Chapter 2 #2
She wasn’t wrong. Ruby had seen right through me, past the carefully constructed facade I wore like armor, straight into the emptiness that had taken root deep in my chest.
I walked back to the bed, my bare feet cold against the hardwood floor. As I sat on the edge, my phone buzzed on the nightstand. The vibration was sharp and insistent, cutting through the quiet like a knife.
I picked it up, already knowing who it would be before I even looked at the screen.
James Roberts. My WITSEC handler. My lifeline. My jailer.
I stared at the name on the screen, watching it ring once, twice, three times. Each vibration felt like an accusation, a reminder of everything I had lost, everything I had become in the years since I entered the program.
Then I set the phone back down and let it go to voicemail.
I didn’t want to talk to Roberts. Didn’t want to hear whatever bullshit update he had about the Marshals’ investigation or the latest threat assessment that kept me and my sister, Abigail, locked in this fucking program.
Didn’t want to pretend that any of it mattered anymore, that I still cared about staying alive when living felt like this.
I just wanted to be left alone.
The phone buzzed again a moment later. A voicemail notification. Roberts was persistent, I’d give him that.
I ignored it.
Instead, I lay back on my bed, one arm behind my head, and stared at the ceiling.
The paint was cracked and yellowing, water-stained in the corner where the roof probably leaked when it rained.
The room smelled of sex and cheap perfume, a cloying sweetness that made my stomach turn.
The sheets were tangled, still warm from Ruby’s body, still carrying the faint impression of where she’d lain just minutes before.
And I felt nothing.
No satisfaction. No relief. No release from the weight that pressed down on my chest like a stone.
Just the same hollow ache I had been carrying for seven years. The same gnawing emptiness that no amount of whiskey or anonymous sex or mindless distraction could ever fill.
I closed my eyes, shutting out the depressing sight of the world around me.
Tried to sleep. Tried to quiet my mind, to slip into the blessed oblivion of unconsciousness.
And that was when she came to me.
She was laughing.
That sound—God, that sound—it was like sunlight breaking through clouds after a week of rain. Pure and bright and so fucking beautiful it hurt. It hurt in that way that good things hurt when you knew you didn’t deserve them, when you knew they were too precious to last.
We were lying in bed together. Not this bed. Not the clubhouse with its stale beer smell and cigarette smoke embedded in the walls. Somewhere else. Somewhere safe. Somewhere that existed only in my mind, but right then it felt real enough.
Her head was on my chest, her dark hair spilling across my skin like silk, like water, like something too fine for hands as rough and scarred as mine to touch.
I could feel the warmth of her breath against my ribs, the weight of her body pressed against mine.
Real weight. Solid and grounding and everything I’d ever wanted.
She smelled like vanilla and something floral. Jasmine, maybe. Or honeysuckle. Something sweet and delicate that made me think of summer gardens and gentle things. Things I’d never been gentle enough to keep.
I breathed her in like it was the last breath I’d ever take.
“Tell me again,” she said softly, her fingers tracing lazy patterns on my stomach. Circles and spirals and shapes I couldn’t name but could feel burning into my skin like brands.
“Tell you what?”
“That you love me.”
I tightened my arm around her, pulled her closer, trying to press her into my very bones. “I love you,” I said, and my voice sounded different. Softer. More vulnerable than I’d ever allowed it to be.
She tilted her head up, and I saw those eyes. Green and warm and flecked with gold in the light filtering through whatever imaginary window this dream had conjured. Looking at me like I was the only man in the world. Like I was worth looking at.
“I love you too,” she whispered, and her breath ghosted across my collarbone.
And I believed her.
I believed in this moment. In the safety of her arms wrapped around me. In the possibility of a future that didn’t involve running or hiding or looking over my shoulder every five seconds. A future with quiet mornings and her laughter and days that didn’t end in blood.
I believed I could be happy.
I believed I could be the kind of man who deserved this.
“Stay with me,” I heard myself say, and there was something desperate in my voice, something raw. “Don’t leave. Please don’t leave.”
She smiled, and it was the kind of smile that could save a man. “I’m not going anywhere,” she promised.
But even as she said it, even as the words left her lips, I felt her slipping away. The warmth fading like the sun dipping below the horizon. The weight of her body becoming lighter, less solid, less real.
“Don’t go,” I said again, louder, and there was panic in my voice now. Real panic. The kind that clawed at your throat. “Please don’t—”
“I’m right here,” she replied, but her voice sounded distant now. Echoing. Like she was speaking from the other end of a long tunnel.
But she wasn’t.
She was disappearing.
Fading like smoke in wind. Like fog under morning sun. Like everything good I’d ever touched.
And I reached for her, desperately trying to hold on, my fingers grasping and clutching at air, but my hands closed around nothing.
Nothing.
Nothing.
Nothing but the cold and the empty and the dark rushing in to fill the space where she had been.