Page 144 of Manacled Hearts

The incessant buzzing in my brain has quieted. Death brings silence, and not only for the dead. Yet, I find no peace. I feel no better, or worse. No relief…

I won. But no great feeling of victory has taken over me. The stories, the movies—they all lied.

“Evelyn?”

My name sounds distant, slow, like the fog it tries to penetrate is simply too dense to allow it to reach me. Yet it fights through…

“Are you okay?! Evelyn!”

Between each crash of the ocean’s waves, the sand beneath my body vibrates. Their rhythm slows as the thumping loudens and the words that filter through the fog soften, carrying something that seems to be missing from my state of mind currently… something strange. Painful.

The vibrations stop as the man who’s been soothing my nightmares plunges on his knees in front of me, gripping my shoulders harshly.

“Please, beautiful, please come back to me. Don’t leave me again…” The last sentence is spoken in the softest of whispers, carried away on the soft crashes of the waves like it never happened.

Fear.

That’s what his words hold. And exactly what stares into my eyes from his striking blue ones.

Did I put that there?

“For the love of god, Evie, please! Are you okay?”

His touch is warm, and tight. He’s holding me steady and only now I realize it’s because I’m shivering. Am I cold? The salty, strong ocean breeze whips my hair around my face and goosebumps spread over my bare arms. Though, they may be due to Finnigan’s possessive touch on me.

He arrived out of nowhere, like I wished him here once the madness ended. Or maybe that’s why I took my phone with me, knowing Carter could track it.

I need him.

But will he want me after what I’ve done?

His eyes roam over my body, pulling at my limbs, petting me, like he’s looking for seeping wounds while holding his breath. He hisses when he reaches my bicep, and mutters something about a flesh wound. Watching the foamy waves doing their calm dance as the moonlight shines brighter, higher in the sky than when I came here, I let him do it.

My muscles are weak. My will is even weaker. Numbness seeps through the fibers forming my being, an ominous gloom I can’t escape, and they feel a lot like punishment. I deserve it all and not even for what I’ve done, but for feeling absolutely nothing about it. Nothing at all.

“Oh God, you’re okay.” He sighs, that sickening fear expelled out of his body as he rips the bottom of his T-shirt and wraps it around my arm.

What’s wrong with me? Killing four people should rip my soul apart, should break me, should shred it with guilt. Yet… there’s nothing.

“Evie darling, we have to leave.”

Why? The salty breeze soothes my skin, and if I don’t move, I can keep enjoying it. A pure moment within the destruction I caused.

Not only the one on this beach and the dire consequences it will bring, but what I left behind. The people I so harshly abandoned, even if I did do it to protect them. One of them sits right before me, and I cannot bear acknowledging his presence. I had a tinge of hope that I would survive tonight, but I didn’t actually think I would. Do they hate me? Does he hate me?

Distant footsteps shuffle through the sand somewhere behind me, and I flinch, but don’t turn. No matter who it is, I know they won’t touch me. Not with Finnigan here. He wraps one large hand over my bony knee, narrowing an assessing gaze on me.

“The others are here.” He jerks his head toward the source of the shuffling without breaking eye contact. “A cleanup crew is on the way too.”

Cleanup crew. Will they scrub my soul too? My thoughts drift somewhere in the distant parts of my mind where they seek the solace that should be there with Frankie’s death.

Franco Bartiste actually.

“Are you okay? Say something.”

Finnigan’s harsher tone forces me to focus and I narrow my gaze on him. Not because of the question, but because of the kindness looking back at me. It holds a tinge of pity.

I don’t need his damn pity.

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