Page 21 of A Touch of Heaven

“What the fuck Chase?” They laugh, “You scared the shit out of us.” Jax grins at me, but I don’t acknowledge it.

All I can see is how I just broke her.

How I just left her on the beach.

I don’t deserve her love.

I know that. I can’t taint her world, no matter how much it kills me to live without her. I know what I’ve done can never be fixed, and that’s how it should be. She’s safer this way.

I walk to the cupboard and grab a bottle of whiskey I brought, chugging half the bottle like a man dying of thirst in the desert, leaning against the fridge, barely acknowledging the guys. Whatever they’re saying feels distant to me. All I can see is her face in front of me, those wide eyes shedding tears as I watched them roll down her face. Hearing her choked sobs as I turned and left her.

I need to be numb.

I need it to go away.

Asher jumps up. He knows my signs of self-sabotage. After all, he does it all the time, too. “What did you do?”

Jax walks up, pulling the bottle out of my hand. “Whatever it is, this won’t help.”

I push him hard, and he stumbles back, hitting the island in the kitchen. Grabbing the bottle from him, not caring, just needing to numb the pain. My ears are ringing with rage at myself, the situation, and heartache from the fact I did it.

I finally pushed her away for good.

I look up, and Jax is holding his back, and I know I’ve just hurt him. I want to say sorry, but I can’t. I can’t be weak. He doesn’t give me a hard time for it. Instead, he looks at me, his eyes softening. “What happened?”

“I broke her…” I say, choking a sob down. “She was there telling me she wanted me, she wanted to be with me…and I…I…” I find myself sliding down the fridge, and before I know it, I’m on the floor. The cold kitchen tiles against my legs. The cold and the darkness creep into my soul the way it always does when she’s not around.

Asher sits down in front of me and grabs my head with his hands leaning against my forehead. “I get it, man,” he says, nodding his head against mine.

“Harper.” I nod back at him.

“Yeah…”

We exchange no more words, but we both get it. Neither of us can suck the girls we love into our world. It’s dark and brutal and bloody. Chasing Asher’s past, it’s not fun. We’ve become harder, different, colder. We’ve had to be.

I still remember how Michael’s body went slack as Jax and I held him down. Watching Asher smirk as he pulled the trigger. The feel of his blood soaking my hands as we beat him brutally until he told us who the others were. We all thought we would be happy that we finally caught him, but we know we all have a long way to go before we’re finished.

The truth is, I felt nothing.

I felt nothing when I hit him.

Nothing when I dropped his body to the floor dead.

Nothing when I helped dump the body and watched it burn.

And nothing when I stepped in the shower, washing his blood off my body.

I want to say that was the moment I changed, but the truth is I changed the minute Asher told me what had happened to his sister and him when they were younger. I felt empty inside hearing his story. I felt the darkness begin to creep into my soul.

We made a pact that day and we will all see it through, no matter what happens to us in the process.

I wish I had the chance to meet her.

I wish that I knew him before that.

Maybe I could have helped, done something. I know Jax feels the same.We were all eighteen when he told us that story, and it’s taken us a long time to get to where we are now.

Jax is next to us on the floor with his legs crossed. He grabs the bottle from my hand once again and takes a shot. Asher lets go of my head and leans back, taking the bottle from Jax and taking a drink himself.

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