Page 102 of Vengeful Rotten Casualties

Her brown eyes widen as they stare up at me, bloodshot and sagging with exhaustion. Fury fills my every pore. It comes alive inside of my chest and swells in me until each and every breath I take ravages my insides with its heat.

“What the fuck were you thinking?” I demand, shaking her hard. “Suicide?” My other hand reaches around and I grip her hair, yanking and pulling at the already tangled strands, snapping her head back so there’s no other choice but to look me right in my face as I await an answer.

I know I should be gentle. She’s fragile right now, but fuck it, so am I. I can’t stop myself. There’s too much emotion in me to stop. She doesn’t deserve gentle. Not now.

All I’ve been is fucking gentle and this whole time, this was her plan. This was always the ending she envisioned for herself and I was too stupid to see a damn thing. She was planning to leave from the very beginning and in the worst possible way. In a way that ensured she could never come back to me. This is worse than any betrayal.

“Did you want to punish me that badly?” I demand. “Enough to kill yourself? Was it all a lie? Telling me that you fucking loved me? Huh?” I shake her again and she turns her head.

“N-no, Luc, i-it wasn’t about—” Her teeth chatter and clack against each other, but I don’t care. I can’t let myself because she took advantage of it. If she did it once, no doubt she’ll do it all over again and next time … I might not make it.

My anger is a beast. It dulls my senses. It makes my humanity fade into the background until all she’s left with are my base instincts. How to make her understand the gravity of what she almost did. Not just to me, but to herself.

Death is the only ending I can’t accept. It’s the one fucking thing I can’t fix. Once you’re dead, that’s it. There is no coming back.

I release her throat and hair and she falls back to the ground, eyes widening as her lips part in shock. I get to my feet, reaching down and closing my fingers around her arm, yanking her up after me. Some fucking how, some fucking way, the gun I’d tucked into the waistband of my pants before leaving Eastpoint is still there. It should have gotten dragged out of my clothes and lost in the river, but it wasn’t. Another miracle.

It slips against my skin beneath my shirt, chafing at my back, giving me an awful idea. A deviant and terrible plan forms in my mind. I know exactly what I need to do to show her the error of her actions. My pants and shirt are so fucking tight to my body that it locks the damn thing against me even as I stomp across the uneven ravine ground, dragging her after me. Good. I have a use for it. If she wants to die then I’ll damn well show her how it should be done.

“Luc—” Micki tries to speak, but I don’t bother to listen as I drag her across the edge of the river. She stumbles, her legs still caught up in the wet weeds wrapped around her ankles. I pause only long enough to bend down and tear them away. Several minutes out of the water have made them easier to remove, but their barbed edges still cut me. My palms run red with fresh blood. I don’t care. I try to ignore the comfort of her hand as it lands on my shoulder while she attempts to remain standing and steady.

Once she’s free from their hold, I continue walking again—not giving her time to protest as I drag her along. “You fucking lied to me,” I snap. “You said—you fuckingpromisedyou wouldn’t leave without telling me!”

“I left a note.” Her defense is weak and quiet, as if she knows just how badly she’s fucked up this time.

I’ve given her everything she asked for. I’ve given her my heart, my trust, my fucking love. And I never asked for shit in return. Only honesty. Only faith. Even now, I don’t want anything more from her than that. But she needs to understand that this—her fucking head—is the problem.

Suicide.The very thought strikes a deep fear into my soul. I’m rough as I turn her and shove her against a massive boulder on the side of the water. She stumbles again, slipping against the wet surface as the fast-moving water alongside it crashes against its opposite side. There’s no coming back from what she almost did, and I almost … I almost didn’t reach her in time.

My eyes burn. Pricking with a heat I’m unfamiliar with. I grit my teeth and shake the feeling away. “Your fucking note was a cop out and you know it,” I growl. “You walked around these last few months, making promises, sleeping in my bed, fucking me, reminding me how good it was, making me love you and this—thiswas what you were planning?”

I take a step back and spread my arms wide, staring back at her. “Do you really hate me?” It’s an honest question. It’s selfish, I know, but I can’t imagine anyone damaging the person they claim to love like this. If she’s gone then what the fuck is even the point of living for me anymore? “Is it because of him?” Maybe it was too much to expect her to love me back. “When you look at me…” I don’t want to ask it, but it has to be said. My throat tightens as if the words are a weapon, as if they’re poison. They come out anyway, dripping in blood and glass. “When you look at me, do you see my father?”

Micki shakes her head as tears track down her cheeks. They clear a path over the grime and mud and dirt streaking her skin. “No,” she says. “No, Luc. You’renothinglike him.”

With trembling hands, I grip her arms. “Then why?” My voice is harsh. Raw. My insides have been pulled out and left in a trail behind us. My side is far from aching now. It’s on fire. My lungs collapse with each breath I take. Living hurts. It’spainful. I know that. But it’s worth it.Sheis worth it. I thought she knew that. Obviously, I was wrong.

Micki continues to cry. Each tear is like a knife to my chest, but I’m slowly growing cold to it. Numbness is encroaching. “It’s not about you, Luc,” she sobs. “Please don’t … you should’ve never come after me. You shouldn’t have saved me.”

“Shouldn’t have saved you?” Her words drift back, echoing over my own tongue. “Because you’re going to try again?” The last thread of my sanity pulls tight, ridiculously close to snapping in half.

Her face tilts down and she avoids my gaze as her breath saws in and out of her chest. When she speaks, her words are a whisper. Barely above the sounds of the wind and the rushing current of the river alongside us. “I just want it to stop. I don’t want to fight it anymore, Luc.” She sucks back a shuddering breath. “I’m sorry.”

The thread snaps.

Distantly, I know that Avalon and Dean are somewhere nearby. I know they’re above, likely searching for a way down here. I know that our time is limited, but it doesn’t matter. None of it matters.

“You still want to die…”

“It’s not about dying,” she replies. “I just don’t want tobeanymore.”

Ice fills my chest. “Okay.”

Her head snaps up. “Okay?” she repeats.

I push her back further, against the stone, lifting her when she refuses to go and sitting her right down on the wet, hard surface of it. She winces, and I resist the urge to check her over. We’re both broken, cut up, bleeding, and sore. Each brush of my hand against her skin leaves streaks of red and brown. Blood and dirt. No doubt we’ve both got more injuries we’re not even aware of yet. I already see bruises forming along her legs and arms. There’s more beneath our clothes, but right now the only thing I can focus on is helping her understand the gravity of what she’s saying. Of what she wants.

Death—sweet as it may be—is inevitable. She’ll die one day, and if she wants that day to be today, if she wants it to be now, then she needs to know my role in it. Because whether it’s life or death, I will always play a part when it comes to her.

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