: Chapter 42

“Jesus fucking Christ.” I suck in a deep breath to cool the burning in my lungs, but it doesn’t help. I listen to her voicemail again, and just like all the other times, a fresh welt is sliced across my heart. She’s barely coherent over the sound of her teeth chattering and her sobs. I imagine her freezing and shivering in the back of a cab in her soaking wet dress, wondering what the fuck happened. We should have talked to her. I should have stopped them …

“Stop fucking torturing yourself, Fitch,” Zeke barks as he takes a fresh bottle of water from the fridge.

He’s right, listening to this on repeat is fucking torture. I would rather stick needles in my goddamn ears than hear her cry like that again. The raw pain in her voice makes me want to throw up. Nobody is that good of an actress. “We fucked up. We never should have done that.” I sink to the floor, my head in my hands.

West sighs. “She lied to us, Xander. What the fuck were we supposed to do?”

“We could have fucking talked to her like normal fucking human beings,” I shout. “What if this is all some big fucking misunderstanding? What if there’s an explanation for all of this that doesn’t involve the woman we love, who has shown us nothing but love and kindness, royally fucking us over?”

“Why would we talk to her, Xander?” West shouts back. “She had plenty of fucking chances to come clean about whatever the fuck she’s been hiding, and she didn’t. She lied to our fucking faces that day she met Nico Constantine in his hotel room. So we just let her lie to us some more? Get some juicy sound bites for her article?”

“Fuck that,” Zeke growls.

I glare at them, rage at the injustice of the situation simmering in my veins. I watched Zeke earlier. I saw the pain on her face when he destroyed her in front of all those people. And West held me back from going to her. “You didn’t have to be so fucking cruel, Zeke,” I yell. “You didn’t have to fucking eviscerate her in public like that.”

He crouches down, his face twisted with anger. “No? You think she’s not going to fucking eviscerate us when her article comes out in two days?”

I press my lips together before I say something that I can never take back. I love him and I always will, but he’s the cruelest person I’ve ever known when he thinks he’s been wronged. He stares at me, and I try to forgive him. And I almost do after I see the pain in his eyes and consider his deep-seated fear of betrayal. But I can’t. Not yet, anyway.

I jump up from the floor and head to her bedroom. Being surrounded by her things is gonna hurt like a motherfucker, but I need to feel it. I need to feel something that has to do with her, even if it’s only pain.

“Fitch!” Zeke calls after me, but in a resigned tone, West tells him to leave me be.

Yeah, leave me be, you heartless fucking bastards.