Chapter 69
Snapped Like a Twig
Ididn’t deal with Karson the next day, or the one after that, or even the one after that.
I kept it stubbornly buried deep in the recesses of my mind.
Instead, I ran high into the mountains. I was desperately trying to outrun the jagged claws that tugged against my soul; twisting, pulling, tearing—and still the void, like the depths of a bottomless cave, remained.
I’d lose my temper at the drop of a hat.
Many drawers were slammed, things thrown across the room; both telekinetically and physically.
Dahlia suspended training for the time being, there wasn’t much else she could teach me anyway, and there seemed to be no immediate threat, although Wolf remained. At least I had that respite.
Ethan left me to my own devices, he didn’t comment at the slam of doors or the muttered swearing.
I did day shifts only at the bar. Karson wasn’t there.
I didn’t even know if he was still in town.
Ethan didn’t speak about him, and I didn’t ask.
Tom had sent flowers, along with a long, scrawled apology.
I threw them straight in the bin. That was my life for the next week and a half. It didn’t get any easier.
I’d worked the day shift at the bar the day before and had left my phone behind.
I didn’t use it much, but I always took it on my runs into the mountains just in case I rolled my ankle or took a wrong turn, or some other unforeseen event occurred.
It was only midday, if Karson was in town, he wouldn’t be in the bar.
I pushed the door open and stepped into the dim light.
I was caught completely off guard; standing at the end of the bar was Karson, with the girl I remembered passing Ethan and I as we left the bar the other night.
In hindsight, there was something about her that jolted my senses but, wrapped in my own pain, it had been a brief flicker.
She’d smiled at Ethan, and I’d heard Georgie’s high-pitched squeals of delight calling her name.
The girl was smiling up at Karson with a drink in her hand, and he was smiling back at her.
There was something about their body language, the way they leaned into each other, the way they held eye contact; the soft excited gush that illuminated from her eyes no less adoring than the look of a loving fan at a rock concert.
I knew that look, I’d it seen it broadcasted in the eyes of many mere mortals when they looked at him, as sure as I knew it had been transmitted across my own face.
But there was more than that, there was a comfort, a familiarity, suggestive of more than just a one-night stand.
I felt as if someone had knocked my feet out from under me, rammed a fist into my gut, and squeezed my heart and lungs so tight I couldn’t breathe. He glanced up. Our eyes locked.
“Amelia.” His voice was a desert, as barren as his face. Not even a grain of sand dared to rise above that platform of desolate cold emptiness.
I willed the tears to remain hidden, my face to remain blank.
“Karson.” My voice came out as blank as his.
“I’m Sarah, my dad told me all about you.”
Sarah was stunning, with long auburn hair full of soft curls. She smiled and strode toward me like a model streaking across a catwalk. Her skin was porcelain pale and flawless.
I gulped down the lump that had cratered itself in my neck. “Dad?”
“Yes, Bob.”
Sarah was tall, slender, but curved in all the right places. With her perfect hair and exquisite face, Dolly Parton’s ‘Jolene’ started drumming in my mind. I didn’t know whether I wanted to laugh or cry, neither would have been pretty. I stifled the pain and managed to remain courteous.
“Oh, it’s nice to meet you.”
“We have a mutual friend—Georgie. We’re meeting for coffee tomorrow afternoon, why don’t you come?” Her lips pulled into a generous, wide smile, it warmed her face and lit up her crystal blue eyes.
No, I didn’t want to meet her for a coffee.
I did not, could not, be around her. It would be like rubbing acid into a gaping wound.
I stumbled through my mind, seeking reasonable excuses to decline.
Despair, and the feeling of Karson’s cold eyes penetrating my mind, had disabled my cognitive function, because I found nothing.
I swallowed heavily and found myself agreeing.
I swept the office door closed and leaned up against it, shutting my eyes and taking a deep breath, fighting tears, fighting the pain, willing it away.
Through the door I heard shouting. I grabbed my phone and ducked my head out.
“What did you do to my father?” Chris was yelling at Karson. His face was red, spittle flying from his lips. He stood a few feet away. His fists clenched into tight balls.
“Nothing, Chris. I do not know what you are talking about,” Karson replied calmly, turning to look at him as if he was an inconvenient bug whizzing around his head.
“You murdering bastard.” Chris grabbed the front of Karson’s shirt and attempted to reef him to his feet. Karson rose, almost leisurely, as if he wasn’t the least concerned. He towered above Chris.
“I know what you are, and I know what you did.” Chris tightened his grip and jerked on his shirt.
Sarah eyes were wide as glass. She stood up but seemed frozen to the spot.
“I would remove those, if I were you,” Karson warned with that dark calm. My heart moved to my throat. Did he kill Jefferson? His slashed body barrelled through my mind. The floor glued the bottom of my feet and the breath left my lungs.
“You killed him, you savage!” Chris shoved him in the chest and let him go.
“I can assure you I was inside—in the arms of a stunning brunette if my memory serves me correctly—whilst your father was being ripped apart by a bear.” There was not an ounce of compassion in his voice.
Son of a bitch. He took a sip of whiskey, and then rested one arm casually on the bar, the glass in his hand.
“If the experts are to be believed,” he said, in a tone that said they weren’t.
Chris was so angry his hands shook. He lifted a finger and pointed it at him like it was a knife.
“I will make you pay for what you did. You think you’re tough, you’re indispensable, but everything has a weakness, and I don’t have to look far to find yours.
” Chris slid his eyes to me. Maybe he’d just noticed me standing there, or was he deliberately threatening me?
If they threaten you, they are threatening me.
No-one threatens me and lives to tell of it.
Sarah gasped, her hand flew to her throat, and she took a step back as if she sensed something was about to happen. Karson’s eyes filled with dark menace. His jaw set. My heart fired through my mouth.
I yelled, “Karson, NO!” as simultaneously, in a blur of speed, he grabbed Chris’s elbow in one hand and grabbed his wrist in the other, twisting his arm back. The radius and the ulna aren’t designed to bend. His arm snapped like a twig. The cracking sound was horrible.
I stood aghast, mortified by Karson’s cruelty.
Chris grunted—how he didn’t cry out I didn’t know. His forehead crumpled. His face went bone white. He sucked in whistling breaths through his teeth.
“You will be sorry you ever hurt my father,” he rasped. Pain of loss, pain of hurt, pressed hard against his features. He cradled his broken arm against his body.
“I suggest you leave before I break more than your arm.” Karson’s chilled voice turned my flesh cold.
Chris opened his mouth and closed it again, thinking better of the response he had firing around in his mind. He looked broken, like he was trying not to cry. He turned and walked away.
Karson’s eyes, vacant of any thread of humanity, any thread of life, landed on mine.
Disgust laced my words. “He’s just lost his father, where’s your empathy?”
“I have none.”
Those three words slammed against my soul like he’d physically belted me. I flinched. I didn’t know what Sarah was doing. I didn’t look at her. The ground gave up its hold and I ran for the doors, away from the man I loved, wondering how I could have gotten it all so wrong.
Chris walked up the path. His posture reflected that of an injury-ridden old man. His shoulders hunched forward. His steps were small and slow. I ran to catch up to him.
“Chris. Chris, stop. Please, let me help you,” I panted, catching up to him.
The sun landed on his face and emphasized the pain which radiated across it, a long slithering tear drifted down his cheek.
“Go away, Amy,” he grunted.
“Chris, please, let me drive you to hospital.”
He stopped. The pain erupted into anger.
“You know what he is. He’s a cold-blooded killer, and you date him.” He looked at me like I was nothing but a putrid morsel, more tears rolled down his face. “You’re just as bad as he is.”
I recoiled at his words, but it was the look he gave me that dug the deepest. My lips trembled.
“I’m sorry,” I said. It was all I could manage.
He walked away, leaving me staring after him, staggered by dismay.