Page 104 of His to Bedevil

“Aren’t we going hiking on Monday?”

“So, it’s a date?”

I shrug. “Sure. It’s a date.” My first date, to be exact. Alejo and I never dated. I never dated anyone ever. At least, not for real.

Kate and I hop inside the Uber, and she ends up passing out right away. I have to literally drag her out of the car and practically carry her ass up to my apartment. Once inside, I toss her on the guest bed and peel her shoes and her coat off. She starts snoring, and I pray that she doesn’t wake up and puke everywhere.

It’s almost two in the morning, and I’m intoxicated, but I know I won’t be able to sleep once I get in bed. I’ll obsess over thoughts and memories of Alejo. I head into the kitchen and grab the bottle of sleeping aid and toss back a sip.

Grabbing a glass of water, I head into my room and peel my clothes off. Using a makeup wipe, I remove all my makeup and fall into bed. Hugging a pillow to me, I close my eyes and wish for sleep.Why couldn’t you love me, Alejo? Was I not enough? Am I that unlovable?

I have never felt so unloved in all my life.

Alejandro

I’m sitting behind my desk watching the live feed from Irma’s apartment. Usually she doesn’t work on Mondays, but today she got up early and got ready and dressed in some workout clothes. Three nights ago, I saw that she had a friend over. Thankfully, it was a female friend. I don’t know what I would do if it were a male inside her home. I know it’s something that will eventually happen, but I’m not ready for that. I don’t think I’ll ever be. But she and her female friend got dressed up and went to a bar in town. I know this because I have her cell phone tracked, as well as someone always watching her. To protect her.

The guy watching her the other night did inform me that she met up with work friends and that she kissed one of them. Found out his name is Trevor Bayne, he’s twenty-six and a local there. He’s bartending to help pay off his student loans, which got him a degree in business. I know where he lives and everything about him, including his social security number.

Pulling up the app I have connected to her phone to see her texts and phone calls, I pull up the texts between her and Trevor and find out that she’s meeting up with him right now to go hiking together. “Fuck!” I throw my phone down and pull at my hair. Hair that I haven’t gotten cut in months. I’m a mess without her. Nothing is abating, nothing waning. Day after day, it hurts more than the last.

Just then, my mother comes bursting through the door. “This has got to stop, Alejandro!” she shouts. “You have taken this too far! Your father taught you better than this.Itaught you better than this. We do not slaughter innocent people!”

I rub at my temples furiously. I have the world’s worst headache, which is unwilling to yield, no matter how much medicine I take. “Mamá, please,” I mumble.

“Don’t you dare ‘please’ me! You will stop this crusade!”

I slam my fist down hard on my desk and face my mother. “I will not stop until every last person involved with or related to anyone involved with Irma’s kidnapping suffers,” I scathe.

“Everyone who deserved to pay has already paid. You know that. Leave their families alone,” she orders.

“Like they left my wife alone?Myfamily?”

“Weare not them.Youare not them,mijo. Irma would not want this.”

“Do not talk about Irma,” I seethe through gritted teeth, teetering on the edge of madness.

“Do not speak to me that way. You chose to give her up. This wasyourdoing. Do not make the rest of the world suffer because you didn’t want her anymore.”

Her words make me snap. I jump to my feet, enraged. “You know damn well it was not because I didn’t want her!” I roar. “She is the only thing in my life I actuallydowant! I gave her up so that she would be safe. Because I fucking love her!”

“Like your father loved me?” She crosses her arms, not at all deterred by the volume of my voice and the wild rage in my eyes.

“You know Papa loved you. What does that have anything to do with it?”

“Your papa loved me like you love Irma. But he didn’t give me up even though I might have been safer away from him.”

“And that was selfish of him,” I snap. I haven’t said one bad thing about my father since he passed away, but right now I don’t give a fuck.

“Maybe. But it didn’t mean he loved me any less. He knew that a life apart from each other wouldn’t be worth living at all. Even if I died because I was married to your father, I would do it all again in a heartbeat.”

“What are you trying to say, Mamá?” I sigh and sag back down into my seat, feeling the fight leaving my body.

“I’m saying that you need Irma, just as badly as she needs you. Without her, you will lose all your humanity. And without you, she won’t live. She’ll just go through life trying to be someone and something she is not.” And with that, she turns and leaves my office.

“Fuck,” I whisper, and get to my feet and head upstairs. Taking my jacket off once I’m inside my room, I toss it on the back of a chair and look around at the empty place. A room where I could always find Irma. My caged little songbird.

The day she left, she tried to erase herself from my life. When I came home and locked myself in my room, I noticed the pictures from our wedding gone from their frames. When I went into the bathroom, I saw that she had dumped out all of her shower stuff down the drain, so I couldn’t even smell her anymore. Her rings were left on the bathroom sink with a note that said, “For your next victim. Fynn.”

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