“I don’t know for certain. He could have done his research, but going with my gut? Yes, it is the same guy. He is baiting you with what he’s done. He’s replaced Jolie with someone else, but he hasn’t shown, what he considers, his work before. It’s coincidence that the objects of his obsession are now in the same vicinity.”
“He hasn’t come up for air when it comes to me since he killed Annabeth. I haven’t been able to find him, and you’re telling me…” I choke up a bit when the rage becomes too much. “You’re telling me he has been near me, somewhere in the woods, this entire time, torturing innocent women? And what… Jolie is with me and he is what … triggered? He is fucking triggered!” I slam my fist on the counter so hard that a crack forms in the expensive marble. “What, he waited for me to move on? Are you fucking kidding me? Has he been watching me this entire time, and I haven’t known?” I look at Howard, then Jaxon, Sebastian, Grayson, and all of them have that look on their face.
The look that says more than what words can.
“Fucking perfect.” I turn around and see Jolie glancing at the picture of the woman who’s replaced her hell. I gather her in my arms and hold her close. “Don’t think for a second that this is your fault. It isn’t, you hear me?”
“If I wouldn’t have left, she wouldn’t have been there,” her words are muddled against my chest.
I pull away and cup her face, staring directly into her eyes. “And you would have died, and he would have found a new woman to take anyway. This is not your fault. We will find him. We will comb every fucking inch of these woods until we find him. And I swear to you, I swear, Jolie, this time, I will kill him.”
“Can you not say that around me?” Officer Howard says in exasperation.
“Just pretend you didn’t hear it like you do all the other times.” Heaven stuffs his mouth with an apple cinnamon muffin.
Jaxon smacks him on the head. “You can’t say shit like that without Zeke around.”
“Where is that annoying lawyer anyway?” Howard asks, helping himself to a cup of coffee.
“Doing things you don’t want to know about,” Heaven says, which earns him another slap from Jaxon. “Ow. Will you stop hitting me? I’m not doing anything. Howard is on our side no matter how much breaking the law twists his underpants.”
Jaxon lifts his hand again to hit Heaven, and Heaven dodges out of the way.
“He’s right,” Howard shrugs.
“Can we get back to the fucking point?” I grump, holding Jolie as our worst nightmares crash together in an unbelievable wreck. “What do we do?”
Everyone in the room is silent.
“You don’t know?” I scoff and lick my lips, pressing them together before I do something I’ll regret.
Like punch Howard in the face.
“All we can do is be on the lookout right now. There are no fingerprints, no return address, nothing. We don’t know how to track him. The best way is to lure him, I think,” Howard suggests the most stupidest idea I’ve ever heard.
“Bait him … that’s your suggestion? That’s your suggestion!” I shout at him, and Quinn groans, holding her stomach as a baby kicks her again. I need to calm down. The stress isn’t good for Quinn or Jolie. “No,” I say. “I’m not putting Jolie in harm’s way again. You can fucking forget it. The way he wants to get to me is her, just like he did with my wife. He’s always going to try to take away my happiness whenever I find it. I won’t let him hurt her. You can forget it.”
“We don’t have to talk about it now—”
“No, Howard, you don’t get it. There will be no talking about it ever because no one is going to risk their life. No one. It isn’t going to happen.”
“Owen, maybe we should talk about it,” Jolie says out of the blue. “He needs to be stopped. That innocent girl doesn’t deserve this punishment. Look at her.” Jolie grabs a picture and holds it in the air so I can see the full view. The girl reminds me so much of Jolie. She’s bound to a bed, crying, gagged, bruises all over her body along with cuts and dried blood. Her eyes are screaming for help, but how without putting Jolie in danger?
Without putting everyone here in danger?
“Jolie, he wants you to get to me now.”
“He wanted me before I had a connection with you.” Jolie places her hand on my cheek, and I lean into it, laying my own hand against hers. I want to lose myself in her touch and forget this day ever happened. I want us to lay in bed for hours and kiss until we fall asleep again because we literally kissed ourselves to sleep. “He’ll want me again if I offer—”
“No, we aren’t talking about this. No. The answer is no.” I turn around and slam each folder closed and then shove them onto Howard’s chest. “Get out.”
“Owen, you can’t be serious,” Jaxon says. “He’s here to help. He’s here to warn us. This is a bigger deal than what you’re making of it.”
“What I am making of it? What I am…” I place my hands on my hips and suck my tongue over my teeth as I try, in some capacity, to not flip the fuck out. “You don’t think I know this is a big deal? You don’t think this scares the hell out of me? I don’t even know this man and he has haunted me for twenty fucking years and finally, finally!” I hit the counter again and then point a finger at him. “Finally, I wake up after being asleep for a quarter of my life, and he’s back? I finally find love again, and he wants to take it from me? He wants to bait us, torment us, with fucking pictures? He wants Jolie again. He wants me to fall asleep. Again. Don’t you fucking dare sit there and tell me I’m not taking this seriously. I’m scared out of my mind! Again! So fuck you for thinking I’m not taking this seriously. I’m being thrust back into my past, and I’m still where I was twenty years ago. We don’t know what to fucking do.” I swing my arm over the counter and send the muffins flying just as Heaven goes to reach for one.
“I was eating those,” Heaven grumbles.
“Shut up, Heaven. For once in your immature fucking life, shut up and while you’re at it— grow up. Grow the fuck up!” I snag him by the shirt and lift him off the stool, slamming him against the glass door.
“Owen!” Sebastian and Jaxon yell my name, but I’m blinded by rage. All of my hate for the man who ruined my life is ready to shoot out of my fingertips, and Heaven is the unfortunate soul in my way.
“God, always with the jokes, always with the nonchalant attitude and the eating and the brushing shit off your shoulders like you can’t be bothered.” I lift him off the glass and slam him against it again, and it cracks.
“You’re hurting him!” Gabriella says, trying to pull me off him, but there is no use. I’m staring right into Heaven’s eyes, and it pisses me off me because he’s relaxed.
Relaxed without a care in the world.
“It’s okay, Gabriella. Let him work it out,” Heaven says.
“God, can’t you be angry! About anything? Jesus, I can’t fucking stand you.”
“That’s okay. Let it out.” His words of encouragement throw fuel on the fire.
There are hands on my shoulders to yank me away from Heaven, but I don’t see Heaven anymore. I see the guy who killed my wife. I see the guy who is trying to kill Jolie, who abused her, and I want to kill him.
No hands, no amount of strength can stop me from killing him. He’s finally right in front of me, and I can kill him for what he has done to me, Jolie, Annabeth, and my daughter. “I fucking hate you.” I slam Heaven against the door again, and the glass shatters, and he falls through.
But it isn’t Heaven.
It’s the man who’s haunted my dreams for twenty years.
There’s a flurry of chaos behind me, screaming and yelling, but it’s all just noise. There’s a touch that I recognize from all the others, softer, gentler, warmer like the wind on a hot day at the beach, and it yanks me to the present.
“Owen.” Jolie wraps her arms around my hips and looks up at me with fear in her eyes. She isn’t scared of me. She’s scared for me.
“Call 911!” Jaxon screams.
“This is Officer Howard. I need an ambulance at…” Howard speaks into the radio on his shoulder, and I’m confused. What’s happening?
“What did I do? Jolie, what did I do? What happened?” I remember being angry, blackout angry, but I don’t remember anything.
“It’s going to be okay. He’ll be fine,” Jolie tries to calm me down, but it isn’t working.
“Heaven. Heaven, you’re going to be okay,” Sebastian tells Heaven, and I gently push Jolie to the side to see what happened. “Stay away from him, Owen. You’ve done enough.”
My boots crunch on the broken pieces of glass, and Grayson stands up when the buzzer of the garage door sounds. I crumble to my knees when I see what I did. “Heaven,” I choke. “Oh god, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I didn’t… I wasn’t thinking. Fuck, you have to be okay. Please, be okay.” Yeah, that’s doubtful with how it’s looking. There’s a huge shard of glass slicing right between his chest. There’s blood in his mouth. “Fuck.” I rub my hand through my hair and press my hand against the wound. “I can’t pull it out. We can’t do that. We have to get you to a hospital where they can operate. It will take more than a set of hands. You just have to keep breathing.”
“If he dies, I’m arresting you for murder, Owen,” Howard warns.
“It was an accident. You can’t arrest him over an accident!” Jolie protests, but I shake my head at her, telling her to stop.
“I’ll let you arrest me if he dies, but Heaven, you can’t die. You’re my best friend. I’m so fucking sorry. I’m so sorry.”
Heaven lifts a shaky hand that’s dipped in blood and swipes his finger over my cheek. “Don’t cry for me. I’ll be fine.”
“I’m not crying,” I grumble, knowing I am actually shedding tears. I take his hand in mine and squeeze. “You aren’t going to die. I can’t believe I did this. I did this.”
“It’s okay, I forgive you,” Heaven wheezes and spurts up more blood again. “Just … can you hand me that muffin?”
I snort with laughter, and my vision gets blurry from the water filling them. “You son-of-a-bitch. You survive, and I’ll give you all the muffins.”
“Deal.” His eyes close, and his head tilts to the side.
“Heaven? Heaven? Hey!” I grab his chin and turn it forward. “Open your eyes. Open them, you son-of-a-⁰bitch.”
But he doesn’t.
I’ve killed my best friend.
Nineteen
Jolie
“I think everyone needs to go home,” Doctor Gladstone says as he walks into the patient room, blood on his scrubs. “I don’t need all of you yelling at my nurses and having to pull me out of surgery because you’re angry.”
“We aren’t leaving until Heaven is off the table,” Owen says, red faced.
“I’m trying to make sure he doesn’t go to fucking heaven, Owen. You and your crew need to fucking leave. I’ll call you when the surgery is over.”
“I’m not going anywhere.”
“You’re going, Owen. The rest of us will stay,” Jaxon says, rubbing Quinn’s stomach. Rubbing his wife’s stomach seems to be calming him instead of flipping the fuck out like I know he wants to do.
“Jaxon—”
“I’m serious. Go. I’ll call you with an update and the rest of us will behave, Doctor Gladstone.”
“I did this,” Owen leans in and whispers to Jaxon. “I have to be here.”
“You didn’t do this on purpose, Owen. A lot of events led up to this. It’s okay. But being here isn’t what is best for you or Heaven. Gladstone needs to be focused, and you are not allowing him to be.”
“Come on, Owen.” I grab his hand and stand. “Let’s go home and get some rest.”
“But I did this.” Owen rubs his hands over his mouth and a sob slips out. “I hurt him. My best friend. I hurt him. He might die. I need to be here.”
“That’s why I think it’s best if you aren’t,” Jaxon says. “Plus, you promised him muffins. Heaven isn’t going to die when he knows there is food waiting for him.”
“Come on.” I’m going to make him the biggest drink he has ever seen, and I want us to wake up tomorrow ready to take on the world. We will come back here, and Heaven will be fine.
It’s my turn to hold Owen.
Owen debates for a minute, and Doctor Gladstone turns around and hurries through the double doors, vanishing. “Okay. Okay,” he repeats, slapping his hands on his thighs, finally taking my hand. “Please, let me know how he is. Please,” he says one last time to Jaxon and a muscle jumps in Jaxon’s cheek as he thinks about his answer.
“Yeah, you know I will,” Jaxon says.
“Thank you.” Owen starts to leave without me, dropping my hand as he heads toward the exit. He stands outside for a second and falls against a concrete beams.
I give everyone one last grim smile, forcing it to my face, and leave. I cross my arms, passing rows of black leather chairs that look like they need to be replaced. The lights are brighter since the sun has set and the night sky has fallen. The double doors open, and I get the view of a very handsome, very broken, devastated man that I’ve fallen in love with.
“Let’s go home.”
“I don’t want to go home. I don’t want to see what I did. I just… I don’t know what I want.”
“Okay, then let’s stay at the hotel across the street.” I take his hand, not giving him a choice, and start walking. I expect a tug, some form of protest, but he’s right next to me. His feet slightly drag along the concrete causing a slight scratch.
The walk is silent and heavy. I can’t imagine how much guilt he feels. I know he was blinded by rage, guilt, and a tsunami filled of horrible visions of the past slammed against him. Owen wasn’t Owen anymore.
He was the man who had lost everything and was about to lose everything all over again. Heaven was in the way.
I know the last thing he wants to talk about is Heaven, so instead, I let the silence speak for itself. What’s there to say? Nothing, we can do nothing. Not until Heaven makes it out of surgery.
When we get to the street, I look right and left to make sure there are no cars coming while Owen looks toward the ground. He takes a step forward, not bothering to look for traffic. Headlights speed down the road, and I grip his hand and yank him back. The car buzzes by, and the driver honks.
I can’t breathe. He nearly killed himself. “What was that? What was that, Owen? What the hell?”
“I’m sorry. I can’t think.”
“That’s not like you, Owen. It’s like you were wanting to get hit by not paying attention. Is that what you want? Are you that careless now?”
“I don’t know!” he yells at me. “I don’t know, Jolie. I might have killed my best friend. I wasn’t trying to walk out in the middle of the street with a car coming; my mind is pretty preoccupied!”
“You can’t do that!” I cry. “You can be in your mind, and you can be quiet, but you can’t be careless with yourself.” Rain begins to pour, patting against the ground in steady beats. Of course it’s pouring, god forbid, it sprinkles instead, but that wouldn’t make sense with the series of events.
Would it?
“Why? You’d be better off without me. You wouldn’t be in the position you’re in if you didn’t know me, neither would Heaven. You’d be safe from the man who…” His brows furrow as he finds the right words. “A man who raped you constantly and beat you. Yet, he’s alive because once again I failed to protect you, and he wants you back. He wants you back because of me, and he’s going to torture more women until he has you back, probably to kill you. So he can hurt me all over again.” Owen chuckles, but the sound isn’t funny. It isn’t the kind that makes me smile, but the kind that fractures my heart.
“What…” I push the wet hair out of my face and lick my lips, drinking the rainwater trickling into my mouth. “What are you saying? Are you breaking up with me?” I’ve never been broken up with, but that’s what it sounds li
ke.
“No. Yes. No. I don’t know. I want you more than this ground needs this rain, but I would never forgive myself if you get hurt or killed because of me, Jolie.”
“You’re hurting me now.”
“Yeah, but you can heal from that.”
“I can’t.” I take a step forward to get closer, the need to be close to him now more than ever. “I can’t heal from you. I’m healing my cuts and bruises, my nightmares, my fears… I’m working on them. I’m fixing myself up, and all the repairs are being made, Owen, but I can’t repair what you break.”
“Jolie…”
“No, no! I can get through a lot of things, Owen. I can heal, but I can’t heal from you. I love you. If you want to leave me, that’s up to you, but I’m going to tell you right now, you aren’t someone that can be swept under the rug or forgotten. You’re in me, Owen. You’re a part of me. I can’t repair what isn’t there, and if you want this, if you truly want this, then you need to know, you’re going to take a part of me. I love you. I’ve fallen in love with you somehow, in some way, in this fucked-up world, and with everything that’s going on with me, I love you. I don’t know how it happened, but I do, Owen. If you are going to leave, then you need to know that.” I wipe the rainwater, or maybe they are tears from my face, I don’t know. I can’t tell.
He stares at me, his hair is sticking to the top of his head and his shirt is wet, giving me a see-through show of his defined torso.
“What?” I snap and shiver when it suddenly becomes cold. “Why are you looking at me like that?” Yet he doesn’t say anything. “What, Owen? What?” He stands there like a deer in freaking headlights after I poured my heart out to him. I lift my hands and drop them to my sides. “Okay, I’m going to go get a hotel room. You can stand here in the rain.” I give him my back and put one foot in front of the other to get away from him so I can nurse my wounded heart.
Cruel Intoxication: A Dark Romance (Underground Kings Book 4) Page 15
