Page 97 of Vengeful Rotten Casualties

My mouth opens, but no words come out. A beat of quiet passes and then Dean’s voice comes through, loud and clear. “Luc?” He must’ve looked at the screen finally.

I close my eyes and squeeze the cell so tight, it threatens to crack in my grip. “I … need your help, Dean.” It’s all I can say. I’ve asked for so many favors in the last day that I’ll likely never be able to pay it all back. But this … this is an emergency, more than anything else.

“What’s happened?”

“Micki’s gone,” I say, “and … I don’t think she has any intention of coming back.”

Dead or alive.I don’t say it, but it’s there—hanging in the silence. This note … the words she scribbled before she left. It’s a suicide note.

“I’m on my way.” The phone goes silent and I drop it to the bed as I stand over where just hours ago, she and I had laid together.

I stare down at the sorry, pathetic excuse for a note. Written on an old convenience store receipt of all fucking things. There’s just two words at the end of it.

I’m sorry.

She’s sorry? She’s not sorry. Not yet, she’s not. But she will be.

42

MICKI

People breakpromises all the time and for them, it never seems to end the world. For me, though, the breaking of this promise is a bit more final than others. A bit harsher on the body and mind.

Tears leak down my face, rolling over my cheeks, dropping from my jaw to land in my lap. I swallow back the gasping breaths as each mile passes by beneath the tires of one of Luc’s cars—another BMW. He’ll eventually find it—or hopefully, someone else will. Someone else will know what happened and he won’t be the one to find … me.

If there is a God, the Earth will simply swallow me up and there will be nothing left. No bones. No flesh. No hurt. Just … memories.

I tried to keep my promise. I really did. At the end of it, though, I couldn’t face him when I left. He would never have let me go. At least I didn’t leave without a word. I didn’t disappear from Luc’s life. There’s a physical reminder of me with him. Not just the note, but the girl.Our sister.He’ll have her. She’ll be his family and he won’t be alone.

Telling myself that doesn’t seem to be enough to stop my crying. My stomach cramps and turns in on itself, rioting and rolling. After a few hours of the nonstop sobs that wrack my frame, I pull off the highway into a cheap gas station parking lot. With the doors locked and the scratchy, buzzy sound of the fluorescent sign light blinking in and out above me, I bow my head into the steering wheel and let the emotions take over.

I sob until there are no more tears left inside of me. Until the inside of my mouth is dry and my voice is broken. My hands shake as I clamp them on the steering wheel. Then I’m just dry heaving in the front seat of a stolen car and trying to figure out what the fuck I’m doing.

This was always the plan, I remind myself. I fucked things up with Thomas. But even if I hadn’t, I’d never meant to stick around after the dust and debris had fallen and the war was over. Though I know this will hurt Luc, he’ll move on. He’ll heal. He’ll have our sister and … thankfully, he’ll have the others too.

They might have started out as rivals, as enemies, but I’ve seen the way he is around Dean and his friends. Luc always wanted what they had. He wanted a family to have his back and he has that now. He might want me, but he doesn’tneedme. Not anymore.

Once the tears have run their course and I’m all out, I restart the car and direct it back onto the road. Miles and miles of black pavement roll beneath me. Hours pass. The sun reaches high into the sky, pouring into the front windshield, blinding my already sensitive eyes.

The sign that announces Plexton is small, almost like a footnote in passing. I only recognize it because I’m so familiar with the area that I spent some of the worst years of my life in. I take the turn and instead of taking an immediate path to my destination, I linger.

I drive through the old town—from the dilapidated pathetic excuse for a downtown strip with its broken shop windows and its graffitied sides to the high school that Avalon attended. I stop at a blinking stop light and a yellow school bus chugs across the road. It feels like it’s been centuries since I’ve been back here, yet nothing has changed.

The trailer parks are still the same. The old red brick buildings and the abandoned warehouses. The fire station. The one mom and pop restaurant the town boasts next to a waffle house, their sole competition. The walking trails. The town, despite its small stature, has a lot of small backwoods roads that lead out into the farming lands. I take them all—for old times’ sake, I guess. Or maybe I’m just delaying the inevitable because I want to see the memories of my time here.

Even with the bad, there was always some good. I met Avalon here after all.

Nothing lasts forever—that was the one mantra I lived by. It was what kept me sane. Even if the good doesn’t last, neither does the bad.

The afternoon is waning when I finish my tour of the town and pull up in front of a familiar faded yellow ranch house. The roof of the garage in the back has finally caved in over the old Buick there. If I crane my neck, I can make out the shattered front windshield of the old car. I get out of the BMW, but don’t go inside. There’s nothing in the house that I want. Nothing I want to see or remember. The image of the outside is enough of a reminder.

Instead, I sit on the hood of the BMW, feeling the heat from the engine against my ass as I stare at the murky, dirty windows of the house that saw me at my worst.

“Please them andit’ll please me.” Thomas’ words rang in my ears as lights flash across the front windows of the house. “All you have to do is give them what they want, and I’ll make sure you get a week off.”

A week off sounded like fucking heaven, and I didn’t have much of a choice anyway, so I guess I was doing this. Again.

The lights outside turn off and I stride towards the front door, ripping it open before they can knock or barge in. I don’t like either. Some men walk in like they own the place because at the end of the day, they’ve paid for ownership of me and I’m the only thing here of any value. Some knock and it feels like some ridiculous facade of human decency. The ones who knock are also usually the ones who like to make me scream and cry.

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