
I would’ve never cheated on Jonay if Taleah’s snake ass hadn’t fucked with me.
I overheard her on the phone bragging to her bitch ass friend about how she switched them…
planted shit in my head… pretended to be Jonay. I’m fuckin’ stupid, yo.”
Every muscle in me wanted to explode, to rip him apart for even saying her name like that. But I kept my voice calm, desperate under the steel. “Kam, stop. You don’t want this.”
His eyes watered, rage softening into something far more dangerous: no remorse.
His voice cracked. “I’ve been off my meds for months, nigga.
I’ve done too much fuck shit to come back from.
You know, my mama used to hear voices too.
She would snap on me and talk to me crazy as hell.
She used to lock me in a closet just to stop the voices in my own damn head.
She’d lock me in that muthafucka for days, weeks even.
I used to scratch at the wood door, like a little rat clawing to get out till my fingers bled.
One day, she took me out finally. She talked shit about how bad I smelled, right before she ate her gun in front of me.
My whole damn childhood, darkness and whispers.
I won’t let y’all do the same to me, lock me in a fuckin’ cage. ”
My gut clenched. For a split second, I saw not the monster, but a broken man clutching at a loaded truth.
Then he spat the venom. “Taleah’s body’s in North Self. She played with my life by fuckin wit’ my meds. She took Jonay from me, so I took hers.”
The room tilted. My finger tensed. Chambers’s breath behind me went sharp.
“Kam—”
“Tell my baby I’m sorry,” he said, eyes glassy now. “Almost three years together, and I never even told her about my sickness. I was scared she’d leave, so I ruined it myself. Tell her I loved her, Elias. Tell her I know you’ll love her like I wish I could’ve.”
My chest pulled tight, lungs fighting air. “Don’t do this. Don’t make me—”
But he already was. He lifted the gun clean, calculated. The barrel aimed at my chest like a verdict already written.
“Kam, drop it!” I pleaded, voice cracking past the control. “Don’t make me do this, Kam.”
He smiled, crooked, broken. “Goodbye, golden boy.”
The flash ripped first from his muzzle. Chambers shouted. My finger moved on instinct. Three rounds thundered out, lightning in the storm.
Kam’s body jerked, folded, and hit the dresser before sliding to the floor like a puppet with its strings cut. Rope slipped from his hand, pills scattering across the rug like teeth spilling from a shattered jaw. His blood bloomed dark into the fibers, a stain that would never come out.
His eyes stayed open, glassy, lips parting like he wanted to speak one last time. But nothing came. Just silence.
The silence after was heavier than the gunfire. Deafening. The kind of silence that swallowed whole blocks.
I lowered my weapon, chest heaving, guilt and duty twisting into one unbearable knot. I whispered under my breath, words no one else would ever hear. “I’m sorry, Kam.”
Chambers stepped up, eyes wide, voice low. “He drew first, Eli. You ain’t have a choice. He wanted to die, bro.”
But standing over Kam’s body, watching that storm finally swallow him, I couldn’t help but wonder if that was true or if every choice we’d both ever made had dragged us right here.
Chambers nodded, camera still humming. “Whole city gon’ see this one day. You saved her life again, bro. I’ll call it in.”
Kam’s eyes glistened, the madness cracking into something rawer, more human. His voice shook, thin as a broken wire.
The house was still holding its breath when the sirens started swelling down the block. Red and blue lights bled through the blinds, painting Kam’s body in the colors of endings.
Chambers stood in the doorway, shoulders heavy, eyes fixed on me more than the scene. “Eli,” he said low, like he didn’t want to break the air. “You good?”
I holstered my weapon slowly, the metal clicking home louder than it should’ve. My hands still shook. My chest still burned with the echo of Kam’s last words. Tell her I loved her. Tell her I know you’ll love her like I never could.
The weight pressed on my chest, but I didn’t let it sit long.
“Cameras caught it,” I said flatly, staring at the corner of the room where the lens winked red.
“Everything he said, everything that went down. IA’ll have it.
Homicide’ll have it. And once they search North Self, Taleah’s body’ll back it up.
” I looked Chambers dead in the eye, my voice tightening.
“So I ain’t got the luxury of burying his words. Even if I wanted to.”
Chambers studied me for a long beat, then nodded slowly. “You gonna tell her?”
I exhaled, dragging a hand down my face. My whole soul wanted to protect Jonay from more pain but protecting her didn’t mean lying to her. Not now. Not ever.
“I don’t keep secrets from her,” I said finally, the words landing like an oath. “She deserves the truth: raw, ugly, all of it. If I carry this by myself, it’ll rot me. And she’d never forgive me for keeping it.”
The sirens screamed louder, engines grinding up the street. Backup. EMTs. The circus. But in that moment, standing over Kam’s body, all I could think about was Jonay’s face when I told her what he’d said. The apology, the confession, the madness, the murder. All of it.
I tightened my jaw. “Better it come from me than a damn report.”