Page 44 of Vows From Hell

Unless he was cooking for me or cleaning up after me, Micah often made hushed phone calls away from me. Other than that, he was by my side at all times. I didn’t hate it, but I also didn’t appreciate being left out.

True to his words, I scrolled through social media and watched the news. There wasn’t a single thing about me. Morrison truly didn’t report my disappearance and that only worked in our favor.

That man kept me up at night.

Something was terribly wrong with me.

Not once did I feel regret for brutally taking his life. I emptied an entire clip into his body, and a few bullets before he died. Technically, that was a form of torture.

I tortured a man and it didn’t affect me at all.

Regret, guilt, and sorrow were a fleeting thought, so much that it felt like they weren’t in my vocabulary. I was only scared that we were going to get caught. Once a couple of days had passed and we were still safely in the house, that fear slowly started vanishing, barely leaving a trace behind.

Nothing.

I felt absolutely nothing, and it terrified me to the point of the blood in my veins freezing.

It wasn’t normal to be that neutral and emotionless when it came to death.

When I killed the police officer over three years ago, in that moment, I was consumed by immense amount of rage. My blood was boiling and there wasn’t anything that could’ve stopped me. Yet I did it subconsciously.

By the time I’d realized the words left my mouth and I had covered his head with the pillow, he was long dead. It was all rage, and it wasn’t something I’d planned on doing. Terrible, yes, but also in the spur of the moment.

However, the moment I saw Micah’s arm bleeding and him clutching the wound, I knew that I was killing Kyle Morrison that night.

The few bullets that I fired at him before killing him in cold blood were a test, to see if I was truly capable of taking another life — this time intentionally.

And I was more than prepared and capable.

Although it was sloppy, it was done.

It had to be done.

I wanted it to be done by me.

Micah’s reaction only made the drive for killing stronger. His eyes were filled with subtle pride, as if he didn’t want me to see it. I saw it perfectly. Once Morrison was dead, Micah was happy.

I made him happy, and I didn’t want to stop feeling like that.

Like something inside of my heart was finally snapping back into its place. I’d been waiting for something like that for too long and it happened as soon as Micah and I came together again.

The cover story Micah came up with was simple but that was exactly what we needed.

“Are you listening?” Sierra’s voice broke my train of thought, and I returned my eyes to the screen in front of me. Alongside a new phone and number, he also bought me a laptop and an iPad to use for my writing.

The man was getting a lot of money killing people.

It piqued my interest, to say the least.

“Yes, sorry,’’ I yawned, cracking my back as I straightened my posture. “You were saying?”

Instead of following Kyle Morrison to New York, I used the opportunity to take time off work and go to New Orleans to meet with my secret boyfriend. A few months back, I had a signing there and a cute guy was hitting on me, so I used his face and name as a cover-up.

I lied to Sierra because I wanted to keep the relationship a secret until I figured out whether it was going to last. Sierra bought it immediately, grinning from ear to ear. She asked for details, and I lied with ease.

The first thing that popped into my head was the thing I told her.

Micah was pissed about it. At the mere mention of that man, he broke a glass or two downstairs. He said it was an accident, but how many glasses could a person accidentally break in one day?

---