Come To Me (Owned Book 3) (18 page)

I remembered the firefighters breaking into the house. I remembered screaming bloody murder as they pulled me out of the collapsing shack we called a home. I remembered thinking desperately that we had popcorn cooking, and if we didn’t salvage it, I wouldn’t eat for a month.

I remembered not wanting to leave her. Even now with the knowledge I had, knowing she was a shitstain on humanity, nothing but a meth-addicted waste of life, I still felt the way that little boy had. Love is funny that way, I guess.

I remembered how Lenny used to think I lied to her.

About everything.

About my past.

About my present.

About who I was.

The thing was, I wasn’t lying. You can’t lie if you don’t know you’re doing it. Sure, okay, some of that’s shit. I lied about a lot of things, but not everything. The point was, I repressed so much of it, I didn’t even realize I was lying. It just wasn’t
there
.

I’d heard stories of soldiers who came back from the war. To them trees were skeletons, fans were choppers, and kids playing in the street were potential suicide bombers. They were always fighting, the bombs still going off in their head. I knew I wasn’t the same.

I left the war early, then continued to fight for something else, someone I couldn’t even pretend was noble. So I shoved my bombs away in a neat little box and put that box somewhere where no one would find it, not even me.

Maybe if I’d let the bombs go off, the fire would have stayed inside my head.

Smoke curled above me, fire burned behind. From fire to fire, it would be a fitting end, a cleansing end. The world really needed to be cleansed of someone like me. I closed my eyes, then I heard something that curdled my blood.

“Vic?”

“L
enny?” I called back, hoping I was near death and hallucinating.

“Vic, where are you?” she answered, her voice sounding closer.

“Lenny get the fuck out of here, the building is about to collapse.” I waited, holding my breath, but not for fear of smoke inhalation. When there was no response I breathed, or at least did the best I could with the blackening air.

“There you are!” I shot up at her voice and immediately regretted the action. Groaning, I told Lenny to leave again.

“I’m not leaving without you. For some reason the fire department won’t listen to me. They think that no one is in here, but I knew better.” I nearly scoffed at Lenny’s observation. Of course GEM had bribed the fire department into leaving me to die. The firefighters probably had no idea I was in here. The order probably came from so high up they wouldn’t have thought to second-guess it.

Lenny sidled up next to me. She put her hands on my body and started feeling for injuries. I tried to push her off but I was sick with smoke. The gunshot didn’t feel that great, either.

“I can’t see for shit in this smoke.” Lenny coughed, feeling along my abs. When she reached my legs, I knew it was only a matter of seconds until she found the wound.

“So get out,” I said, trying to urge her away. “I’m the one who gave you that black eye, remember?”

“Of course I—oh my god, Vic! You’ve been shot!”

I chuckled. “My problems are a bit bigger than a gunshot, don’t you think?”

“I can get you out of here,” Lenny said. Her voice cracked, betraying her fear despite the determination. “I’ll drag you down the stairs…or throw you out the window onto a trampoline. They still do that right? I probably have time to run out and get the fire department…”

“It’s better this way, Lenny.”

“How?” she screamed. “How on earth is this better? Don’t give up, goddammit, Vic!” I smiled to myself, thinking that it was a bit perfect that her fire matched the one raging around us. You could even make the argument that she’d come undone. We’d all come undone.

Or maybe I was just sick with smoke.

“You’ll find someone who doesn’t lie,” I pressed. “Someone who can be better for you.”

“I never figured you for the self-loathing type, Vic.” I could practically hear the eye roll in her voice. “Now is definitely not the time to start.”

“I’m serious, Lenny.”

Lenny moved her hands from my leg to my arm. I felt my blood on them, warm and sticky. She clutched me as she spoke. “I want to spend forever with you Vic.”

“Maybe our forever isn’t supposed to last. Maybe our forever is short and intense and all consuming. We’re a neutron star, Lenny. When I die, I’ll take you with me. I don’t want to take you with me. Let me burn out alone.” For a mercenary, for a killer, for a glorified thug, I thought I’d said my peace well. Her sticky grip slowly slid away, and I thought we were done with it.

Then she slapped me on the chest. “You’re an ass.”

“That’s not a very nice thing to say to a dying man.” I laughed, despite the pain in my chest.

“You don’t have to die.” Lenny re-upped her grip, tugging at me so hard I felt it in every crevice of my body. “Get your ass up and let’s go.”

“Lennox—”

“Let’s go!”

“Lenny, I’m pinned.” A beam had fallen from above. I loved lofted and open ceilings. Of course that just meant when the previously beautiful architectural beam fell, it had a longer way to fall—specifically, onto my leg.

Lenny studied me for a moment, blue eyes piercing even through the smoke and the fire, then she lay down alongside me.

“D
o you think it could have been different?” Lennox whispered, holding my hand. We stared up at the falling cinders like they were falling stars, bright dots of yellow and tangerine that quickly faded to nothing. In our twisted universe, they were.

I thought on her question as fire raged, black smoke filling our never very happy apartment. “No,” I answered her. “It would have always ended this way. Maybe not today, maybe not next year, but eventually.”

“Let’s pretend.” Lenny gripped my hand tighter. “Let’s pretend for a minute that it isn’t today, but sixty years from now. We’re old, we’ve had a life, we’ve had kids, and we were happy.”

“What were our kids’ names?” I asked. Somewhere something popped and crackled.

Lenny turned on her side, smiling at me. “On the count of three!”

“Seriously?” A smile twitched at my lips.

“One…” she started. I nearly laughed. Only Lenny, amidst absolute ruin, would start a fucking game. “Two…” she continued. On three we both said their names.

“Romeo!” I shouted.

“Ophelia!” she said.

“Ophelia?” I laughed. “Why Ophelia?”

“Romeo?” Lennox scoffed, turning again to her back. “Could you be more cliché?”

“What did our kids grow up and become?” I said, getting away from the subject of my inevitable demise.

“I don’t know…” Lenny sighed. “Fucked up, probably.”

“Whatever they became, you were a loving mother and you supported them. I like to think they were artists.” Yeah, artists because with our genes they didn’t really have a choice. Still, despite her intense self-hatred, Lenny would never have turned it on the children. She would have been a brilliant mother. She would have supported them.

Lenny laughed. “Artists? Okay. Well, I think you were a strict father but they always knew you loved them.” The smoke had made it nearly impossible to see and it sounded like the fucking Fourth of July. When I heard the sound of creaking wood, I knew our time had come to an end.

“I would live any life with you, Lenny.” I gripped her hand, continuing, “But you have to go now.”

“Let’s talk about where we would live,” Lenny said, ignoring me. “Do you think we would have lived in Santa Barbara forever? I’ve always wanted to see Scotland.”

“You don’t have to burn with me, Lenny,” I pressed. “I don’t have to snuff you out, too. Go live in the light. Go be with everyone on the outside.”

“Funny, I always thought I would be the one to snuff you out,” she said dryly.

I pulled my hand from hers. “I’m serious, Lenny.”

“I’m not leaving you, Vic!” Lenny screamed. “You light me up. Before you I was just darkness. I don’t care if you take me, because if you leave me I’ll go back to that darkness anyway.”

“Look at me.” I grabbed Lenny’s face but she refused to look. “Look at me, dammit!”

Reluctantly Lennox opened her eyes. Deep blue, probing…for a moment I thought they might wash it all away. “You didn’t leave me,” I said, keeping her chin taut between my fingers. “You were here until the very end. You did everything you could, do you understand?” Tears fell freely from her lids. My sight grew blurry. I’d have liked to say it was from the smoke, but even I knew that was a lie. Water blurred my vision. Tears stained my skin.

“Say it Lennox,” I bit out.

“No.” She tried to jerk her chin out of my grasp but I held firm.

“Say it!” I yelled as more debris fell.

She spat out the words, spit hitting my face. “I was with you until the end.”

“Now you leave.” I let her chin go and shoved her off me. “Get the fuck out of here before you die with me.”

Lennox stumbled back. Refusing to meet my gaze she said, “I hate you, Vic Wall.”

“I know.” Fire was licking its way closer to us, the heat making me sweat. Lenny needed to get out, and quickly. Forget the debris—if she didn’t leave now the smoke would make her drop.

“I don’t want this to be the end.”

“I know.” At that point, I wasn’t sure if it was smoke inhalation or the crushing reality of our situation making my chest hurt.

“Why did you make me love you?” Tears streamed down her face, clearing the skin anew where soot and ash had darkened it. I opened my mouth to answer her, not prepared for what I was going to say. Another beam fell and with it carried some of the second floor. It separated us and then I could only see her shadow.

Her black outline stood unmoving for a few moments, the smoke wrapping around it like fog on a bayou. For a moment I thought I was going to have to throw shit at her or something to make her move, then just like that she vanished.

All the times when we’d been separated, when we’d fought, when we’d clawed at our perilous love like it would really kill us.

All the times I’d thought it was our end.

Had never prepared me for the reality of when it was truly over.

Lenny