Chapter 12
Phoenix
I haven’t moved. I’m paralyzed by want—like if I stare hard enough, long enough, I can manifest her. Force her to materialize right here and whisper that I’m her entire universe. That this broken, obsessive mess of a man is somehow everything she’s ever needed.
Even knowing I’m not.
Rage.
Blinding, blood-boiling rage.
Hurt.
Heartbreak.
Pain.
Humiliation gnawing at my insides until I don’t know where the shame ends and the fury begins.
I could keep going. I could list every festering thing clawing at the walls of my chest, but they all circle back to one person.
Not Shannen.
No.
She walked away, and I’m letting her have that illusion of freedom for now. But Brandon? The motherfucker who helped drive her away all those years ago. He’s done. He’s mine.
I’m still standing in the room where Shannen gutted me clean open, hands shaking so hard I nearly drop my phone.
I open the app and check her location. I’ve been tracking her for years and stopped pretending it was normal a long time ago.
It’s not about control or power. It’s about needing to know where the hell she is when she’s not with me because if I don’t, I unravel.
I stare at the screen, my breath coming too fast, watching that little blue dot like it’s my lifeline. I already know her next move—she’s predictable in her panic. She’ll try to get a car and run before I can close the distance between us again.
She’s headed back to the other hotel—the one I made sure to book a room in too.
She still has no clue it was me who picked her up from the airport. She sat behind me in the back seat and looked right through me in that rearview mirror—past the baseball cap, shades, and the fake accent I’d practiced for months.
She didn’t sense me at all, and I hated it.
But right now, I need to find that piece of shit.
In some twisted, romanticized corner of my brain, I’d convinced myself to wait.
To leave him be but always know exactly where he is.
For years, I let the idea simmer—thinking maybe Shannen would want to handle him herself.
That one day, when she was ready, I’d gift wrap him in blood and bruises and place him at her feet.
A brutal gift of devotion.
Closure, maybe.
Justice for all the time we lost.
But with the way she looked at me tonight—with all that broken hate behind her eyes—I know she wouldn’t accept anything from me right now. Not even him .
I step back into the ballroom, the pulse of music louder, the crowd drunker and looser than before. Laughter echoes off the high chandeliered ceilings, and when I spot Brandon standing by the bar, drink in hand, talking to Fiona Finch like he’s king of the fucking world, something in me snaps.
I barely knew Fiona in high school. She was just another desperate girl with too much eyeliner and not enough self-worth, always orbiting the popular crowd, flashing her tits for attention, and hoping to get pulled into the light.
“Phoenix, my man! Thought you were hooking up with that redhead chick?” Brandon calls out the second I’m close, grinning like we’re old friends. He claps me on the back, and I flinch. My skin’s still raw and tender to the touch, but I steel myself.
“Yeah, I did. She’s gone now.”
“Shame, I would’ve loved a turn.”
Don’t kill him.
Breathe, Phoenix.
Don’t rip his fucking throat out. Not yet.
“Hello,” Fiona snaps from beside him, clearly pissed. “You’ve been trying to get into my pants for the past twenty minutes.”
Brandon shrugs, completely unbothered. “Yeah, and you were a hell of a lot easier in high school.”
“You’re a prick.” She spits it out with more fire than I remember. Maybe she’s grown a spine since those days. Good for her.
“And you’re still average.” He flashes that lazy smile, the one that used to make girls melt and now just makes me want to put my fist through his teeth.
“Alright, Brandon. That’s enough,” I say smoothly, stepping in. “Why don’t you take a walk? Get some air. When you’re back, we’ll find a couple of girls worth our time. Let me calm Fiona down first, yeah?”
He fist- bumps me—fucking fist-bumps me, like we’re in on some joke together, and I want to flay the skin from my own hand.
He steps out, and Fiona has already vanished.
I follow him, moving fast, grabbing Brandon and slamming him so hard that his head cracks against the wall, leaving a fresh dent.
His hands fly up in shock, fumbling for balance, but I’ve already got a fist twisted in his collar, dragging him down the hallway like the pathetic coward he is.
My elbow crashes into his jaw, snapping his head sideways, and by the time he’s blinking away the stars, I’ve got a length of cord in my hand—taken from the curtain rigging upstairs.
I loop it around his throat and pull. Not enough to kill him. Just enough to steal the oxygen from his blood and blur the edges of his world.
He thrashes against me, gargling on spit and terror, and I whisper low in his ear. The words are soft, venomous, and completely meaningless to him. No names, no confessions. Just pure rage spoken in static.
“This is for what you did to her.” I pull him deeper into the shadows. “For every bit of pain you put her through.”
The fire he set to her hair—the one that could’ve killed her.
His eyes roll, and his pupils dilate, his kicks beginning to weaken.
This is the edge I want, the one where he hovers somewhere between consciousness and collapse.
I hold him in that space, where his body is too weak to fight, but his mind is still alive enough to register every second of what’s happening to him.
I drive the heel of my palm into his gut, right beneath his ribs, knocking the wind out of him. Another blow comes next—angled into his side, straight for the kidneys, the kind of hit that guarantees he’ll be pissing blood for days.
Crouching beside him, I retrieve the small vial from my jacket. Chloroform—pharmaceutical grade. It took weeks to find the real kind and not some cheap shit off the internet.
I soak a cloth and press it to his face.
He’s too tired to fight, and unconsciousness claims him in less than thirty seconds.
“She was mine,” I murmur, watching his eyes glaze over. “And because of you, she’s gone.”
When he goes still, I sit there for a moment, staring at the mess I made.
He’s out cold.
He’s breathing, unconscious but alive. And as much as this worthless bastard deserves to feed the worms, I can’t stomach the thought of Shannen looking at me like I’m a monster if she ever finds out I killed for her again.
I reach for Brandon’s phone, wipe it clean of texts, clear his call log, and close out every app before pressing it back into his limp fingers and dragging his hand across the screen, painting it with his DNA.
The story writes itself: Some drunk asshole trips over his own feet and eats the wall.
No witnesses. No memory. No proof I was ever here.
Before I leave, I crouch down beside him once more and whisper in his ear.
“Every breath you take after this is because I let you. Remember that, even if you don’t remember me.”
And then I vanish.
By the time someone finds him, he’ll be bruised, concussed, bleeding, and clueless. A blackout drunk with a story no one will bother to question.
My phone buzzes, lighting up with the alert that Shannen's almost at the other hotel. Perfect.
I’ll be there soon, pretty girl.
When she books her flight, I’ll already be three steps ahead with the seat right next to hers.
I’ll be on the same plane, in the same air, close enough to touch her and inhale her skin.
No more lurking in the dark. No more hiding behind screens and distance.
From now on, I’ll be her shadow in the daylight, her constant companion.
She’ll never be alone again. Not even when she thinks she is.
We’re bound by something darker than love, something stronger than death, and if the world ends tomorrow, I’ll die with her name on my lips.
And whatever comes after, whether it’s fire or oblivion or whatever version of the afterlife I’ve got to look forward to, I’ll still be looking for her because letting her go was never part of the story.
To Be Continued…