Hard to Love, Book 1

by W Winters

  It’s just the trash can hitting the back of the house. I tell myself again, hoping it will calm me down but it doesn’t. The wind screams and the plastic can bangs against the back of the house again.

  With my eyes closed, I breathe in and out. It’s okay. I’m okay.

  “Please answer me, Seth.” I whisper the words, only to open my eyes and see no response and Cami’s dead body on the floor.

  Her skin is so pale.

  It takes everything in me to lean down. Even as bile rises in the back of my throat, I carry through with it, hot tears streaming down my cheeks. It’s easier to close her eyes than I thought it would be. Her thick lashes feel wet beneath my fingers and I don’t know if it’s from my clammy hands or tears that had gathered there.

  I don’t say goodbye to her, but I know it’s the last time I’ll see her when I lift my hand and her eyes are closed.

  My steps are hurried and loud as I make my way to the bathroom, turning the faucet up as hot as it’ll go and viciously rubbing my hands clean.

  It’s too loud. The water is so loud I can’t hear anything that could be going on around me, so I’m quick to shut it off even though I don’t feel clean enough.

  My back hits the bathroom wall as I stand there, staring at myself in the mirror. Disheveled hair, wild eyes, and hot pink cheeks. It’s obvious I’ve been crying. It’s obvious I’m lost.

  It’s obvious I can’t stay here.

  I have nowhere else to go, though. Nowhere around here is safe. I’m not safe. Jackson was right. I have to save myself.

  Time slows as the next thoughts come to me. The clicks of the ever-present clock seeming to tick longer with pauses between each one, punctuating each moment of clarity.

  The money is in the safe. A safe that couldn’t be opened by Cami because she didn’t know the code. That’s why they tied her up. They wanted the code; they wanted the money.

  Tick.

  The money they killed her trying to get.

  Tock.

  The money meant for a better life according to Seth, and it cost my best friend her last breath.

  Tick.

  Money Seth will use for guns, drugs, gambling.

  Tock.

  Money I need to get the hell out of here.

  Tick.

  It’s over just like that.

  Maybe five seconds have passed. But it feels like an eternity. It feels like the weight of the world. It feels like the end.

  I’m still shaking when I hear the rapid beeps as I enter the code into the keypad. The click of the lock unlatching and the ease with which the heavy metal door opens only brings a new pain.

  If only I had told Cami the code.

  If I could go back in time and tell it to her, let it slide that the code was our anniversary date, I would have even though she never would have asked. Maybe she would have been in less pain. Maybe it would have been faster if she could have just told them the code.

  With cloudy vision, I try to shut down the visuals of what happened to her hours ago.

  I don’t know how much money is here. I’ve never asked and I don’t count now.

  There are stacks and stacks of cash neatly arranged into bundles that are easy to grab by the fistful. I have to back away for a moment, questioning myself but the question is gone as quickly as it came.

  I can’t wait for next time.

  I can’t keep going like this.

  There’s a backpack, one I’d planned to take to nursing school if I ever got into one, in the far corner of the closet. I know it’s there and the memory of it forces me to move quickly on these insecure legs. I unzip it on my way back to the safe, and dump its contents, unused notebooks and packs of pens, onto the safe floor.

  I take a stack of cash and then another.

  I have my car, money, and enough fear to push me far away from here.

  Seth’s face is there every time I close my eyes. The hurt, the disappointment. Picturing his sad eyes makes me waver, but only enough that I pause. I don’t stop packing.

  I’ve begged him. I’ve told him I can’t stay.

  Another stack and the backpack is full. It’s six large stacks in total and a little more than a quarter of what was in here.

  I have trouble zipping it up. The little metal zipper slips from my fingers and then snags on the bills the next time I try.

  I’m a hell of a mess. Scared and damaged. In raw pain from losing Cami, but also from knowing how I’m leaving Seth right now.

  I won’t wait for him anymore. With that thought, I shut the safe door, leaning my back against it as I heave in oxygen, praying for it to calm me down enough to drive away. I’m faster packing a bag, grabbing everything I can without bothering to remove the hangers. I shove it all in, eager to get the hell out of here.

  A small voice whispers to wait. It begs me to check my phone again, to give Seth one more chance.

  Oh, how my body bends to that will. I wish he would have texted. I wish he would have been waiting for me right then and there. To stop me from going alone. I want him to come with me.

  I need him to. Or in this last moment of weakness, to force me to stay. I wish he were here now to shove me in the safe, like he said he would. Because I don’t want to leave. Even now, I’m so aware I don’t want to leave.

  But Seth isn’t here. He didn’t text me back. And he isn’t going to leave this life. He’ll never leave it.

  This life is who he is. I know that it is.

  My swallow is harsh and ragged, like broken glass slicing its way down when I get to the front door.

  My hands are so cold now, they’re numb. My entire body is by this point.

  I stare at the red door, envisioning Seth walking through it. I wait for one beat of my heart and then it’s followed by another fucked-up beat that skips all over. But he doesn’t come.

  I would have been dead for hours and hours, and then what? What would he do “next time?”

  The bookbag drops to the tile floor with a thud as I walk around the counter, pull out the junk drawer in the kitchen and grab a small pad of paper and a pen.

  I have to scribble the pen for a moment to get the ink flowing, so I move to the second sheet. Letting the tears flow, I take out another clean sheet to write down my last words to him.

  He’ll never forgive me. I already know that.

  I don’t think I’ll ever forgive myself either.

  The clean sheet is stained by a fallen tear before the tip of the pen can mar the perfectly white paper with a slash of black.

  * * *

  I’ll always love you.

  * * *

  I write that line first but the others aren’t good enough. Please forgive me. I think that thought every other line, but I never write it. I had to. I don’t have to, I’m choosing to and I know it. He knows it too.

  The only truth I can bear to give him is that I’ll always love him.

  Then I write my final thought.

  * * *

  Even if you hate me, I’ll always love you.

  * * *

  There can’t be any blood in my hands or face; they’re cold and numb. I know that much from the pricks that travel along my icy flesh. It’s all drained from me. I don’t know how long I stand there, wishing for better words that don’t come.

  Wishing it wasn’t over, but knowing that it is.

  It’s over.

  I’m leaving him.

  The resolution gives me enough strength to move, but I still linger at the door, gripping the edge of it as I whisper, “I’m sorry, babe,” to Cami. “I love you.”

  I think about her as I wipe my face and drive away in the dark night. The headlights shine ahead of me, two yellow streaks in a sea of nothing.

  It’s my fault. I knew who Seth was, I just never thought that there wouldn’t be a way for our lives to fit together. It was always so perfect, so easy. He was my everything.

  Occasionally I glance at the backpack in the passenger seat, the money I stole from him. When
I get to a motel hours and hours away with sleep dragging me down, I finally check my phone for the first time since I left.

  There’s nothing from him. Nothing after the texts I sent him to come home and that I wasn’t okay. He saw them though. He saw but he didn’t answer.

  Derrick messaged me, though. Reading his text sends me into another sobbing frenzy on the scratchy sheets of the motel.

  Tonight is the first night of many where I simply cry myself to sleep, hating who I am and how little I’m worth. And it’s the first night in years that Seth doesn’t message me back. He never messages me back.

  Seth

  Fuck.

  “No, no, no.” With my hands running down my face I keep praying to whatever God would even bother to listen to me to make Cami wake up. To make this entire night go away. Erase it from fate’s plans. None of this should have happened.

  “Please, God,” I beg, but no one’s listening to me.

  Derrick hasn’t moved. Not an inch. His body is over Cami’s, his forearm resting above her head. His face is near her stomach, and his shoulders heave every so often. I’ve never seen the man cry in our entire existence, but he cries for her.

  “We’re too late,” I tell him again, with a dry throat and hope he hears me this time. My fist slams against the wall when he tells me “no” like this isn’t real. The pain of my knuckles bashing against the wall isn’t enough. The pain is miniscule compared to everything else. So I do it again and again, letting the anguish wash over me. The drywall cracks and crumbles so easily.

  I don’t even realize I’m screaming until Derrick yells at me to shut the fuck up.

  Picking up his head, he stares at me, both of us breathless, wounded and guilty.

  “This is because of me,” he tells me with red eyes. The pain is etched in every feature of his expression. “She’s dead because I couldn’t—”

  “She’s dead because Mathews wanted to hurt us. They wanted to steal from us. They wanted to kill her.”

  “It’s on me,” he emphasizes, lowering himself until his forehead rests on her stomach. “She died because of me.”

  “We’ll get them back. We’ll make them pay.”

  Time passes in silence.

  “Where’s Laura?” he asks cautiously. He didn’t see the note when we came in. It’s the first thing I saw. The blood, the trail of it to the safe. The emptied backpack.

  “She took off,” I answer him and I swear the confession strangles me. Each word tries to choke me, hating the very thought of it.

  “Where she’d run to?” he asks and the lack of contempt, the lack of sympathy… he doesn’t get it.

  “She didn’t run from them; she took off for good,” I explain. It hurts more than I thought it would to say it out loud. “She left me.”

  With bewildered eyes he shakes his head and that’s when I turn away from him, leaving him where he is over Cami and walking away. I have to wipe my face with my forearm as I head back to the kitchen and to the front of the house.

  I feel restless, anxious, tormented and angry. It turns to pacing, thinking about how to get revenge against Mathews for hurting Laura, for trying to steal from me, for scaring the one girl I’ve ever loved away from me.

  I can picture Laura finding Cami; that breaks me down to nothing. I am nothing when I imagine that scene. I know how she would have reacted. But I can’t see her emptying the backpack and shoving the money inside. I can’t see her packing up her things. I can’t picture her leaving me.

  Never did I think she’d leave me. I can’t imagine it, even though it’s already done.

  The ghosts in the living room call to me. She wanted me to leave. I did this. I did all of this.

  Another vicious scream tears from my throat as I swipe my arm down the counter. My body’s hot, my head feels light and I do it again. The bang and clatter of the broken glasses and pans hitting the tiled floor urge me on.

  I destroy everything, everything I touch, why should this place be any different?

  It takes me a long moment to realize she took the cash and what the consequence of that is. I needed that cash. We needed every fucking cent of it.

  “Fuck!” I scream out the word, but it doesn’t make anything better.

  This is what it feels like to be at rock bottom.

  It takes a long time for me to actually cry. To let it all out and feel the deep-seated pain in the very pit of my stomach. For me to accept that Cami is dead and Laura is long gone.

  Getting revenge for Cami is the sole focus of our crew.

  That’s the only thing that keeps Derrick moving. The guys are silent. Everyone is. No one asks where Laura is either. They know she left; they don’t know about the money though.

  If I told them, they’d want to go after her. So instead I have to be smarter, harsher, more violent to get the message across.

  She screwed me. Laura screwed me over when she left. She left me at my worst, and made everything harder. I have to tell myself she couldn’t have known, but that only helps for so long.

  It takes hours of standing in a scalding hot shower to try to wash it all away, the pain of what I’ve caused, the agony of what I lost. It doesn’t leave me though. There’s no cleansing these sins.

  When I fall into bed, I take her note with me. It crinkles when I grip it, no matter how much I try to let up on my grasp. I can’t help it; I hold it with everything I’ve got.

  I have her note, and the messages she sent.

  The dim light from the phone is the only light in the room, and I stare at it for hours. Reading the texts about her doctor’s appointment, then about Cami. I reread the lines she sent, wanting me to come home. Needing me.

  Instead I was out, making a hard life even harder. Getting us into deeper shit.

  All the while she was dealing with a dead girl whose blood is on my hands.

  There’s a mix of regret and hate.

  As the weeks move on, I get colder, harder. The realization of what I’ve chosen fuels me to do unspeakable things. Mathews never stood a chance. Neither did Fletcher.

  Laura doesn’t text me again other than to tell me she’s sorry and I don’t respond to that message. She doesn’t come back to Tremont or anywhere within a five-hundred-mile radius. Well only once, and it wasn’t for me. A year had passed and she came back for a single day, hoping not to run into me even though she stepped into my territory, into my bar. I knew it when she saw me there, bumping into me by accident, that she wanted to leave without running into me.

  That hurt stays long after she’s gone. I thought I wasn’t capable of feeling like that anymore, until she showed up.

  Derrick keeps tabs on her. He has since she left.

  The regret fades. The hate takes over.

  I loved her more than she loved me, because I never would have left her.

  Every day that passes, I start hating her more.

  She said she loved me and she left.

  She stole from me and she left.

  She never looked back; she just left.

  Seth

  Eight years after the dreaded night on the west coast when Laura left….

  The first chapter of Desperate to Touch

  * * *

  I wonder if Laura knows it’s me, for about half a fucking second. The way she averts her eyes and refuses to look at me gives me the answer I’m looking for. The East Coast has been good to me. I wouldn’t have chosen it for myself, but it’s where Laura ended up.

  It’s pitch black and the stores in the shopping center are closing down. I’ve been parked here for a good three hours now, just watching. It’s what I’m paid to do and what I need to do tonight.

  I’m supposed to watch Jase Cross’s girl. I’ve been working with the Cross brothers ever since I left Tremont in Derrick’s hands. There was no one left to kill there, no challenges to face. So I followed Laura, keeping my distance and getting comfortable.

  Fate’s a prick.

  She’s with the girl I’m supposed
to be keeping an eye on. I suppose it makes sense. My life’s a sick joke.

  Fuck, just looking at her dredges up everything. Every splinter of emotion I thought I’d long buried. The sick concoction of it all slips into the crevices of my bones as my eyes wander over the curves of her collarbone.

  Then lower, to the dip at her waist.

  It’s hot and cold. Anger then lust. Fuck, I can’t keep still in this piece of tin knowing she’s right there. So damn close, I could go get her if only I wanted to. Some moments I do, but I don’t know that I’m ready yet and I need her to come to me. A piece of me needs her to be the one to come to me.

  Her eyes catch mine once, then twice. She turns stiff in the car across the vacant parking lot.

  I bet she thinks I’m here for her. She thinks this is about her, and maybe it was when I first moved here. Now though, I have plenty to keep myself occupied here before I attend to her.

  If she thinks what’s between us is over, she’s wrong.

  If she thinks I’m going to let her get away with it, she’s out of her fucking mind.

  The wine bottle is nearly empty in her hands as she sits in the driver’s seat. I’ve been watching her and Bethany, Jase’s girl, drink at the bar, go into a shop, drink at another bar, and go into another shop all damn night. They’re both on the verge of fucked up when Bethany knocks on my window, wanting a ride.

  The slow smirk is hard to hide when I roll down my window. She thinks she can trust me. She hasn’t learned that in this life, you can’t trust anyone. Not even the ones you love.

  Bethany’s a sweet girl but oblivious. It’s nearly sick how much I revel in her unsuspecting question to simply take them home.

  Bethany gets in easily enough, feeling safe and secure because she knows her boyfriend is my boss. She knows I won’t do a damn thing to hurt her.

  She has no idea what I want to do to Laura, though. She isn’t aware that I know her. I know Laura more than I know anyone.