Page 167 of A Bond with the Dark

“Sayah, wait,” I plea, ignoring the voice and going after her.

The sound of Bash’s boots thudding against the deck boards, blocking my way, enrages me further.

“Get. The. Fuck. Out. Of. My. Way.”

If it drips in a spattering rush or is a slow, methodical ooze.Pinching the bridge of my nose, I clench my teeth to bite back that voice.

“Just leave her be,” Bash says tersely, and the urge to punch him in his smug fucking face taunts the demon that teeters on the edge of my madness. “I think you’ve done enough damage.”

“Fuck you.”

“You’re just mad that, for once, I’m not the monster. You are.”

Turning his back to me, he flashes after Sayah, leaving nothing but blurred black lines and the smell of his cologne in his wake.

The only people left here now are me and her aunts. The aunts whose shrewd eyes are narrowing on me like they would like to see my head on a pike. The aunts who know now that I killed their mom. Their sisters. Their family.

Hilda hobbles up to the door, her wild white hair matching the madness in her eyes. “We rescind our invitation,” she seethes and slams the sliding glass door so hard it should have shattered.

Fuck.

Rescinding their invitation means I’m no longer welcome on their property, which means I have to exit it immediately, or else I will burst into flames.

As much as I deserve that right now, I must stay alive a little longer to help Sayah finish her quest. To help save her son. To save humanity.

Maybe then my soul will be redeemed for the horror I’ve caused.

The calm wind rushes into my skin as I speed down their property’s hill and continue going through her aunt’s winding neighborhood. I don’t care if anyone sees me; the feeling of the sky crushing me alive and the ground rising like quicksand, my life is hanging in the murky balance in between.

I didn’t know that was her mom’s house.

I didn’t fucking know.

Tears stubbornly fall down my face, and I don’t cry.

Sayah is my whole world, wrapped into a perfect package of kindness, grit, strength, and raw, unadulterated resolve. Nothing made sense, and my existence was one lonely line of one-night stands and hunger pains until she entered my life. The distress is beginning to devour my bones; I’m surprised my feet are still moving. I feel so heavy that my feet would melt if I stopped.

I should have been honest with her the moment I knew I was falling for her, and that is the one thing that will haunt me for the rest of my miserable days. I’m a planet that has spun loose from its orbit.

Nothing can break me faster than losing the love of my life. I have never felt more alive than when I am with her.

My one.

My end game.

Everything about her flickers through my mind as I lose myself along the spangled streets of Anacortes. The way her eyes light up when she talks about something she’s passionate about or the way her cheeks flush when someone tells her she’s beautiful. How her expressions rearrange with every emotion she feels and how she feels those emotions a hundred times stronger than most people. How her pain has sketched stars around her scars and how she wears those scars like battle paint. She has been strengthened by whatever she has gone through in her past. She is the parts of my story that I’ve underlined, the maps of realms I’ve memorized, the lyrics to songs that have embedded themselves within my soul. She is my absolute everything, and to be without her is like watching all the stars fall from the sky. Watching the moon go out, or the sun lay down with a sigh.

To know I’m the one who has caused her pain dismantles me. It breaks apart the atoms of my being and tosses them into a ravine so hallow and reverent, even the demons would lay down to die from the sorrow. Whatever is tethering me to sanity is fraying, eroding along with my resolve to keep going.

I’ve fucked things up beyond all recognition and have no idea what I’m going to do now.

I’ve lost.

I lost.

I’ve been running so long that the blue haunt of the mountains is looming before me, and trees surround me at every turn. Not knowing where the fuck I’m at, I stop and look back at the road I sped down. A blue Subaru slows down as they pass, and I see Bash and Sayah. Bash’s glacial blue eyes collide with mine, but Sayah’s remain fixed on the road.

I watch them as they pass me by.

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