Chapter 40
The Monster
R ain soaks through my jacket as lightning strikes across the sky. Ainsley would have hated this. Thunderstorms always terrified her, even if she would never admit it.
Shivers rack my body as I stand here, looking at the pile of dirt that disrupts the perfectly green grass. I watched as they filled the hole in the ground with dirt, forever sealing the casket buried within, and still felt nothing but numbness.
“Boss,” I hear Jonah say from behind me. He’s stayed behind me the whole time, the only person remaining with me after everyone else decided it was time to leave.
He doesn’t say the words, but I know he’s telling me it’s time to leave. We’re both soaked and frozen to our cores; despite that, neither of us moves to walk away from the grave.
Somewhere in the distance, I hear a phone ringing. It’s not until I hear footsteps walking away from me that I realize it’s Jonah’s phone. As he walks away, leaving me alone for the first time today, I lean over the grave and close my eyes.
“This wasn’t supposed to happen,” I whisper to the dirt. “You were supposed to come back with me. You were supposed to stay by my side. How am I supposed to do this without you? You’ve been there for me through it all. You deserved so much better than the hand that fate dealt you. I’m so sorry we never fixed things between us.”
Jonah clears his throat as he approaches again, standing at my back and waiting for me to acknowledge him. As I stand up, he speaks.
“Boss, she’s awake,” he tells me. “She’s asking for you.”
With one last look at the mound of dirt, I say a last goodbye to the man buried in the Earth. My best friend since childhood, my right-hand man, the only person in the world that knows everything about me.
“Rest easy, John. I’ll see you on the other side.”
My suit drips as I walk through the halls of the hospital until I reach her room. I pause at the door, not ready to face her after everything that happened. This is where she’s going to tell me she never wants to see me again. She’ll tell me to walk out of her life and never come back, and I won’t be able to fight her.
Jonah stays behind as I grit my teeth and enter the room. The sound of machines fill the room, from the one monitoring her heartbeat to the one pumping oxygen into the tube around her nose. Her eyes open just a crack as I enter the room, but when she recognizes me, she opens them wider.
“Cain,” she breathes, sounding almost relieved to see me. I don’t read too much into it, not wanting to give myself false hope. She’s probably just relieved to get this over with and know that she won’t have to see me again.
“How are you feeling, little one?” I ask as I sit on the edge of her bed, wanting to be as close to her as possible while I can.
She chuckles and winces in pain as she realizes how much it hurts to laugh after being shot in the abdomen. “Like shit. What happened?”
A sigh escapes me. I can’t keep this from her, but I wish I could.
“You were shot, Ainsley. You did such a good job getting out of his hold, just like I taught you, but he shot you as you were running to Jonah.”
Her eyes glaze over as the memory comes back to her, and she’s forced to relive it. Pain is etched into her face and quickly replaced with panic.
“Where’s Jonah?”
I look toward the door just as Jonah pokes his head in, giving her a small smile. “Right here, little bird.”
She smiles at him, and he pulls his head back out, giving us some semblance of privacy again.
“There were three shots,” she remembers.
My head hangs low between my shoulders as my elbows rest on my knees, reliving the sounds of the shots bouncing off the walls. When the gun went off, I never imagined it would have hit a mark.
“When the gun went off the first time, the bullet hit John,” I tell her with my head still hanging, not wanting her to see how ashamed I am of myself for how that night turned out. “My father recovered quickly and shot you before I could stop him, and the third bullet came from me. I didn’t miss.”
While she takes time to process the events she didn’t get to see unfold, I stand up and remove my wet jacket and hang it over the chair before returning to her side.
“You never wear suits,” Ainsley comments absentmindedly. “And why are you soaked? You’re dripping all over the bed.”
My head hangs between my shoulders again, but I turn it enough to meet her confused gaze. I let her see the heaviness in my heart through my eyes and the exhaustion consuming me.
“John was shot in the head. When my father jerked the gun away and pulled the trigger, somehow the barrel ended up being pointed at John. We buried him this morning,” I tell her. My voice falls flat as my emotions are numbed once again. When the pain of John’s death finally hits, it’s going to break me nearly as much as when I didn’t think Ainsley was going to make it.
I spent hours thinking I lost both of them while John was being covered with a sheet and Ainsley was being rushed into emergency surgery. The doctor’s were with her for a grueling five hours, and even when she came out, they couldn’t tell me if she was going to survive. She didn’t wake up, even when the anesthesia wore off, but her vitals were strong. My girl is a fighter, that much is obvious, but even I doubted her for a while.
“I’m so sorry, Cain,” she breathes. She reaches for me, but her movements are restricted with the pain in her abdomen, and her arms fall short. I stand from her bed and pace the room, not able to be still any longer.
“Cain, you’re bleeding.”
Ainsley’s words register somewhere deep in my mind, but I’m too lost in my thoughts of what’s happened over the last three days to react. I continue pacing the room as I try to bury the memories deep in my mind, meanwhile Ainsley continues repeating my name.
“Cain!” she shouts, pulling me out of my thoughts. I stop pacing and meet her worried eyes, only to watch as hers fall down my body. “You’re bleeding.”
As she says the words, they finally process in my mind. Looking down, I see blood seeping through my white shirt, spreading along the wet material. Flashes of Ainsley’s blood seeping through her white dress cross my mind, but I push the images out of my mind before they cripple me.
“It’s nothing,” I assure her as I meet her gaze again. I should have changed before I came here and put a black shirt on so she wouldn’t know that I’ve spent the last week reopening the cuts between my hips over and over again until the pain became the only thing that could comfort me.
“Why are you bleeding?” she asks. I have to give it to her, she sounds strong for just waking up from a three day coma.
“Drop it, Ainsley,” I snap at her, sounding much harsher than I mean to.
She tries to sit up in her bed, but her body refuses to obey as she collapses back into the pillows and winces in pain. “Either you tell me why you’re bleeding, or I’ll get Jonah in here to do it for you. And we both know he’s going to listen to me over you.”
Jonah pops his head back through the door, raising an eyebrow at me. He knows exactly why I’m bleeding down there, since he walked in on the end of my first session after losing Ainsley.
With an angry huff, I pull my wet and bloody dress shirt out of my waistband and pull it up just enough that Ainsley can see the letters of her name bleeding on my abdomen. I reopened the wound this morning, just before we left for the funeral.
“Cain,” she chokes out as tears threaten to spill over her eyelids. “Why?”
Instead of answering her, I turn to Jonah and wait for him to give us some privacy again. He gets the hint quickly and pulls his head out of the doorway, though I know he’s still listening. I close the distance between us as I kneel by her bedside and take her hands in mine.
“What do you want me to say, Ainsley?”
“Tell me why.”
“I’m a broken man without you, little one. You were taken from me, kept from me for days, and even when I got you back you weren’t here. Today, I said goodbye to my best friend, and yet I didn’t dread that nearly as much as I dreaded coming to this room,” I answer her honestly.
She flinches in pain at my words, taking them the wrong way. “You didn’t want to see me?”
“That’s not what I said, Ainsley. I dreaded coming here because I knew you wouldn’t want to see me, and I didn’t want to have to go through that. Even though I deserve it.”
My eyes leave her, not wanting to see the moment she realizes she doesn’t have to pretend anymore. I know it’s over, she just has to say the words.
“Why wouldn’t I want to see you?”
When I look up, her eyes are filled with genuine confusion. Her thumb strokes the back of my hand, trying to soothe the emotions plaguing me at the thought of losing her.
“I failed you,” I remind her. “You were kidnapped because of me, and this time, you were shot. You almost didn’t make it. Why would you want to see me?”
“Because I love you,” she answers without hesitation, as if it’s the most obvious answer in the world.
“Ainsley -” I start, but she holds up a hand to cut me off.
“Don’t start with me. You made me fall in love with you, and when I left you, it nearly tore me apart. It took me months to feel like a normal person, and then you were there again, trying to remind me why a normal life isn’t for me. You fought me until you made me unveil my feelings for you. I let myself love you again, and I’m not about to stop. You belong to me, as my monster, just as much as I belong to you.”
Silence falls over the room as my ears refuse to believe what they’re hearing. She sounded as if she had rehearsed that speech already, like she expected this exact conversation to happen today. My eyes search hers, waiting for the sincerity in her gaze to turn mocking when she decides to tell me it’s all a joke and she doesn’t love me anymore. Her arm stretches out to cup my cheek, and she strokes a thumb along my cheekbone.
“You deserve better, little one,” I tell her, because it’s the truth. She deserves better than this chaotic, dangerous life, but I don’t want her anywhere that’s not right by my side.
“It doesn’t get better than this,” she answers, smiling at me as the words fall from her mouth. “You’re the best there is for me. I don’t want anyone else. So, ask me again.”
A question forms in my eyes, not understanding what she’s telling me to do. Ask her what again? I didn’t ask her a question.
“Cain,” she calls to me. My eyes focus back on her again, leaving my thoughts behind. “Ask me again.”
As she stares into my eyes, seeing straight into my soul, realization dawns.
Never stop asking.
She can’t really mean -
“Marry me, Ainsley,” I blurt out before I can stop myself. A wide grin splits her beautiful face as the words fall from my mouth. She pulls her hand from my face and motions for me to come closer. I obey until I’m leaning over her so she can whisper into my ear.
As she speaks the single word, her breath tickles my ear, sending shivers down my spine.
“No.”
Pulling away from her, I let her see the confusion clouding my eyes again. Did I misinterpret her? Was there another question I was supposed to ask?
“You just tried to get me to leave you, you’ll have a lot of making up to do for that. Just don’t stop asking, okay?”