Chapter 28
Indie
i love you - billie eilish
They say death is peaceful.
That it frees you from life’s burdens, silences the troubles and gives you an eternity of calmness.
But make sure you live your life to the fullest, regardless if that’s tempting; enjoy every second spent alive, waste no time with the what ifs or regrets, smile through the dark days.
And when the other half of your soul dies, the whole reason for you living, a part of you will go with it. The world darkens to a colour you never could imagine. And death is all you wish for.
Morgan is dead.
Barry is dead.
The Chief is dead.
I’d craved for their lives to end early, when really, they’re the ones winning. They don’t have to deal with all of this anymore.
Now what I’d do to take it all back, so that he wasn’t dead.
The love of my life, the man I’ve been sickeningly infatuated with since an age I couldn’t comprehend my feelings. Gone.
And for what, so I could live?
This isn’t a life I want, a mindless existence whilst the hole in my chest grows wider by the minute, where hours span into days staring at the same walls. Ones he once stood within.
The pain of losing him forever leaves me hopeless. I don’t want a future; I don’t even want to see another day go by where he’s not in my life.
I can’t breathe, can’t eat, can’t speak.
I’m slowly dying inside, willing anything along the way to speed up the process.
The wind whips in my hair around the roof of the Pit as I stare down at the whiskey bottle and his cell phone. I found it in his jacket pocket, and I haven’t gotten the strength to check it until now.
My hand wraps around the bottle, unscrewing the lid and deciding to just throw it off the side of the roof. It’s serene up here, but my eyes don’t dare glance upwards.
Not when the only place I’ll be heading is downwards. Right to the pits of hell.
A smile teases the corners; maybe my devil will claim me upon arrival.
Besides, the sky lost its appeal when the stars were snatched from the night. When my favourite stars of all finally burned out and slowly bled to black.
Saint’s body hitting the back of the trunk plays in my mind like a vicious broken tape. I hear it when everything goes quiet: the crack of the bullet, the pain in his grunt, the thud of his body hitting the back.
He was already struggling from the stab wounds, and then George put two bullets in him as soon as his vest was off.
Fucking coward.
I laugh pitifully into the chill night air. Isn’t that what I am? Instead of hunting them down and bringing them to justice, I’m not. I’m giving up the fight, frightened in case I fail him.
No, I’m not scared. I’m just tired.
So fucking tired.
Tired of being heartbroken, losing the ones I love most in this world.
They won. I lost. I lost everything.
The Montgomerys have taken and taken from me. They can’t have anything else.
There’s nothing else to give.
My hand wraps around the cell phone, trembling thumb sliding upwards, and the self-torture begins. Alcohol passes my lips for the first time in six years, the taste bitter on my tongue, but it’s nothing compared to the poison rotting me from the inside out.
I open his picture album, and the breath is knocked out of me.
Images stored from all our time spent together, but there’s a jump in years between when we were first together, until recently.
He didn’t take a single picture during our time apart.
My hand grips around the whiskey bottle. I gulp down its contents and push past the burn on my throat, hoping it relieves the one behind my eyes.
A sob sneaks through, causing me to choke on the amber liquid, and I send the bottle crashing against the wall.
Why the fuck has everything worth having in my life been tortured in some way or another?
My dad, the first man I loved, was killed. Now presumed murdered by them.
My relationship with Saint the first time, their actions the driving force of our breakup.
My best friends, dragged into whatever shitshow Louisa got herself into, them taking the girls as collateral damage.
They’ve done it again.
They’ve finally taken something that can’t come back to me.
I don’t know how I’ve survived all this; I’ve died a multitude of deaths already.
Once when I was raped.
Twice when I saw my sister standing with the enemy, knowing the role she played and the knowledge she held.
Then a thousand times over when I lost him…for good.
Truthfully, I’d drag the knife along my throat and do each of them again, if it meant I got to experience his love one last time.
Maybe it’s me who was the masochist after all.
Placing the phone on the ground, I lock it. I rise to my feet, dragging them towards the ledge. Each step is heavy, like something rooting me to the ground, begging me to be careful.
The four story drop from the top of the Pit’s building doesn’t look as bad as it did when I stared up at it this morning. It looks appealing as the liquor warms my veins.
I close my eyes, letting out each painful breath.
All this pain would end for me if I took another step. The thoughts cause my stomach to spasm with the pain in my chest. I just…can’t.
It’s been five days since we left that forest; it’s a fucking miracle I even made it this far.
The first hour was the worst.
That numbness is a feeling you can’t quite describe, but the broad term explains it perfectly. I’ve never had a moment where you just feel…nothing.
No thoughts.
No words.
No feelings.
Until it hits you.
And you know that it’s there to stay.
I didn’t move from that spot in the woods, not even when the trees blended with the darkening sky, not even when Regina called my name with the rescue team.
A chime sounds behind me, and I look over my shoulder to see Saint’s phone light up. Frowning, I blink, and the screen is dark again.
Fucking liquor.
When I face back towards the woodland, I step both feet up. The chill wind blows through my hair, soothing the sting that burns around my eyes.
The phone chimes again.
I fully step off, a little bit unsteady on my feet with the tipsiness the whiskey has provided me, but instead of the buzzed feelings it used to give me in my youth, all it does is take the edge off the pain.
I can see why some people turn to it in times like this. I don’t want to be in control anymore either. I don’t want to feel anything.
Bending down, I lift the phone as the screen lights up with an unknown number. When I unlock it and open the messages, they land straight on mine.
Our texts range from outright decorations of love, to sassy commands, to lust-filled desires.
No.
I can’t do this. This is a form of torture I cross the fucking line at.
Just when I go to lock the screen, the red bulb in the corner reminds me of why I picked it up in the first place. Opening the text, my brows crease even further.
What the fuck is this?
“Indie!”
I whip round so fast, I tumble to the side. Jenna’s staring at me, Rex holding the door open to the stairwell as both look from the smashed whiskey glass to the phone, and then to me.
Jenna walks slowly towards me, like she’s approaching a cornered animal. “Are you okay?” she asks gently, and if she said that just minutes ago, I’d have laughed.
Now…Now I don’t know.
“I…” I drone off, looking at the phone, and then to her.
She takes another hesitant step. “I saw you from my room. What are you doing up here?”
“I was just…I don’t know.” My slurred words are carried off in a whisper with the wind. Honestly, I don’t know why I ended up here to begin with. I’m on the edge; it seemed fitting to witness its danger.
Rex comes up behind Jenna, and I notice how she allows it. “You wanna come inside and talk about it, Indigo?”
“I don’t know,” I repeat, nothing else coming past my lips. I’m not sure why I’m clinging onto what I think I hold in my hands.
I could have read it wrong. It’s not possible. It could be another lie.
That’s all anyone seems to do.
But he would be the first to see through it.
Maybe I did fall off the ledge there, and I’ve landed in the limbo of purgatory. Neither force knows quite what to do with me yet. Do we keep her, or do we send her upwards? Juggling the vigilante killer that only tried to do right with her heinous crimes.
“That’s okay”—Jenna smiles, holding her hand out—“but it’s really cold, and maybe we should go inside?”
The phone burns in my hands, and I clutch it tightly to my chest. “I-I found something,” I say, looking at them through my lashes. “I just don’t know what it means.” My words slur more at the end, and I see the alarm rising in Rex’s bloodshot eyes.
He’s in pain too.
He just isn’t acting as lost as I am; he’s channelling it into getting those that took his best friend away from him. I should have maybe asked him how he got through when he thought he lost Jenna.
An invisible hand slaps me against the forehead.
You just answered yourself.
You’re standing in its playground.
“Is it on the phone?” Rex asks, stepping forward, and I nod my head. My trembling arm slowly reaches it out, and he equally approaches me with the same caution. When his palm reaches mine, I place it in it.
I don’t even notice how close Jenna has gotten until she puts a jacket over my shoulders. “Let’s go look at it together, okay?”
The warm tear rolls down my cheek, and she wipes it away with the back of her hand when I whisper, “Okay.”