Page 61 of Abigail's King

You can’t escape it.

You killed us.

Our blood is on your hands.

You don’t deserve her.

You don’t deserve love or to be loved.

Just give in to the darkness.

“NOOOOO!”

I shouted as my body finally gave in under the relentless stress and pressure I was putting it under, and I collapsed onto the ground. I wasn’t sure if I was telling the voices that I was never giving in or if I was just giving into the darkness that had been chasing me. Either way, it had found me. It had descended and enveloped me in the cloak that had always been there. I may have forgotten about it for a while, managed to live a normal life, but I had known it would return. This time though, I was sure it would never leave me.

Tears started to pour down my face as the loneliness I had always felt started to entwine its way through my body. Why now? I was happy with Abigail. I was starting to see a light at the end of the never-ending tunnel I had been travelling through for the past eighteen years. Where has the light gone? Why was Abigail no longer my light? She had been my light for the past two months. What had suddenly changed?

It was only then that it hit me. The telephone call. It was clear that she was worried about me finding out something, worried about how I would react when I heard what she had to tell me.

She had made her decision. She was no longer being stalked. I was surplus to requirements and was about to be placed in the friend zone, like every woman before her.

My desperation turned to anger as I started punching the sand around me, needing to get everything out. The darkness was taking hold quicker than before. But I wasn’t fighting. I was embracing it. Wanted to let it in and allow it to finally consume me.

The voices were right. The ghosts of the past were sending me on the path I needed to take. I shouldn’t have been living a life outside of the darkness. I was and always had been a mercenary. I was good at that. It meant I didn’t need to have a soul. I could function in the darkness without worrying about feelings and shit. I should never have involved my brother with Abigail. It was obvious to me now that he would form feelings for her. What red-blooded man wouldn’t? She was gorgeous. She was a model; every man on earth wanted her. Every man on this earth deserved her…except me.

Things suddenly became clear in my mind. The voices were gone, replaced by nothing but blackness. Kye was back. The true Kye. The one that had no feelings or worries. The Kye that could drag a man to his death just because he owed a few measly hundred pounds to a loan shark, or drug dealer, without any remorse.

I was no longer Ricardo trying to be Kye. Trying to have a life that I didn’t deserve. That life was gone and would never return. I didn’t want it to return. This was my happy place. A place where I didn’t have to think. I just did. And right now, I had one thing to do. Remove the last shred of humanity that was left within me.

I got up from where I had been seated and headed back along the beach. My return was more leisurely than how I had gotten here. I was no longer running from my past. No longer trying to avoid the darkness that had been following me. Allowing it back into my heart and soul had given me the clarity I had needed for the past few years.

Jogging back, I had one last thing to deal with. The easiest one of all: removing Abigail from my life. I would have said first thing this morning that it would be the hardest decision of my thirty-six-year-old life. But that was the old Kye. Now it was simple. All I had to do was walk into the house and tell her to leave.

I ran up to the kitchen door and found her sitting there. She seemed happy, but worried at the same time. Her demeanour had no effect on me now. Not long ago, I would have run to her side and embraced her, telling her everything would be okay. But now there was zero. Naught. Just a black void where my emotions had once been.

I stood in the doorway looking at the woman I had once loved. I say once, because now I felt nothing. She forced a smile, but soon removed it from her face as she looked at me, sensing that I had changed. That I was no longer the man that she loved.

“Kye, can we talk?”

I looked at her nervous appearance, the fact that her hands were shaking as she held something in them.

“What’s to talk about? It’s over. You’re safe. You don’t need me anymore. You want to move on. That’s fine with me. I’ll drive you to the airport.”

I looked on as the realisation of what I’d just said hit. I could almost see her heart breaking apart as I said the words. The tears were already starting to fall from her eyes as her whole world was crumbling around her. But I showed no emotion. Just stood there looking like a robot. It was the life I knew. The one I could live with easily.

“But Kye—”

“Just go already. I’m making it easy on you. Save the whole ‘it’s not you, it’s me’ speech. ‘Can we just be friends? I’ll always be there for you.’ Don’t worry yourself, Bonita. I survived eighteen years without you, and I’m sure I can do it again.”

She got up from her seat with tears pouring down her face and she held back the sobs. “Don’t worry about taking me to the airport. I’ll get a cab.”

With that, she walked out from the kitchen and into her room as I stood there with my still-stoic expression on my face.

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