Page 200 of Dark Romeo

Slowly, his shaking hands slid over mine, his eyes growing resigned. “Okay, Julianna. Okay.”

* * *

Late that night, I held the tiny vial in my hand. The thick dark liquid inside looked black, but held up to the light, the edges revealed its true nature. Blood red, like wine.

The Father’s words came back to me as if he were standing right next to me.

“Drink the whole bottle on an empty stomach. All of it, don’t miss one drop. You’ll begin to get sleepy in a few minutes. You’ll sink into what feels like a sleep, then you should feel…nothing.”

I had prepared for my death in a steady, logical motion. I’d cancelled my electricity, my home phone and internet account. I donated the groceries left in my pantry and fridge to the local soup kitchen down the street. I wrote out a will, a suicide note, signed them both and left them on my dining room table.

I went over to Nora’s place and gave her one last hug. I threatened to give myself away when I squeezed her for too long. She just thought I was still upset about Roman. She didn’t realize my veiled attempt at goodbye.

Just one last goodbye to make. My stomach tumbled around as the phone rang. It didn’t matter how much I blamed him, he was still my father. He would hurt enough as punishment when he realized I was dead.

My heart fluttered with relief when my father’s phone went to voice mail. His gruff voice came on over the speaker, telling me to leave a message. The same voice that rumbled “I love you” against my forehead when I was a child and he thought I was asleep. It would be the last time I would hear it. He might have killed Roman, but he was still my father and he would mourn me. I knew he would mourn me.

Beep.

“Dad? It’s me… I just wanted to tell you that I know what you did to Roman. I know you shot him. I wish…” my voice cracked, “I just wish you’d gotten to know him, the real Roman. He is…was…my air. Just like Mom was yours. I can’t live without him. I hope you understand. Goodbye, Dad.” I hung up before I broke down.

I lay myself in bed, dressed in a long nightgown. The vial watched me from the bedside table as I played the audio recording of my mother’s voice one last time, letting her voice infuse me with strength. When the recording ended, the silence was swollen.

It was time.

I picked up the vial. My future felt weightless and so delicate in my hands. A river of fear ran up my arms. What if Father Laurence had been lying? What if it was painful? Or worse, what if it didn’t work?

I pushed down these thoughts. If I wanted to see Roman again, I would have the courage to drink every last drop. I focused on his face, clear in my mind. My chest filled with resolve. I unscrewed the top and dropped the tiny cork stopper. It bounced off my bed cover and rolled around on the floor somewhere.

I remembered Roman’s last words to me. “My life began with you. It will end with you.”

I lifted the vial up in a toast. “To endings, that are really just beginnings.”

I knocked back the vial and the cool liquid hit the back of my throat. It tasted like bitter almonds and grass. I forced myself to swallow it all down.

I dropped the empty vial. I lay back on the covers, staring at my ceiling, waiting.

First, my toes and my fingers began to tingle. Then a tightness, like a frost, closed around on me. My heart thudded as a shot of fear went through me. What had I done? It wasn’t too late. I could run to the bathroom and make myself throw it all up.

“Be brave,” I heard Roman whisper.

The frost swept over my vision, making all my edges blurry. I embraced it. I began to float. It wasn’t long before the blackness took me.

ROMAN

____________

I got into my small pickup truck and wiped the back of my hand against the sweat beading across my forehead. It was only nine a.m. but the sun was as raw and exposed as the land here around this desert town. As empty and vacant as my heartscape. The steering wheel of the truck was almost too hot to handle. I ignored the burn and accelerated down the dusty road away from my one-bedroom shack, windows open to try to cool the inside of the cab.

My name was Remy Montague now. I hated the name. I hadn’t shaved since I left Verona, my three-day stubble already transforming my features, making them darker. The sun was already turning my olive skin a deeper shade. The desert dust was in the weave of all my clothes, in the creases of my elbows and stuck in the eyelets of my boots. No amount of cleaning would ever get them out. The desert was already consuming me. Soon I would be nothing but a part of it. This relocation wasn’t a new life, it was an exile. This desert town was only a two-and-a-half-hour flight and four-hour drive south of Verona, but it may as well have been another planet.

Even as part of me raged against my purgatory here, another part of me knew I deserved it. I may not have gotten life in prison for my crimes, but this was another type of prison. The wide-open spaces, the sky touching the edge of the dry, dusty landscape, rocky crops where only the most daring and brave of the desert flowers could grow. They were my bars. This scorching, glaring sky became the walls of my prison. The rattlesnakes, my wardens.

There was not a second since I’d left Verona that I didn’t think of Julianna. I prayed that she would not hurt for too long. Maybe it was better that she thought I was dead. It was a cleaner break. It gave her some closure. She could move on. Closure that I would never get.

I drove into town every day to get internet reception so I could check my phone for news on Verona. I couldn’t help it. I sat in the same seat on the porch of the only café in town and ordered a coffee, black. Some things didn’t change.

I connected to their Wi-Fi, which was spotty at best, and waited. My coffee had cooled to the point where I could sip it by the time the browser loaded. It pained me every time to read about a city I was no longer a part of. But I greedily drank up every headline—a new development proposed, the local elections coming up, a local school attempting the world record for most consecutive turns of a skipping rope—because these things were happening around the woman I loved.

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