Page 106 of His to Bedevil

Alejandro

Why wasn’t I enough for you? Why? You said I would never be alone again!

The words keep ringing in my head as I stare at Irma’s sleeping form through the screen. She’s been asleep for a few hours now, but I can’t seem to tear my eyes away from her. I bring the glass of whiskey to my lips and take a huge gulp, enjoying the sweet burn as it slides down my throat.

I haven’t been able to sleep well since she’s been gone. It feels like it’s all getting worse still. Every single day is a struggle to get up and go down to my office and conduct business as usual. No matter how many lives I take, no matter how many times I beat Vlad and Sergio and make Ivanka suffer, nothing gets better. It only gets worse.

When I eat, everything is tasteless, and it never sits long inside my stomach. I end up throwing everything up moments later. My hands are always shaking, and I feel like I have been just barely hanging on to my sanity since I made the decision to let Irma go. She isn’t the only one falling apart here. But I have to believe this will all get better. At least for her. This is what is best for her. She will move on and live a long and normal life. She’ll have friends and eventually find herself a good man.Fuck!I grab at my hair again and pull. Every time I think about her loving some other man, it makes me homicidal and suicidal. When I saw her kissing Trevor in her apartment, I about died. My eyes blurred, and when she kicked him out before it went any further, I collapsed in my chair and dug the heels of my hands into my eyes to prevent any tears from spilling. I don’t have a clue how I would handle seeing her have sex with someone else. Or falling in love with someone else.

But she will. Something that should make me happy for her. But it enrages me. I don’t want her happy with someone else. It’s selfish, but it’s too true to deny. She belongs to me and only me.

“Alejo.” I look up to see Berto standing there with a frown. I didn’t even see or hear him come in. “What are you doing? It’s after midnight.”

I ignore him and go back to drinking and watching Irma sleep. I don’t even want to look at him these days. He’s the one that convinced me that this was the right thing to do. It doesn’t matter if he was right. It was still his advice that I listened to.

“Alejo, I have a confession to make.” I see him come closer, but he doesn’t take a seat. “I’m afraid my advice about letting Irma go…” He pauses. “It may have been a little ill-advised.”

I slam my glass down on the desk, and the liquid sloshes out. I still don’t take my eyes off of Irma though. “No me estes divariando.”Stop talking nonsense.“Just say exactly what you have to say.” I clip out every single word precisely.

“She is no better off without you than you are without her. A quick and painless death would be more humane than the slow one you are both going through.” My eyes snap to his. “I’m so sorry, Alejo. I knew that you loved her, but I think what you and she have goes beyond that. I don’t know the word for whatever is beyond love, but it’s what you two have, and it’s a bond that can never be severed.” He pauses again. “I think you two have suffered enough. We need to bring her home.”

I don’t know if I want to kill him or thank him. This was all his idea. But I could have told him to fuck off. All I know is that I can’t go to Irma. She will hate me. I focus back on the screen. “It’s too late. She will never come back to me willingly.”

“Has that ever stopped you before?”

Irma

Ipretty much stay in bed the entire next day after I kicked Trevor out. Thank God my shift is covered. I would’ve called in sick anyway. Poor Trevor. He’s texted me a bunch of times to make sure I was okay, but I ignored all of them.

I don’t understand it. I was doing so well. I was smiling and laughing and actually enjoying myself for once. Then all the heartache and pain came crashing down on me all at once and hit me harder than it did on the first day. Like a tidal wave. Only worse. Maybe it’ll get worse before it gets better. It just has to get better. Ithasto. I can’t keep living like this. It hurts too much.

Dragging myself out of bed, I head into the shower and sit under the hot water, resting against the wall with my knees up. I sit there forever and stare at nothing, completely checked out. My mind finally numbs for some peace. It’s only momentarily though. So many times I thought I could just turn it all off, but then I’m pulled back under to drown in unrelenting heartache.

Robotically, I wash up and then exit the shower. Grabbing a bottle of champagne from the fridge, I pop the cork and sit down on the couch wrapped in just a towel. Picking up the remote, I turn on the TV and findThe Office.

Reclining back, I drink right from the bottle and pretend to watch my favorite show. Once the bottle is empty, I glance over at the clock on the microwave. Is six p.m. too early to take something to sleep? I’m feeling a little tipsy and a little less depressed. Unwrapping both towels from my head and my body, I stand up from the couch and stretch.

Tossing the empty bottle into the recycling, I grab another one out of the fridge, and when I see the container of leftovers, I realize I haven’t eaten since lunch yesterday. I pull both the bottle and the container out. Throwing the leftover food from a restaurant on a plate and popping it into the microwave, I pop the bottle and start drinking it.

Once the food is ready, I take it over to the unnecessarily large dining table and sit there still naked and eat my food. Drinking straight from the bottle and once again with abject loneliness. The silence taunting me.

Being alone never bothered me before. Fuck Alejo for pointing out how lonely I was and fulfilling that part of my life, only to rip it away. If that was his plan all along, then well played. This is the worst form of punishment.

I shove down as much food as my stomach will allow, and then I clean my plate off, dry it, and put it away. Because I’m a neat freak. Always have been. It bothered the shit out of me when I left those two shot glasses in the sink when I went out with Kate the other night. But I wanted to seem normal, so I left them. But they drove me insane until I got up in the middle of the night and cleaned them and put them away before I went back to bed.

I turn the TV off and go to the kitchen cabinet where I keep medicine and pull out the bottle of my sleeping aid. I take a shot of that and then head to bed with my almost empty bottle of champagne.

I crawl into bed on my hands and knees and lean my back against the headboard of my king-size bed frame and pull the covers over my legs. Pulling up my music app on my phone, I turn on a playlist and connect it to the Bluetooth speaker in my room. Sipping on my champagne, I stare into the dark as a sappy ballad plays softly in the background. I should change the song because it only makes me feel worse, but I can’t, for some reason.

The only way this is going to get any better is if I get rid of any and all traces of ever being with Alejo. Meaning I need to leave this apartment, leave my car, leave this town, take nothing with me but what I’ve bought with the money I’ve made from my waitressing job. I need to survive on my own in a place that isn’t in any way tainted by him. Nothing that is connected to him. Maybe I’ll go to Canada. He never mentioned having any ties up there. That’s precisely what I’ll do.

Not wanting to wait, I jump up out of bed and throw on a T-shirt and some panties. Then I grab a duffle bag and my backpack and begin throwing shit in them. There isn’t much that I bought with my own money clotheswise, but it’s enough for a few days. I’ve lived on the streets before when I was still practically a child. I can do it again. I still have my pocket-picking abilities and still have no remorse when it comes to that. I’ll be just fine.

Next, I go to my bathroom and take the toiletries I bought recently with my own money and toss them all in my bags. By the time I’ve done all that, the sleeping aid has kicked in, and I feel like I might fall over. With two middle fingers raised in the air, I drag my ass back to bed. I have a feeling Alejo has at least one camera in here somewhere. How else did he know I broke my TV and had it replaced when I was out of the house? I don’t know if he watches it anymore, but in case he does, I want to give him a big final fuck you.

“I’m going to forget you,” I mutter as I climb into bed and under the covers. “It’ll get better. It has to,” I whisper before my eyes droop closed and I succumb to nothingness.

I feel the covers shift over my body and the mattress behind me dip. I know I’m just dreaming, so I’m not alarmed. It’s rare that I dream these days, but when I do, it’s always the same. An arm wrapped around me, and I know it’s Alejo’s. It’s always him. Only ever him.

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