Page 84 of Three for a Girl

Chapter Twelve

Chad stepped into the house, placed his phone on the side table then stumbled back into the front door. Even when Chad slipped down to the floor, he kept falling. It didn’t matter that he physically stopped, his mind was caught in an endless drop.

A free fall.

All his fraying edges unraveled completely, leaving a broken mess, a sorry excuse of a man. He drew his knees up to his chest and beat his forehead against them.

“Chad?”

He froze at the voice, and his heart flittered with hope, but he shut it down, parting his knees to glare at the illusion of Romeo.

He wasn’t there, Chad would’ve heard his approach, he would’ve seen his car, nothing but his mind toying with him, throwing up the image of Romeo in the kitchen doorway.

“You’re not here.”

His voice broke, and he turned away from the illusion studying him. His lazy mind hadn’t even put Romeo in the right t-shirt. He’d been wearing a white one he left, it had been soft against Chad’s cheek when he’d hugged him, slumped over his puzzle in the outhouse.

It felt a world away.

“Where am I then?”

Chad shook his head. He didn’t know. He didn’t know where Romeo had gone, whether he was off killing or dead in a ditch.

A raw sound escaped him, and he closed his eyes.

“I kept seeing you when I was with Marc, too.”

“You never told me that.”

“I imagined you in the doorway when he loomed over me. When he did as he pleased, made me hurt and I had no option but to accept it. I pleaded with you to help me. You were the only one who could.”

“And I did. Not as fast as I would’ve liked, but I did come.”

“You did. You took away the pain. You stopped him hurting me again.”

Chad opened his eyes, and heat spilled from them, running down his cheek. The illusion of Romeo tilted his head, and drew his eyebrows together, as if Chad’s anguish had transmitted to him.

“I wish you could’ve taken the memories, too.”

“All of them?”

“No, only the painful ones.”

Chad was familiar with the intrigued looks, Romeo had always studied him, relished in his unravelling mind when they were in the farmhouse, but he’d never looked pained back then.

All Chad’s revelations, and Romeo had only looked interested, pleased, like he was learning the puzzle that was Chad. He was entertainment, passing the time before he could kill again, claim his number one.

Chad’s chest tightened.

Romeo’s empathy had been a new development since Marc. Romeo had sought to block Chad’s pain, muffle it, distract from it.

It seemed to bother him.

Romeo strode forward and lowered himself to his knees in front of Chad. His gaze found Chad’s throat, and he stiffened, locked on the skin, his mark clear to see.

The mark from the monster.

Chad stared at him, trying to piece together Romeo’s reaction.

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