Chapter Twenty-Five
Hayes
“You feel like eating?” Lochlan asks from outside my temporary prison cell. He was in one long enough. He knows how to make something work on the fly.
“No.”
“If I open the gate, are you going to try to leave again?”
“Yes.”
He sighs, rubbing his hand over his head. “It’s nearly midnight.”
“So?” The moon has been out for hours, but the floodlight beside the barn is the only thing providing me with any light.
He holds up a piece of folded paper in his hand. “I want to give you this, but I need to know that your freak show from earlier is over with.”
“Why? Afraid I’ll hurt you again?” His purple cheek and swollen eye socket stare at me through the cage bars.
He chuckles. “You look worse than I do, pretty boy. Besides, I got you in here once, I’ll do it twice if I have to.”
“You only managed because you got me in a headlock when I wasn’t looking. It was a cheap shot.”
“A cheap shot that saved you from doing something stupid.”
“Doesn’t matter now.” She’s a married woman.
He tips the paper forward between the metal bars, handing it to me.
“What is this?”
“Jo told me I needed to give this to you asap.”
I unfold the first crease, but my cracked and bloody hand stills.
—
Dear Jensen,
—
“Is this a joke?” I don’t take my eyes off the handwriting that I know by heart.
I don’t have to unfold the second half of the paper to know it’s from her.
“Read it, I’ll be on the porch.” He unlocks the padlock on the cage but doesn’t open the door, strolling back up to his farmhouse, and leaving me to read the letter in my hand.
I unfold it slowly, exposing the rest of the words.
—
Dear Jensen,
I wasn’t happy.
He’s not my soulmate.
Still,
Olive Greenwood
—
I read the words again. And again. Convincing myself that I’m comprehending them wrong, and that I’m only seeing what I want to see.
I read it again, but this time I’m on my feet before I can finish, shoving through the cage door and sprinting up to the big house.
“She didn’t marry him?” I ask breathlessly, holding the letter in front of me.
Jo’s sitting next to Lochlan, looking at me tenderly. “She didn’t marry him.”
The gravel bites my knees as I fall to them. “Is she okay?”
“She will be,” Jo assures me.
My hands scrub at my arms as if I can wipe away the blood and grime caked to my skin. As if I can erase my psychotic break. She needs me, and she shouldn’t see me like this. I need to shower.
“Hayes,” Lochlan says, grabbing my attention. He waits until I look at him, and he shakes his head. “You can’t see her yet.”
“What? Why? I need to be there for her.”
“She needs time.” Jo looks at me sympathetically. “Alone.”
“Alone? She still has a stalker out there!”
“She’s staying with Thea for a while. Let her come to you when she’s ready.”
I grab the porch railing, letting my head hang between my shoulders. “And if she’s never ready?”
Jo shrugs. “I don’t know.”
“Just be ready for her when she is,” Lochlan adds, trying to give me an ounce of hope.
He knows I won’t survive losing her again.
* * *
11 years ago…
I can’t ruin her life. She has to go to college and escape the storm cloud that I live under. I love her more than life itself, and I can’t rot in here knowing she isn’t moving on.
“Cell 247, open,” the guard announces, waiting for the automatic buzzer to signal it’s unlocked. The heavy metal door creaks as it opens. “Cell 247, close.”
It slams shut behind me.
I’m alone. Lochlan must be at visiting hours. I just got done having my stitches removed from our scuffle the first day I was assigned to his cell.
The guard had let it slip that Lochlan was in for a sex crime, and I let all of my rage at my own situation loose on him.
But he fought back, and we both ended up bloody and bruised.
He’s the first person who has ever been able to put up a fight against me, and it made me angrier.
“I know you’re pissed off, kid. I would be, too, but I didn’t rape anyone. I didn’t do it.”
He spit those words at me while his forearm was pinned to my trachea, but I still didn’t believe him.
He backed off anyway, seeing the malice in me.
“Fine. Go ahead. Kill me. I’m tired of fighting.”
The defeat in his voice had nothing to do with our current confrontation, and for some reason, I took pause, watching blood drip down his chin. He didn’t bother wiping it away.
He already had scars, and I definitely added a few more, but it was his eyes that were the most marred.
He was dead inside, just like me.
He told me his story, and I believed him. He was disgusted to be labeled as a predator.
I told him my story while we were getting stitched up in the infirmary. I told him about Liv and how much I loved her.
I told him about the night of the school bonfire.
And that the only thing I regretted is that I didn’t kill the fucker.
Lochlan didn’t condemn me for admitting it.
“We make choices in life that we have to live by forever. There are no do-overs. It’s better to do what you think is right than to sit by and let innocent people suffer.”
It was a relief to hear someone think like me, and I wish I told him that, but it’s too late now.
I have to make sure Liv moves on without looking back, and the only way I can do that is to not be here at all.
We’re too connected on this plane. She’ll always seek me out just like I would if I were on the outside. I will never be able to live without her, but all my existence will ever do is drag her down.
I stare at the empty glass vial in my hand that I swiped from the infirmary cart before I smash it against the side of the bed frame.
It shatters across the floor, but all I need is one piece bigger than the rest.
“I’m so sorry, Liv.” Tears prick at the corners of my eyes as I whisper my final goodbye to the gray walls. “Thank you for being my best friend when I had no hope left in my life.”
The sharpest corner of the glass shard pricks the skin at the base of my wrist. “I love you, forever, dove.”
The shard digs deeper into my wrist until blood wells up around my fingers, and before I give myself another second to think about it, to think about her, I rip the glass up my forearm, flaying my skin several inches.
The blood pours out, covering my arm, splattering down my legs, and I sink to the floor as I watch it pool around me.
“Do great things, baby girl,” the words escape me as my consciousness fades.
“Open 247.” The door buzzes as it opens, and my head lolls to the side.
“Kid! NO!” Lochlan’s voice thunders.
His body collides with mine on the floor, and he reaches for my arm, wrapping his hands around my wound as if he can put it back together.
It’s too late. The blood is blanketing the cell and both of our bodies.
“HELP!” He yells. “HELP! You’re going to be okay. HELP US!”
His words barely seem real as darkness closes in around me.
“I’ll take care of you, kid.”
“You’re not alone.”
“Fight, Hayes!”
But I didn’t fight.
I had no reason left to.