Page 82 of Beg Me Angel

Chapter Twenty-Three

Pax

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Rubbing my wrists, I could still feel the indents where the metal had burned its mark into my skin. I hadn't slept in a week, my brain was charred, stuck in a hate-filled zombie trance.

The police were dead set on watching me hang, ready and willing to strap me up and yank the floor out from beneath my feet. I hated thinking I got lucky, but I did. That poor woman had to endure the pain for me to be set free. But without her, I'd be done.

Dropping into the chair by the fire, I held a glass in one hand and a bottle of bourbon in the other.

Drinking wasn't something I normally did, not anymore. It was another one of those habits I wanted to leave in the past, right beside that urge to pull the trigger. Liquor and me, we don't mesh well.

Rubbing the gold label with my thumb, I poured another shot, not giving it any time to even settle in the glass. Throwing my head back, I swallowed hard, tasting almost nothing but the acidic burn as it went down.

What the hell am I doing?

Spinning the glass in my fingers, a small splash of bourbon painted the clear bottom in braised auburn. The fire crackled beside me, heating the side of my face as the flames roared, engulfing the logs and turning them to ash.

I felt different. I felt alone. I felt empty again.

But this emptiness went far deeper than before, it had opened a giant abyss inside me, threatening to destroy whatever I had left.

My angel was gone, she was the one thing missing from this place. I didn't like it. But all I could do was hope she got my letter and could understand why I did what I did.

I owed her an explanation, all I can do is let her take from it what she can. Hopefully it could give her some closure to the question she might have had; Why?

I saw her face on the flier at the store, I chose to ignore it and keep her for myself. It wasn't easy to do and in the same breath it was the easiest thing I had ever done.

The regret for keeping her when I should have let her go crawled into my chest, sitting there like a thick lump. I didn't have any other explanation for what I did other than selfishness.

She had become mine. I cared for her, I kept her alive, and she had done the same for me.

My angel had actually saved so many others and those people had no fucking clue. There was no purpose to any of it other than to quench my own sick need. There were no more orders, no more men hunting me down like livestock.

If it hadn't been for her, I would have killed again, I would have destroyed so many lives. And I was ready, ready and willing to finally just give up on the battle altogether.

But you didn't give up. You kept one promise.

My fingers tensed around the glass, squeezing down hard, trying to break it in my hand. In one quick snap, I threw the glass into the fire. Red sparks exploded from inside, pock marking the floor like glowing confetti.

I sat staring into the coals, watching them fizzle out as there was no more fuel to feed them and keep the fire burning. Clutching the neck of the bottle, I let my arm hang off the side of the chair, my eyes stuck in place.

What the hell do I do now?

Before Vera came into my life, I had routines, I had things that needed to be done in order to survive. Now that she was gone, those routines meant nothing to me. I didn't know how to jump back in or fill my time.

I tried to chop wood earlier, but all I could think about was her. I could see her sitting on that wood block, I could feel her body against mine and the warmth of being inside her. The bed was colder now, the cabin lifeless, slowly crumbling with me inside.

It took years to make this place into what it was, to turn wood into a home and logs into a sanctuary. But it took her two weeks to stamp her presence here, to claim a small portion of this cabin as hers.

And it took one second to tear it all apart.

Leaning forward, I gripped the sides of my head and groaned. “How the fuck do I move on? How do I move past this?”

A light tap forced my head up. Listening closely, I heard another couple knocks on the front door. Standing slowly, I placed the liquor on the coffee table and stalked to the door.

I half expected it to be a reporter trying to get a story, or the police again, coming to charge me with something just because they thought I deserved to be locked away.

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