Page 77 of Lost Soul

I take off my cut and the rest of my clothes, and she watches me in a confused silence. Then I lift up her arms and strip her of hers too. Pulling back the covers, I slide in and tuck her in beside me. It’s just me and her, skin against skin, away from all the evil outside. I got her wrapped up in a world where I can protect her, and I want to keep her there forever.

I haven’t seen or spoken to anyone other than Jessie in three days. Grimm dropped my laptop off the night everything happened, but he hadn’t said a word, and it still remains untouched on the kitchen table where he placed it.

Jessie makes sure Nyx is here to guard the door whenever he has to go down to the club, but he’s never away from me for long. We still haven’t spoken about what happened, we haven’t really spoken at all. We watch TV, we eat when I could stomach to, but mainly we fuck. We fuck as if that alone is the cure to the pain. But it never takes very long for the pain to come back.

Today, Jessie is trying a new approach, the let’s just pretend two innocent women never got killed because of you, kind of approach. When I get up, I take the blanket with me and head straight out onto the deck. Settling in a chair that overlooks the lake, I listen to birds chirp, watching the water on the lake rock and the sunlight dancing on its surface. Nature is still going about its business despite all that’s wrong in the world. It has no choice but to carry on.

Jessie brings me out a coffee and places it on the table. Then bends down to kiss the top of my head.

“Mornin’ darlin’, what you want for breakfast?” he asks stretching his arms over his head. I know he’s not getting much sleep at night because neither am I. Sleep is impossible when there’s so much going on in your head.

“I’m not hungry,” I answer, waiting for the lecture I know is sure to follow, the same one I’ve gotten from him every morning since Carly’s been gone.

“Come on you haven’t eaten properly in days, I could try and make pancakes,” he offers.

“What did you do with her?” I ask, ignoring his last sentence. It’s all I’ve been thinking about the past few days, and it’s driving me crazy.

“Mads. I don’t think…”

“Tell me,” I interrupt. I need to hear it. Nothing can be worse than the image I have of her laid out on the floor when I’d found her.

“Okay.” He shrugs, defeated. “We want her to have a funeral same as Hayley did. We couldn’t have the body found here because it would bring too much heat on the club. So Grimm took her to a motel out of town and called it in, Roswell made sure he was the first officer on the scene. It’ll go down as suicide.”

I look up at him in shock. Carly had family, it would destroy them to think that’s what happened. Surely Skid couldn’t be okay with this.

“But…”

“We already have the feds on our backs, we had to think fast. Things would have been a damn sight worse when they showed up here yesterday if they were investigating a body too. Yeah, it’s shit, but it’s the only way we could guarantee a proper funeral,” Jessie explains.

“You could have gone legit on this one, it’s obvious who did it. That cop knows you, he would have explained. The people who did this need to be in prison,” I argue, feeling my anger multiplying.

“The people who did this need to be dead,” Jessie snaps back at me, instantly looking guilty for the sharpness in his tone. “Look, things don’t work like that around here. If they get put away, Prez and Skid don’t get their retaliation, and right now that’s the only thing keeping them both going.”

“And what about you? Is that what you want too? Retaliation?” I ask, hearing the harshness in my voice.

“Yeah, Mads, I do,” he answers without any shame, a stark reminder of the guy he can be when he isn’t trying to feed me and cradling me in his bed.

“Do her family know the truth?” I change the subject hoping that at least Carly’s family are in on the cover-up.

“Yeah, Skid told them,” Jessie assures me, and I nod, taking a small comfort at the same time as feeling devastated that there are now even more people on the planet that hate me.

I fix my eyes back onto the lake. I’d sat out here with Carly almost every day since I’d been here. We’d talk and laugh, having her with me was helping me deal with losing Hayley. Now I didn’t have her, all that pain’s back too.

“It should have been me… I wish it had been.”

I must say my thoughts out loud because Jessie flips.

“Don’t you fuckin’ say that.” He crouches down in front of me, the tone of his voice full of anger but the expression on his face hurt. “Don’t you ever fuckin’ say that. Hayley gave up her life for you. You can’t think like that.” He grabs my face in his palms and forces me to look into his ice-blue eyes.

“Listen to me, Mads. You got to fight those demons out your head, fight ‘em away or you might as well be dead too, and that can’t happen ‘coz I fuckin’ need you.” He shakes me. “You hear me? I need you!” When he forces my head into his chest, I’m relieved that I don’t have to see the worry on his face anymore. I feel his heartbeat thudding against my cheek while his hands stroke my hair.

“She was pregnant,” the words tumble from my mouth and muffle against his skin. I don’t know why I say them now, maybe I want him to understand why I wish I could have taken Carly's place, or perhaps it’s because the burden of being the only person who knew just how much Skid’s really lost is dragging me into the ground.

“What?” Jessie pulls back, his face pleading me to tell him that he’s heard me wrong.

“Carly was pregnant, she was gonna tell Skid that night, had this whole amazing idea planned out.” Jessie's head falls as he listens. His head shaking slightly as he tries to absorb what I’m telling him.

“This is gonna finish him.” He slumps onto his ass, his back resting against the railings, and his arms hanging over his knees.

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