Page 130 of Till Death Do Us Part

Over the sheet.I got it. But too fucking late.

He kept his face forward. “I don’t know where it is.”

I raked my teeth over my lip. In a move he didn’t see coming, I turned the wheel into oncoming traffic. We grappled over it, the car slightly rocking from side to side.

“Let it go, John! Fuck! You’re suicidal!”

Cars swerved around us, horns blared, but there was a big truck hauling ass, and it was not going to be able to stop.

“I don’t know if she’s really dead or just gone!” he exploded.

I let the wheel go and he swerved back into the correct lane.

“Tell me more.”

He ran a hand through his hair. “Everything before you got arrested was a setup. Candy at the restaurant, Roma seeing her with you. Tommaso wanted to make sure she ran, but he wouldn’t hurt her this time. Emanuele asked nicely for his daughter to be taken out of the issue. It was you he wanted gone.

“After you were locked up, Tommaso told me she was gone too, but the entire thing was being kept too quiet. It never sat right with me. He ordered me to leave it alone. Ordered me not to see you until you got out.” He glanced at me. “You go looking for her, he’s going to start something. He wants this dead and buried.”

“He already killed me. Nothing more he can do.”

“Not true, if she’s not—” his eyes flicked to me, then back “—gone,gone. He might know where she is. He might do something to her and make it look like an accident. He might get rid of both of you on principal. Fuck. I don’t know. Those pills Corvo has him on makes him—” He made a whirly motion against his temple.

“You told her all this?”

He nodded. “I couldn’t lie to her. She wears her love for you in her eyes. I was honest about what was happening.” He pulled into the parking garage underneath the penthouse and shut the car off. “She didn’t run to save herself. She ran to save you. I knew she wouldn’t run if it came down to her.”

He followed me into the penthouse.

It still smelled like her. Like apricots and vanilla and mandarin. It smelled like my little herbivore. My fucking home.

That thing in my chest twisted tight enough to stop blood flow, but it had no direction to go in to find relief. To find medicine. To find my cure. It was enough to drive a sane man mad and I was never of sound mind. I realized it when I’d found her. She was the good and right side of me. The need to keep her close and protect her only made who I was stronger.

I took a seat on our bed, staring at the shut blinds. The room was dim and cool. I needed a minute to clear my head. My chest was in chaos, though, and it was corrupting my thoughts. My eyes fell on the nightstand. The picture of my wife and Jack taken at the wedding stared back at me. I picked it up, and a note drifted from underneath.

Dear John,

We were doomed from the start. I should have known it when I saw you in my hospital room through a haze of blood. A warning. Or maybe it’s just bad luck. A broken glass or a storm on a wedding day. Or both. I don’t know. I just know without a doubt I’ll love you for the rest of my life, even if I don’t want to.

I never would have thought a carnivore and a herbivore could share a soul, but we do. We somehow created an entire world between the two of us. Something just for us.

I’ll carry you with me wherever I go.

Eternally yours,

Roma

I crumpled the paper in my fist, her words reaching in my chest and tearing my heart out. It numbed me for a second before the hole started to fucking throb. I could have sworn the pins and needles against my skin was blood pouring out.

“John? Where are you going?” Cassio went to follow me, but I stopped him.

“Stay here. Or go home.”

“If there’s going to be trouble, I go where you go.”

“Not this time.”

He didn’t follow me when I left. He knew better. I would have broken his kneecaps if he would have tried to.

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