Page 16 of The Ripper

~ Bad luck, that is.

Arella slithered her way through the trenches and sharp stones inside me and reached the one place I thought was dead: my heart.

There was no doubt in my mind that in my own somewhat rotten, maybe toxic, definitely fucked-up way, I loved her. Even though I hadn’t spoken to her since the flight three years ago.

~ I’m vomiting.

I was undeniably in love with a woman I’d spoken to twice, in fucking love with the way she helped everyone around her, with her smile, with her white dresses and that long hair she never trimmed more than an inch. I loved the way she curled up on her balcony with a book, wearing nothing but a white satin robe. I loved the way she always smelled her coffee before taking the first sip, and how she shivered slightly after inhaling the scent.

I loved the small freckle above her lip, the scar on her arm, her walk, her obsession with lemon-scented everything, her slightly crooked laugh and the way she chewed her lips when she was anxious.

I also loved that darkness I knew she kept inside, and I wanted her to give me that cold she was afraid of, freeze me to death if needed, but I wanted her to give me that secret, so I could love it too.

Fucking hell, I loved everything about her.

As I promised myself that day, I watched over her from the shadows. I kept every filth at bay. I murdered men who stalked her and stopped her from going out with the wrong guys, those who, if given the chance, would have undoubtedly hurt her.

~ You’re a stalker too.

In all honesty, no guy was right for her.

Either they were boring, and she dumped them without my intervention, or they were cheats and liars, phonies who liked to pretend they were something when they were really nothing, and that’s where I came in to expose them. I had no idea how she picked them, but she seemed to go for the bad boys like a bee to fucking pollen.

~ She’s a bit of a cliche, don’t you think?

~ No.

~ But she…

~ I said no.

I didn’t kill them all, although they kept tempting me because they had the audacity to touch what was mine. It would have brought me morbid pleasure, too, but they didn’t know she was spoken for. She didn’t know it either. And so, until the day I got up the guts to risk it all, including her safety, and not be a fucking coward, I would keep giving her hints about the true face of her suitors.

~ What can I say? You’re Prince Charming.

The automatic glass doors opened, and she came out wearing her light blue scrubs. Her hair was tied back in a ponytail, and a few strands came loose from the elastic, dancing in the Chicago wind as she yawned.

I bit down my fist and wondered how many hours she’d gone without sleeping this time. Twelve? Twenty? More?

She had an all over the place schedule, packed full. Long fucking shifts at the hospital and volunteer work at a shelter for homeless children. On top of that, once a week, she went to a local facility that housed women who were victims of domestic abuse, where she treated their wounds.

I did say she was an actual angel, didn’t I?

~ Yeah, Romeo, we got it. How about you drink some poison now, too?

It made me wonder if she was doing all that work to wash away some other sins I didn’t know about, but it was hard to believe someone as good as her had anything to wash.

Arella helped people so much that it seemed she forgot that she had to also take care of herself, and anger boiled inside me when I noticed she was thinner than last month.

A muscle in my jaw tightened at the thought that she hadn’t been eating enough lately.

I reached for my phone from the passenger seat as I watched her walk toward her car, an old Toyota Corolla that was – to put it kindly – a coffin on wheels, a problem I desperately wanted to fix.

I was already ordering takeout from her favorite Chinese restaurant — something I did often, and something she never seemed to question — when someone called her name.

I frowned at the sound and followed her line of sight to see a man leaning against his car, a black SUV with tinted windows parked next to her car, holding a bouquet of red roses.

I cringed and wrinkled my nose in disgust.

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