by Anne Malcom
He pushed the hair out of my face and caressed the area he’d just hit. “I don’t like to mark your skin,” he said, “but you forced me to. Don’t make me do it again,” he warned.
“You killed Drew,” I repeated.
He tilted his head. “Of course I did.”
“Why?” I asked, horrified.
“You sound upset.”
My eyes bugled. “You fucking killed someone, Eddie!” I tried to scream, but my voice was husky.
“Yeah, but you didn’t like him. He was always rude to you. Whenever he was backstage, it was obvious you wanted rid of him. I did you a favor.”
I regarded him in horror. “You’re insane.” It just popped out. I realized, after I said the words, that they weren’t ideal.
A hurricane settled over Eddie’s boyish face and he jerked up. “You don’t say that, Lexie,” he warned. “I know you’re upset. It’s because of him. I just can’t figure out why, why you let him back in.” He twisted the barrel of the gun against his temple in a confused gesture. “He’s not right for you. Only I am. I’ll make sure you know that. After I kill him.”
I froze. “What?” I asked, my voice shaking.
Eddie tilted his head again. “After I kill him, you’ll have a clearer head. You’ll be able to see.”
I struggled against my bonds like a banshee. “You won’t touch him,” I screamed.
Another hit landed on my temple, this one harder and jarring me. “Don’t raise your voice to me,” he said quietly. Dangerously.
I blinked, knowing I was playing this the complete wrong way. I needed to play along with crazy.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered through the pain. “I know, you’re right. I was just upset at the thought of… you getting hurt. You don’t need to put yourself in danger by going after him. We’re together now.”
I had to stall him. I had to play along. Killian would come. I knew that. Emma would notice me gone and Killian would come for me.
Right now, I totally understood his need for vengeance as the man who had almost killed my friend stood in front of me. The person who’d killed Drew.
Somehow the cops had gotten the wrong guy. It made sense now, how he could have gotten the photos and access to my house. He came and went with sound gear all the time. He’d even hung out with us at the house a couple of times. My blood was ice. It was him, the entire time.
Eddie squinted at me. “You think he could hurt me?” he asked, fury lurking in his tone.
“Of course not,” I said quickly. “He’s just not worth the risk. It’s easier to hurt him when he sees me with a real man. The one I belong with.” I paused, trying to wiggle my arms from my binds. “You’re right. I was blind before. But seeing you, seeing how far you’d go to get us together, I realize…” I trailed off, my binds loosening.
Eddie came forward, eyes lit with hopeful insanity. “Realized what?”
I glared at him. “That you’re a fucking crazy person,” I informed him. Then I freed my hands from the binds I’d loosened and didn’t hesitate in landing my right hook on his temple. The impact jarred my entire arm, but I didn’t let the pain stop me. I let it fuel me. I surged off the chair and let my foot impact Eddie’s shin, bringing him crumpling to the floor. Time slowed and I had to make the decision on whether to scramble for the gun that had tumbled out of his hands across the stage in the opposite direction of the exit or run.
I made the choice to run.
The wrong one it seemed.
Because when I made it to the side of the stage, the gunshot echoed through the room in a similar fashion to how my music did. It was only after that that I recognized the blossom of pain in my stomach. It stopped me in my tracks and then brought me to the floor.
“Tell me you’ve fuckin’ got something,” he barked into the phone. He was pacing outside a restaurant in West Hollywood where cops had shut down half the street. One was interviewing a tear-stained Emma while a hard-faced Wyatt hovered at her side.
It had been almost two hours. Two hours that his heart hadn’t beat and he hadn’t sucked in a clean breath.
An ambulance further down the street had loaded Clyde into it half an hour ago, trying to staunch the bleeding in his gut. No word from the hospital yet on his condition.
Killian felt like he was bleeding out with him. He could hardly stand upright. Lexie was gone. The fucker had snatched her from the restaurant after he’d neutralized Clyde.
Bull and half the club were on their way. That was the hardest call Killian had ever had to make. To hear the utter devastation in Bull’s tone. And the accusation. He hadn’t gone out and said it, but he didn’t have to.
Killian had failed her.
He’d fuckin failed her, and if anything happened to her… no.
“Might have,” Keltan said, voice grim. He’d had all his boys out looking for Lexie and all chasing every lead they’d abandoned after they thought he’d been caught.
“Roadie, been with Lexie for a year and a bit, he raised some red flags. My boys were gonna look it up, then we heard from the cops. Just came from his place. No one home, but he happened to leave his front door wide open. Found some creepy shit.”
Killian clenched his fists. “What sort of shit?”
“Photos,” was all Keltan said.
Killian took a deep breath, trying to swallow the dragon at his throat. “You got a lock on him?”
“I’ve got my guy triangulating his cell right now.” There was a pause, glancing down at hid phone. “We’ve got a location.”
Killian jogged to his bike. “Tell me, now,” he barked.
“Bro, I can have my boys meet you, have backup. They’re half an hour out. I’ll be there in forty.”
“Fuckin’ tell me,” he roared.
Keltan rattled of the address.
Killian roared off in the direction of the area. He could get there in ten.
He hoped to fuckin’ God he’d get there in time.
I’m coming, baby.
Getting shot hurt. A lot.
I had no idea how Killian managed to control a car and keep calm when he’d been shot five years ago.
It was like a red-hot poker had been shoved in my side and it kept getting hotter and hotter.
“Why did you make me do that?” Eddie asked hysterically, hands on his head. He was pacing in front of me while I pressed my hands to my bleeding stomach. There was a lot of blood. It worried me.
Quite a bit.
Eddie had set me back on the chair and I was slumped on it.
“You keep making me hurt you,” he babbled.
“I’m sorry,” I gritted out. “But you need to get me to a hospital, Eddie.”
He didn’t seem to hear me; he just kept pacing. Then he paused, jerking his head up as if he heard something.
I jerked up too, ignoring the pain. Someone was here.
Eddie rushed to me and placed the cold barrel at my temple, putting his finger to my lips.
I swallowed my fear. It was draining away in a way that worried me. Fear was a survival instinct, something that kept your heart beating in situations like this. What did it mean if my fear was trickling out of me?
Eddie scooted the chair so that we no longer faced the invisible audience but the sides of the stage. I cried out as the movement caused the pain to worsen.
It exploded into agony when I saw the person emerge from the stage. When I saw Killian’s blank face flicker with panic as he focused on the blood seeping out of the middle of my torso.
Killian raised his gun, his jaw granite and eyes wild. “Let her go,” he growled.
Eddie laughed. “Never. We’re meant to be together.” He pressed the gun against my temple once more. “Put down your gun or I’ll blow her skull apart. After that, you’ll kill me I’m sure, but I’m happy to follow Lexie into the afterlife, where we can finally be together. I’m not afraid of death.” His voice dripped with crazy, and worse, s
incerity. He gazed at me with a cocktail of fanatical adoration and rage in his eyes. “My violent soul craves the same tragic end,” he whispered my own words back to me, and they’d never sounded so ugly.
I couldn’t focus on that anymore, on the possibility of my end. Instead, I sought solace in Killian’s gaze. He heard the promise in Eddie’s voice too. He immediately lowered the gun, his gaze was burning into me.
“Now slide it over here,” Eddie commanded.
Killian did as he said, his entire body taut. I could see him shaking with fury and frustration. Eddie had all the power right now.
“You’re going to be okay, freckles,” he choked out.
I nodded. “I know,” I whispered through the tears.
Killian’s eyes focused on Eddie. “Kill me,” he ordered. “You want me gone? Shoot me. Just get her to a fuckin’ hospital.”
“Kill, no,” I cried out.
He ignored me. “That’s what you want, right? Me out of the way? I’ll die. Gladly. You can have your life with her as long as I’m dead and you get her treated for that.” He nodded to the wound in my stomach. His eyes glistened. He knew. The sorrow in his face told me he knew if I didn’t get to a hospital, and soon, I was gone. I could see that knowledge tearing him apart.
Eddie regarded him. Then he laughed. It was that crazy laugh that made me flinch. “You’d do it? Die for her.”
“In a second.”
The gun didn’t leave my temple. “You hear that, baby? He’d die for you.”
“Killian,” I croaked out.
“It’s okay, freckles.” His voice was firm, confident, but his eyes were etched in pain.
It wasn’t. None of this was okay. I couldn’t watch Killian leave this world. I jerked my head up. “You know I’m dying, right?” I asked Eddie. “You said we’d be together in the afterlife. We can be, but not if you hurt him. Not if you lay a finger on him.”
Raw, carnal energy filtered from Killian. “Shut up, freckles,” he commanded, his voice hoarse.
Eddie must have seen him move because he pressed the barrel into my head. “Not another fuckin’ step or you’ll see the inside of her skull,” he hissed.
Killian immediately froze.
Eddie looked between us. I tried not to focus on the pain in my stomach. Or the scarier thing of it retreating. That didn’t mean good things. But if it meant Killian didn’t have to die, I’d gladly give into the darkness tugging at the edges of my vision.
“Isn’t this something? You’d both die for each other,” Eddie mused. His jaw was hard. “Tell you what, Lexie, while I think on this, I need you to do something for me. I need you to sing.”
I glanced up. “What?”
“You heard me. Either way, one of the men who love you is going to die tonight, and I’m not a cruel man. If it’s to be him”—he nodded his head to Killian—“he deserves to hear your voice one last time.”
“No,” I choked out through the splitting of my newly healed heart.
The gun left my temple and pointed in Killian’s direction. He didn’t even jerk. In fact, his body relaxed slightly the moment the gun left my head.
My hungry gaze roved over Killian, over the boy I loved who’d turned into the man who inhabited my entire being. He was frozen like a statue of himself, a snapshot of this moment in time, fury and fear paralysing him. I knew this because of the way his fists were clenched at their sides, at how the muscles of his biceps seemed to pulse and the veins above them were raised, almost bursting from the skin. I imprinted all of this into my heart, drinking him up and letting this image chase away the last of my pain and fear. I centered my gaze on his strong chest, knowing my name was tattooed on there and the words from my soul trailed on his ribs. And when my eyes finally met his, time stopped. The world paused and it seemed the universe gave us that one moment away from the horror of reality, the imminent and permanent separation. It was just us. I tried to tell him everything I could with that gaze, pouring every word that would be left unsaid into it. Tell him how much he meant to me. Problem was, that would take an eternity. We didn’t have that. We had the handful of minutes, the length of a song. I knew, from the way my skin seemed to lose its warmth with every passing second and how the pain that had been excruciating was fading away, I was dying.
“Sing,” Eddie commanded. He shook the gun at Killian in a warning gesture. “Sing or you watch him die.”
I struggled to sit up, my body taking a second to obey my commands, even then it was like moving underwater. There was still pain deep down, enough to make me suck in a breath, but not enough to give me hope. I knew now, what pain was. Pain was life. Whether it be excruciating from a bullet tearing through your flesh or an exquisite pain from loving someone and losing them, pain was the dictator of life. The trademark.
Killian’s jaw jerked as he took in my small gesture of discomfort, his eyes tearing away from mine to sear into my blood-soaked torso. For one split second, pure panic and terror cloaked his beautiful face. That look sent ripples of agony through me, worse than a bullet. Because that was Killian’s pain, his fear. He knew. He knew life was leaving me, and I got the glimpse of what he would be once I was gone. It terrified me enough to try and grasp that pain and use it as an anchor to cling to this world. To Killian.
The moment of terror was gone and Killian’s face went cold and dark. I knew his darkness took over for him. His demon. “I’m going to kill you,” he informed Eddie, his voice arctic. “It’s going to be slow and enduring and never ending.”
I shivered at the promise in his tone. Killian stepped forward, as if to make good on his promise, not fazed by the gun pointed at him. For one horrible second, my panic mirrored Killian’s at the thought of Eddie squeezing the trigger at Killian’s advancing form. Thankfully, this was short lived as the barrel found its home at my temple once more.
Killian froze once again.
“You don’t move,” Eddie said, unflinching in the face of Killian’s fury. “Because if you do, you’ll get to feel the warmth of her brains against your face.” His voice was even, conversational. It was chilling, a hallmark on just far down the rabbit hole of insanity he had tumbled.
How had he hid it? How had I not noticed how sick and twisted this man was?
Killian’s face hardened, so much so I feared it might shatter. “You don’t need to point that at her.” His eyes were focused on the gun. “You want to use it, use it on me, like a man.”
Eddie sighed dramatically, like a father might when his child wasn’t listening. “We’ve been through this. You’re not in control here.” Eddie used his free hand to push the hair from my clammy forehead. I glared at him and flinched from his touch. He chose to ignore this. “I’m in control. I’m finally here for Lexie. You’ll do as I say, won’t you?”
I swallowed the grit in my throat. “If you don’t hurt him, I’ll do whatever you say.”
“Freckles…” Killian’s tortured voice hung in the air, but I schooled myself and kept Eddie’s gaze.
Eddie smiled. “So kind. It’s what I love most about you.” He paused. “No, it was your voice that did it, that connected us. The first time I heard you, I knew. I knew you were singing to me. So I want you to sing, now before my patience runs out and I shoot him.” He nodded to Killian.
Silence descended after his words. Not the beautiful silence that had settled around me ever since I’d let Killian back into my soul, but stagnant, bitter silence. The silence of sorrow. The silence of good-bye.
I closed my eyes, unable to live in that silence, unable to accept that these were the last moments I had with Killian, in the company of a killer, while I bled to death right in front of him. So instead, I went somewhere else, to that beautiful silent place that was introduced to me six years ago in the parking lot of a garage.
And I sang. Not for Eddie. Not for the gun at my temple. For Killian. For us. To try and tell him everything he needed to hear that I only had three minutes
to say. Brooke Fraser’s “Hymn” floated into the air and I poured the last of my life into those heart-breaking words. I used every inch of energy I had left to sing the last words I would ever sing to the man I loved.
The cold grip of death left me as I let the warmth of memories wash over me. As the song entered my soul, the terror left me. Unable to sing in darkness any longer, I opened my eyes. They immediately met ice blue eyes drenched in sorrow, in despair. In love.
A single tear trailed down Killian’s beautiful face as I sang the last of those words to him. The last good-bye. As that bitter silence replaced what had been beautiful with the end of the song, I clung to Killian’s gaze like a life raft, needing his eyes to be the last thing I saw before I succumbed to the darkness creeping at the sides of my vision.
I felt the loss of his gaze when his eyes flickered back, behind me. If I hadn’t been moments away from the final silence of death, maybe I would have noted something in that gaze. Maybe I would have been able to cling to the hope it held. Instead, the moment his gaze left mine was the moment I let go of that grip I had on life. On reality.
Then there was only darkness.
It took him a moment to notice them. Longer than it should have. Long enough to make him hate himself more than he ever could. Because maybe that moment might have made a difference, might have been the difference between life or death. For Lexie. For him. Because as soon as her light left this world, that was the moment all light was gone from him.
Perpetual darkness.
Infinite hell was what awaited him if his worst fears were realized. It was what he got a taste of the moment he walked into this fucking stadium and saw Lexie, saw her blood spreading from a fucking gunshot wound in her gut. One that was draining the life from her every second he stood there, unable to do a fucking thing. His girl, his life, was sitting right in front of him, bleeding, dying. And he couldn’t do a fucking thing.