Page 88 of Twisted Cage

This might be the closest I ever come.

I bury my nose in the collar and it’s almost as satisfying as burying my nose against his neck. Padding to the bed, I turn the lamp down to its lowest setting and climb between the sheets.

I’m not weak. I’m just exhausted.

I am not weak.

I’m not slipping back into the gullible girl I was.

I’m choosing to momentarily lay down my armor… just for now. In the privacy of this room.

Burying my face in the pillow, I let myself drown in his scent.

When I let her in, the endless signs of him no longer haunt me, but instead become a craving I can indulge in.

And I loathe myself for it.

Lying on my side, I peek at my phone one last time. My hand brushes the handle of the drawer as I draw it away.

I resisted opening it before, but really, what harm can it do at this point?

The scrape of the drawer is barely perceptible, and still, I can’t help but glance over my shoulder to the door, just to be sure.

God, I’m being stupid.

Sliding it the rest of the way open, I look over what’s inside. ChapStick, three pens, a pad of paper, the top sheet grooved with his handwriting from whatever note he’d written last. I brush my fingers over the indentations, then slide it aside and spot a box of condoms.

I clench my fist and immediately want to kick him in the balls for my sleeping arrangements. Really? He couldn’t stick those anywhere else.

Like, I don’t know… straight up his ass.

I yank my hand back and the light from the lamp catches on something shiny. Reaching back—because really, can anything be worse than finding the fucking condoms he uses to fuck other women—I tug on the cool metal.

When I open my palm, my stomach plummets to my toes. The air stutters in my lungs and my eyes brim over with tears.

The familiar sacred heart locket my mother wore every minute of every day mocks me for even daring to believe for a single moment he was mine.

It’s not like he stuck it away there long ago and forgot about it. The safe house was new in the past year. And in that time, he made the conscious decision to tuck her locket away here where it would be close.

Pain sweeps through my chest, until I gasp. The last bit of him that felt like home to me, cracks under the suffocating doubt churning in my gut. My fingers tremble as I dump the locket back in the drawer and quietly close it.

This is what I get for letting that girl in who so desperately loves him.

The shirt mocks me now, but the pulsing pain keeps from getting up, and instead, I allow myself this one last time to sink into the hurt.

30

KONSTANTIN

I thought the whiskey would help me sleep after my shower.

And it did, for about an hour.

But then I’d see that bullet in my nightmares. Hear the sound it made as it bounced off the SUV right next to her.

And then the dream would shift. The bullet hit its mark, tearing through her golden dress, lodging in her chest. Blood poured from her mortal wound. The spot slowly trickling down and spreading out, the crimson stain growing by the second, before she collapsed back into the vehicle.

Then the nightmare flipped. The heart-shattering scene slipped away, and I stood in the den. Every man we collected dead, but one.

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