Page 8 of Promise of Destruction
Soren Palmer is a broken woman, and I want her more than I’ve ever wanted anything.
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Soren
Myheartdoesn’tstophammering until Jimmy turns onto my street, the headlights cutting through the dark but tidy yards of my little suburban neighborhood.
Hewas right there. Inches away from me. He put hishandson me. Hespoketo me.
Was it all an act?
Not a single part of me believes that the wealthiest man in the city just wandered intomy barfor a drink.
I guess I finally got his attention. After months of denied meetings and ignored phone calls, I finally drew him out. And like a damn fool, I ran.
My mind is spinning so furiously I feel dizzy, the houses outside the window blurring together in a fury of porch lights that’s making me nauseous. The pounding in my temples feels like it may split me in two.
But it isn’t just fear or shock that’s got me spiraling. It’s also a rage so profound that I think there’s nothing left. A rage that swallows all the light in the world, that sets my bones on fire andmy muscles on edge. It’s a rage that sneaks under my ribs, slips into my lungs and threatens to turn my insides black, necrotic.
I like rage best. It gives me the control that I need, same as pain. It lets me get a grip on the depth of my despair and mold it into something useful.
Denial is the first stage of grief. It was also the briefest stage. It’s hard to live in denial when you wake up alone, go to sleep alone, when your calls go unanswered, and you find yourself front and center at a funeral with everyone lamenting their condolences at you, sobbing as iftheywere the ones whose entire life shifted in an instant.
The anger comes the minute your denial falters, and it shapes the rest of your life.
Some people move on to bargaining, but I don’t know who they’re trying to bargain with. A false God that they foolishly believe will save them and restore life to the places death has touched? Or maybe they’re trying to bargain with death himself, begging him to come whisk them off to a place without the burden of emotion or feeling.
When no bargain can be made because God doesn’t exist and death is a bastard who does only what he wants, most people fall into depression.
Lying in bed for days on end, feeling alone in a crowded room, realizing the color has bled out of the world. I felt all of those things for years before I met Vin… before I could feel something.
Some people eventually accept their new normal. I don’t know what acceptance is supposed to mean for the grieving process. I’ve already accepted that my old life is dead. I’ve accepted that my life isn’t what I thought it would be. I’ve accepted that the last time I saw him was the last, that there are no happy endings for people like me, that heaven is a fairytale concocted to make people feel better about the fragility of human life.
I’ve accepted all of it, and yet I’m still grieving. I slid backwards— right back into the cold hands of anger.
Anger’s embrace isintoxicating. He whispers little things in my ear that remind me I’m not alone despite how empty everything is—my house, my body, my head when I take the pills they tell me to.
The other stages of grief patted me on the back and sent me on my way like they couldn’t wait to be rid of me, but anger stayed. He festered and turned into something more.
That’swhy I wrote the article. That’s why I threw it all out there, why I released that story with everything I knew about the man who could be responsible for ruining my life. I may not be able to get close enough to kill a man as untouchable as Declan Evers, but I can tear him apart in the public’s eye.
I know one little story isn’t enough to take him down; it’s only the first domino to fall.
Unfortunately, I’ve set the first domino in motion without placing the rest.
I didn’t think this through. I didn’t plan what to do next.
And I sure as shit didn’t plan for him to show up in my bar looking like a dark Prince Charming, feigning innocence and kindness. I didn’t expect that when I finally was face-to-face with him that I’d freeze, that every cell in my body would twist, vacillating between the desperation to make him pay for his sins and also besotted with his presence.
I knew Declan Evers was gorgeous. Sometimes the most sinister people are the most physically attractive, taking care to layer on the charm to conceal their rotting souls.
But I hadn’t expected to have such a visceral reaction to his presence—one where I could hardly breathe, where my stomach dipped and twisted with something thatwasn’tjust rage. His presence was powerful, domineering…
I’ve never felt so eclipsed by another person, except for maybethatnight.
Jimmy, who’s been trying to talk to me nearly the whole way home, clears his throat and I look up to realize we’re sitting in my driveway.
The two-story craftsman looks like the place of a young couple’s dream. It was the place ofmydreams, for a while. We bought the house and moved in together even before Vin ever put a ring on my finger. He’d seen me stare at it every time we passed, marveling at the violet-painted door and the white shutters.
