Chapter 26
Twenty-Six
My Ego Dies At The End — Jensen McRae
T his.
This was the meeting I was afraid of. Terrified of.
There was not even a tiny uptick in my heart rate when I’d threatened and blackmailed one of the most dangerous men on the planet.
Not as I watched him take his last breath.
Because he meant nothing to me. Because I was positive I was doing the right thing.
That I had enough power to defeat him. That I’d tied up all my loose ends.
Yet standing here, behind his door, there were no certainties about power or whether I’d be walking out alive. If my decision was the right one. If he could be saved.
Jasper didn’t appear to be surprised when he answered his door. As if he’d been expecting me. He did a quick perusal of my body, his eyes flaring just slightly, the only show of emotion I got from him those days.
It made my heart stutter, that flare, though. Because it illustrated the need he had for me. That need I’d had in me once before. Before it was smothered, strangled and died, piece by piece.
I didn’t want him. Not even a little. But a wretched, evil part of me still loved him. Would always love him.
Without a word, he stepped back to let me in. On wooden legs, I walked through his opulent apartment. I followed him to the bar, listening to the cocktail shaker rattle as he silently made me my drink.
When he slid the glass across the bar, I grasped the stem but didn’t bring it to my lips. I couldn’t swallow anything right then, my heart was clogging up my throat.
Jasper watched me carefully while he drank his own drink.
I wanted to know what was going through his head. Wanted to open it up so I could comb through it, find a reason, find something that would make my choice easier. Or something I could use to save him.
Though I’d known for a long time that Jasper was beyond saving.
“You’ll have to kill me.” Looking me straight in the face, his tone was void of emotion.
“You know it. You’ve known it for a while.
Because I’ll keep coming. I can’t let you live a life without me in it, Calliope.
” It sounded like he was in pain. And though I was sure I’d insulated myself against feeling anything for Jasper Hayes, my heartbeat skipped.
He was the same man, standing in front of me with the suit. One of the most imposing and dangerous people I knew.
But suddenly, he seemed so small.
“I will not go away,” he promised. “I’ll keep setting fires, destroying things, hurting people to get you back to where you belong. By my side. There is a part of you you’ll have to kill if you stay there too.”
He put down his drink, walking slowly toward me. My muscles tensed as he stopped in front of me, eyes plastered to mine. He reached out to cup my cheek in a gesture of tenderness that I hadn’t known he was capable of.
“Because that part of you wants to be here,” he continued. “By my side. Away from the person you force yourself to be with your family. This is the real you. With me. Where I don’t judge you, where you indulge every single one of your desires.”
I closed my eyes and leaned into his hand, just for a minute.
I wanted to memorize the weight of it, the contours, the smell of him.
The prickling along my skin from being in contact with his.
I dove into the memories… Us standing outside our high school that first day.
Yoga in the meadow. Every day after that.
A tear trailed down my cheek when I opened my eyes, my hand slipping into the sheath I’d fastened into the jacket I’d put on as I’d gotten out of the car.
My palm was clammy as I gripped the hilt of the knife.
There was no time for hesitation, no second-guessing my decision.
The moment I grasped it, I moved quickly, plunging the knife I held into Jasper’s neck.
His carotid artery. The element of surprise was the only thing I had, coaxing him to me, using his one and only weakness—his desire for me.
There was shock in his chocolate eyes when I did it, but not a lot. He knew, somewhere deep down, he knew that this was what I was going to do, that this is what I had to do. Deep down, he wanted it, wanted it to end.
That’s why he’d said all of that. To give me the green light. Permission.
The boy I knew was still in there, somewhere. And that boy was misunderstood, angry, intelligent. But he wasn’t cruel or evil. That boy was suffering under the decisions he made unaware of how far they’d take him from himself.
He let out a wet, gurgling sound that I knew I would hear in my nightmares until the day I died. When his weight slumped against me, I let us both sink to the ground.
With effort, I pulled the knife out, and blood spurted quickly, soaking both of us, tepid, wet.
The coppery smell made my stomach turn, yet I reveled in it because it was the last warmth I’d ever feel from my first love.
The man who understood parts of me even Elliot wouldn’t glimpse.
The parts that were bleeding out inside of me.
The pain was unimaginable. I’d gone for the knife, the artery, because although messy, I’d deduced it would be the quickest, the most painless—as painless as death could be—and the most intimate.
I needed Jasper to leave like that. Needed to give him that.
The closeness he ached for but had never be able to give me or get from me.
I needed to punish myself by feeling every ounce of what I’d done.
“I love you.” I cradled Jasper’s head in my hands, my eyes never leaving his. “The part of me that’s dying right now loves you. The boy you were. The boy we both lost.”
He didn’t say anything, but there was no blame, no anger in his eyes as the blood slowly stopped flowing, and his eyes became vacant.
My heart twisted in my chest like it had stopped too. But I was hurting. The pain meant I was still alive.
My choice had been made. I’d done it. Marked myself down to the bone. Did it matter that I might’ve saved countless lives, including my own, my family’s, Elliot’s, by killing Jasper?
Yes, it mattered.
But I wouldn’t delude myself into thinking I’d done some kind of good deed. At the end of the day, it was a selfish act to ensure that I got the life I wanted. The life I wanted cost exactly one soul. It wasn’t my job to weigh that soul, to judge its misdeeds. I took it. That was my crime.
I sat with him, stroking his hair from his face, until his blood dried and cooled on my skin.
Then, with great difficulty—emotional, not physical—I pushed his body from my lap, standing in the pool of his blood to look at him one last time.
His large body was clad in black, the pool of blood underneath him smeared to look like wings, like he was some dark angel.
His eyes were still open, staring at the ceiling, lifeless.
Although he was a large body, he’d never seemed so small to me.
“This won’t be the way I see you,” I promised. “I’ll see you as the boy who read Russian literature and romance, who loved Kurt Cobain and bought little girls ice cream. I’ll see you as who you might’ve been. Who we might’ve been.”
With that heartbreaking promise made to a dead man, I turned and left.
I drove home through the night. Not showering. Which wasn’t smart considering I was wearing white, drenched with blood, and all it would take was a routine traffic stop to send everything to ruin.
But everything was ruined already.
Jasper’s body was being taken care of. The murder weapon had already been destroyed along with any trace of me being in that apartment.
Even in my state, I wouldn’t leave loose ends.
I might’ve killed an important part of myself with that knife, but I wouldn’t completely self-destruct. No way would I enjoy prison.
I made all the necessary arrangements to ensure that I was never tied to Jasper’s death.
No security camera footage, no cell phone tower pings, DNA, nothing.
Not that it was hard. Jasper didn’t exist in the first place, not on paper anyway.
There was no family to report him missing to, no friends, no lover.
Beyond the people he worked for, who wouldn’t mourn him for a second, there was no one to miss him.
Except me.
Once his body was gone, it would be like he had never existed.
It was after midnight when I made it home to Jupiter, ignoring the urge to go to Elliot’s small house in the woods. I ached for the comfort of his arms, as if his scent and his skin would absolve me of my sins. Keep me safe. What I’d just done had guaranteed that I’d never darken his door again.
He’d turn me away anyway, now that I’d told him about Naomi. There was only so far the love of a good man went.
Instead, I drove to the house on the beach that belonged to my brother but was now the only home I had left.
The house I grew up in would always be there.
I’d go there for holidays and pretend to be a member of my family, but Thomas Wolfe was right: You can’t go home again.
Especially after you murdered the boy you fell for as a teenager who then dragged you into a life of crime as an adult.
Crime I committed while wearing couture but crimes, nonetheless.
I’d leave the ghosts of Calliope and Jasper untouched and pristine, running around a small town on a loop, unaware of the life that would ruin them both.
Jupiter was it for me. I had nowhere else to go.
And I’d have to walk around carrying the ghost of who I might’ve been had things been different.
If I wasn’t a killer. If I hadn’t met Jasper when I was a teenager. If I hadn’t met Elliot.