The front door slammed closed with the type of finality I didn’t ever want to consider.
Forty-One
Jace
Pain lanced through me.
Cut after cut.
Excruciating.
I stumbled out into the darkened hall of the old house. I swore that I could hear ghosts screaming from where they were chained to the walls. Metal clanging and scraping. Shrill howls as spirits begged.
An echo of Faith and me.
A wail from Joseph.
A tangle of thieves and liars and cheats.
What had I done?
But I knew she’d hate me when she found out. I’d known it.
It didn’t make it hurt any less.
It did nothing to lessen the agony that sheared through me.
Violent and piercing.
Ravaging every part of me.
I stumbled down the hall, hand darting out to keep me standing. To keep myself from dropping to my knees and crawling back to her.
But I’d hurt her.
Hurt her in the worst way that I could.
I knew it. I knew it.
And it just made me that much more of a bastard that I hated him too.
That I hated Joseph for putting her through what he had.
For being such a selfish prick that he hadn’t cared that he’d put Bailey and Faith in danger.
I hated the look of grief on her face when I told her that I had sat back and done nothing. That I could have stepped in and prevented what had happened.
Refusal tried to grab on to my heart and mind. This fucked-up piece that wanted to refuse it. To lay all the blame on Joseph.
I’d told him.
Warned him and pleaded with him to stop. Gave him every chance. Played his fucked-up games for years before it’d all become too much.
Before I couldn’t take any more and the only thing stopping me from coming back here and taking Faith and that little girl from him was cutting myself fully out of his life.
Maybe that was what I should have done right from the beginning.
Come back and taken them.
I staggered into the darkness of the room where I’d been staying, quick to throw my things into my suitcase.
It wasn’t like I had all that much there, anyway. The only things that mattered in those walls was Faith and Bailey.
Faith and Bailey.
My spirit roared. Roared and thrashed and demanded that I go back into her room. Take her back.
Make her mine the way she was always supposed to be.
Instead, I slung the strap of my overnight bag over my shoulder, grabbed my suitcase, and forced myself out into the hall.
Heart slamming against my ribs, I tried to go directly for the stairs, but I was trapped. Drawn to the door of that little girl who’d made me believe.
Magic.
I could feel it radiating from the room.
Unicorns and sunshine and fucking rainbows.
I wanted to get lost in it.
In the fantasy.
But that had never been my world, and every single time I’d attempted it, teased myself with the idea that I could have something more, it’d only brought on a greater loss.
Guessed I was just a sucker asking for the pain.
I set my palm to Bailey’s door, imagining that I could feel it, her life-beat thrumming from the other side where she was lost to sleep.
Eyes pinched closed, I left the rest of what I had right there.
My love and my adoration.
Because I’d never love anything as purely as I loved her.
Struggling for a strangled breath, I dropped my head, sucked down the pain, and forced myself downstairs.
I knew the only thing I had left to give was helping Mack wipe out any threat.
I tried to quietly latch the door shut, but a gust of wind slammed it, as if that storm was beating from the inside.
Quick to shut me out.
I forced myself across the fucking porch that gleamed white.
Safe.
That was all I’d ever wanted them to be.
After tossing my suitcase and bag into the backseat of the rental car, I climbed into the front seat.
My phone rang.
The only relief I got was the number that was flashing on the screen. “Felix.”
“Yo, man, you on your way out?”
“Yeah.”
“Good. I’m on my way. I think it’s important you’re there. You’ve been right in the middle of this mess from the get go.”
I hesitated, not knowing exactly what to say, but not knowing how to just let go of the two who were inside.
It was like I could feel the agony bleeding through those old walls, the ghosts stretching out with the spindly, bony fingers, trying to grab onto me.
Refusing to let me go.
I just didn’t know if I could stand to ever have Faith look at me the way she had when I’d finally confessed my involvement. “Just . . . watch over them, okay? Don’t let anything happen to them. They don’t deserve any of this.”
Felix blew out a sigh. “Of course.”
“Thank you.”
Felix dithered for a second before he finally said, “No problem, man.”
Grateful, I hung up and gunned the engine as I headed toward Mack’s.