Page 81 of Guarded By the Phantom

Her movements were controlled, expression perfectly calm, her eyes cool with disdain. I flinched again, wishing I could hide from that scornful gaze.

“But… Just this morning…” I fumbled with my words, falling silent when she snorted with laughter.

“Look, it was fun and all, but I don’t have time and patience to pretend anymore,” she said with a huff of amusement. “It was a game, Phantom. You were this big, bad bodyguard. I wanted to see if I could bring you to your knees. And guess what? I did, and now the fun is over.”

She turned away again, stretching the other side of her body. I studied her, everything inside me rebelling at her words. I saw her last night. I felt how her body reacted, I heard her words and all the sounds she made. No one could pretend this well.

“You don’t mean that,” I said quietly, taking a lurching step closer on unsteady legs. “You… They told you to break up with me. It had to be something…”

She whipped around, her calm shattering. I fell silent, watching as her eyes narrowed, her face drawing tight in anger.

“Oh, I very much mean that,” she hissed, coming closer. “You want to know the truth? Fine! I read all about it. The magical abomination dicks. I read how every girl just dreams about fucking one, and guess what, I had my very own abomination on hand. So I led you on and got you to fuck me! And as a bonus, I can now brag about it and shock my parents! You didn’t want to be my little rebellion, remember? Well, you are! But that’s all you’re good for, and I don’t need you anymore! You’re fired.”

I felt it. Every little crack, every tear, every fissure. My heart, so freshly mended by her murmured I-love-yous, shattered again.

She was like all the women who wanted just my body, but not me. Except, she was worse, too. They didn’t pretend to like me, to accept me, to love me just for fun. She did, and even worse, she excelled at it. She had me fooled all along, from that moment I saved her life under her balcony.

I thought she was good, fragile, innocent, but it was all a mask. Barbara Ashford-Kingsley wasn’t a rare flower, a good person living among shit and corruption. She was the perfect reflection of her environment: cruel, egotistical, and vain.

“Say it to my face,” I demanded quietly, the flowers in my fist shaking with a rustle. “Tell me you don’t love me and want me to go, and I will.”

She took a deep breath to settle her anger. Her eyes bore into mine, the blue as cold as ice.

“I don’t love you. I never want to see you again.”

I stared at her, wishing for the barest flinch of her eyelid, a tremble of her lip, something. Proof that she was lying, or maybe that she was controlled by somebody else. But her face was hard, eyes flinty. After a few seconds, I took a lurching step back, then another. The roses fell out of my hand, scattering on the parquet.

I turned and ran, pressing a hand to my chest that tore open with the horrible pain of her rejection.

The next few days were a blur. I stole a bunch of rubbing alcohol from a vet clinic with the intention of drinking myself into a stupor. Normal alcohol, even if I drank lots of it, gave me a pleasant buzz at most. That was why I slammed shot after shot of the foul stuff, stopping only when I felt like puking. Once nausea passed, I had more shots, until I finally lost consciousness, and the pain ebbed away.

Until I woke up and did it again. Once the rubbing alcohol ran out, I tore into my extensive collection of luxurious liquors. I dulled my pain with single malt Scotch washed down with tequila aged in white oak barrels. Once those ran out, I drank homemade moonshine I’d had imported from Poland. It worked almost as well as the rubbing alcohol.

In the rare moments of clarity, I cussed and kicked the furniture, making a huge mess of my apartment. It was all right, though. She’d never see it. No one would, because I was done. No woman would ever cross the threshold of my place, because I was done hoping.

I wasn’t meant for relationships, and I should have never forgotten it. Women were either disgusted by me or scorned me, only valuing my body. I should have remembered that. Instead, I let stupid hope take over as soon as that cute bitch fluttered her lashes at me.

But was she even to blame for taking advantage when I was clearly a total moron? Ha! She probably laughed at me even now, telling her friends how she got the big, bad abomination to cry on top of her. And good for her. It was my fault for letting her fool me.

I should have never forgotten how impossible it was to love me.

A week passed like that, and then my liquor ran out. That was fine, too. I had other ways to dull the pain. Like crystal meth.

I called my dealer, who was thankfully still in business. I had been good for the past six years, since the Monster Security Agency required me to be clean, but I gave no fucks about my job anymore. Ash’takh promised to deliver my drugs in person, and I smoked cigarette after cigarette, my hands shaking as I waited for my salvation.

Except, when I opened the door to my dealer, it wasn’t Ash’takh. It was Nat.

“Fuck, you stink,” he said, pushing into the doorway when I tried to slam the door in his face.

“Go away,” I bit out through my teeth, trying to crush him with the door. “Get lost. I fucking hate you.”

But I was weak and shaky. I hadn’t eaten anything in the past week, just drank and drank, while Nat was a huge shehru who worked out five days a week and ate a ton. He pushed me inside my apartment and slithered in, his heavy snake body crushing a broken bottle with a crunch.

His silver scales shimmered faintly in the gloom. All the shades were drawn, just a few lights lit. I had a faint memory of breaking a few lightbulbs in a fit of rage. As Nat’s red eyes trained on me, I huffed and walked into the kitchen, stepping over all the debris strewn around: books, shattered bottles, cigarette butts, broken furniture. He followed, my stuff crunching under his steady onslaught.

“At least open the window,” he said, wrinkling his snaky nostrils when I lit another cigarette.

When I made no move to obey, he huffed and did it himself. Late October air poured in, making me shiver. I tightened my armor to keep the cold at bay. Some of the alcohol still lingered in my system, and I clung to its anesthetic effects.

---