Come To Me (Owned Book 3) (19 page)

T
he casket was black and polished with silver handles. Black orchids rested on top. A light mist fell from the overcast sky. The funeral procession walked with somber determination. There was only one open grave that day.

That was either good fortune or bad, depending on how you looked at it.

I’m going with pretty fucking terrible.

The preacher opened his book and began to read. Of the five of us in attendance, only four turned to watch him. I remained motionless, eyes trapped on the sky as if it was about to fall in any second. Grace gently touched me, probably trying to get my attention, I don’t know. Eyes up like that I probably looked like a fucking psycho—

“Psycho.”

“Addict.”

Murderer.

“I killed him…” It was going to full on rain soon. I wondered if it would have rained that night, might he still be alive. Probably not. The preacher continued to talk, not bothering with me.

“I am a killer,” I mused as droplets fell on my cheeks. “Add that to my repertoire. Psycho. Addict. And murderer. Is that a hat trick?” The laugh wasn’t supposed to happen, it just kind of did. Like a lot of the shit with Vic and me, it just came out. And soon the laugh transformed into a wet and wailing thing. Or maybe that was the rain.

I took a step toward the casket and oh man, you could just
feel
their unease. They probably wondered: what is this crazy harlot gonna do now? What
hadn’t
I already done? That was the question they should have been asking. The preacher clicked his tongue because I wasn’t simply standing and holding my grief inside.

“Sweetie?” Lissie asked, her hand hovering just above my back. Eli stepped toward me and I…I lost it.

“Get the fuck off me Eli!” The words brought me to the ground. I didn’t do it on purpose. I wasn’t trying to display my mourning like a one-woman show.
Hey, come check out this bitch as she unravels before everyone in a fucking cemeter
y
!
I just needed to see inside the grave. Maybe if I looked I would see…
it
. That part of me Vic had taken when he died.

The past few days there had been nothing. I’d thought I knew what nothing felt like, but I was so naively unaware. It was as if I was walking through the world without color, without sound, and without warmth. Everything was shadows now.

Vic had held a vital spot inside me. When he died it was torn out. I was bleeding and everyone was giving me flowers and casseroles to fill up the hole.

Did you know you won’t immediately stop asking for them? I was saying things like “Oh, I’ll go get Vic,” or “Let me ask Vic.” Even as we prepared for his funeral, I was about to ask Vic if he wanted something. Something for his own fucking funeral.

My head was in my hands and the pretty black dress Lissie had lent me was getting wet and muddy; it was probably worth thousands too. I felt their hands on me, trying to comfort me, but it wasn’t right. It didn’t
fit
. That wasn’t what was supposed to go inside the hole.

We had to finish, though. We had to finish this funeral.

I stood up and flung a hand at the preacher, because fuck that guy. Wasn’t this his
job?
Why was he acting like I was the first person to ever mourn in front of him?

He couldn’t have had much time left in his sermon, but that place I lived in now, you know the one, the shadow place? Well, that place existed beyond time, so I felt their small worried glances at my now torn up knees. I saw the hurried glances between them as they wondered at my red eyes filling up with unshed tears. I saw all of that, and I felt it spread on and on.

Then the preacher closed his book, and suddenly time was too fucking short. The sound was like a judge’s mallet when the pages kissed. I should have been better prepared, I fucking know that okay? Obviously a funeral ends. I’m not living in a Tim Burton film where the whole thing is some weird homage to a funeral.
I get it.

Still, when he closed the book, and the guards raised the guns, and the casket started to lower, the last bit of me snapped. I screamed and flung myself on the casket. Don’t try and ask me why. Reason had left the building. I was a sobbing, heaving, mess off loss.

I knew Vic wasn’t inside the coffin

He was ashes.

Well what the fuck ever. All I had left was inside the coffin. All I had left were squished orchids. All I had left was about to disappear beneath six feet of earth.

I wasn’t ready. I could never
be
ready. Life didn’t even prepare you for the living, much less when the living ended up dead…

Lissie, Zoe, Eli, and Grace all grabbed me by my feet, my hands, my waist—anything, basically, and pulled me off the casket. I didn’t fight. My fight had died with the man in the box. I fell back into them, limp and broken, my eyes speaking the words my tongue refused to acknowledge: I wanted to be inside the box.

I should never have left.

I should have died with him.

T
here was something supernatural about watching my own funeral. But now, standing on the loose dirt of my own grave, I felt more alive than ever. Cocking my head to the side, I read my headstone. It protruded from the ground almost ostentatiously.

Vic Wall

Beloved Lover, Brother, Friend

Grace must have picked that out. I couldn’t imagine Lennox choosing something so…clean. No, that wasn’t the right word. Formal wasn’t the right word either. It was traditional, which Lenny wasn’t.

I tilted my head more, scrutinizing. “Vic Wall” was etched in big, bold letters. My name taunted me from the grave.

“We might have to live with a goddamn chink because your cunt is broken, but don’t mean I have to call him that. He’s Vic. It’s a good, strong American name.”

I shook my head at the memory and turned to walk away. There was no way for any of them to know I wasn’t born “Vic.” And I guess I’d never thought about who I would die as until it was glaring at me, etched in granite.

It didn’t matter, either way.

My feet sunk into the wet grass as I walked farther from my grave. Seeing my headstone was a risk not worth taking, but I thought seeing my etched name might cement my determination. The funeral had made me waver and question what I’d done.
They even had the honor guard. It was more than I expected…more than I deserved.

I remembered when the man had opened his book, Lenny kept her eyes up. When Lissie had gently touched her, trying to get her attention, she still kept her eyes on the sky. Her lips started to move, but it was impossible to hear what she was saying from where I stood. By the way the preacher’s eyes had narrowed with contempt, it wasn’t good.

Eyes still on the heavens, Lenny kept speaking. Everyone stopped to watch her. She took a step toward the casket, hovering precariously over the empty grave. Tension thicker than the misty air clogged their throats as they watched her take another step toward the grave. Eli reached out toward her but she shook him off and fell to the ground, the only evidence of sobs her heavy shaking. They all watched like statues stuck in time.

The memory of Lennox falling to the ground, her black skirt flung out around her body gathering mud, would be carved into my mind more than any headstone. Her black dress had spilled around her body like a shadow. She gathered mud and wetness, but it didn’t seem to bother her. Nothing seemed to bother her and yet everything seemed torture. The gentle caress of a friend. The reassuring word from a sister. It all seemed crucifixion. When she’d fallen, I’d reached my hand out, grasping at raindrops.

Eventually Lenny had stood and flung an angry hand at the preacher. The preacher opened his book and continued. No one watched him. They all watched her. They watched her unshed tears. They studied the rips in her skirt. They studied the scrapes on her knees. And they studied the tension in her limbs ready to uncoil.

Slowly the funeral ended. The preacher closed his book and motioned for the guard. As they raised their guns and the casket lowered, Lenny screamed. The sound was so loud it could be heard even behind the trees, where I sat watching as only a ghost could. Still, in the end, my funeral was quiet and understated.

Except for one thing.

Lennox.

Her red hair was ragged and clung to her skin. Her eyes bloodshot. Her lips cracked. When her screaming ceased, she’d flung herself on the casket. In that moment I wanted to fling myself too. I wanted to fling every goddamn thing that I’d done and go to her.

Luckily I was too far away. I’d kept myself hidden between trees, cloaked under dark fabric. Grace and Eli had pulled Lenny off, and Lissie and Zoe kept her restrained. The preacher gave Lennox one last scornful look.

From behind the trees I’d watched. I’d watched as my friends struggled to hold my lover against falling back to my casket. I’d watched the love of my life break into pieces over and over again. My heels found the soft earth so I didn’t run up and grab her. I wanted to run up, hug her, comfort her, and let her know everything was going to be okay.

It was a lie, of course.

Nothing would ever be okay again, but at least they would be safe.

K
eeping a low profile two cars back, I followed the group. I hadn’t gone to my birth mother’s funeral, not that it would have been anything like mine. Child services asked if I wanted to go, but I said no. It was the first time I’d ever asserted myself, the first time I’d ever let on that something was wrong with the way we had lived.

Years later I still hadn’t visited her gravesite. She’d pushed me out her cunt and that was the end of that. I was sent to live with the Walls, who were now also dead. Not many get to say they were lucky enough to be orphaned twice in their life.

Now I was dead.

You could say my funeral began the day I was plucked from my unit in Afghanistan. Or I could go back further, to my junkie mother who forced me into foster care the day she overdosed and left me to die…which then forced me to the Walls, a lovely abusive couple that then forced me out on my own at the ripe age of seventeen. Either way, my funeral song was being written long before the fire.

It was past the time to point fingers though. I was dead and buried, and the only reason I was sticking around was to make sure the dirt didn’t get kicked up. It was nearly impossible to get information, though. I couldn’t use any of the channels I’d used before without alerting someone I was still alive. All my old aliases, codes, and usual backdoors had died with Vic Wall.

“Christ on a motherfucking Sunday cracker Vic.” Seven lit a cigarette while the fire blazed around us. Fifteen minutes had passed since Lenny left. I was beginning to accept my end, then that asshole showed up.

“You said to make it look real,” I coughed, blood smearing across my hand.

“Well, let’s go get you that Oscar.” Seven bent down and with a great heave, pushed aside the beam that kept me pinned. He stuck out his hand. I didn’t have time to wonder what it meant to lean on a Boogieman, because without him I would have burned, and so would my loved ones.

Parking my stolen car, I watched the group walk into a bar. Lenny was already leaning on Zoe. Either she was already drunk or she was hurting too badly. Maybe both. And, yeah, it killed that I couldn’t know which.

Seven had said I was going to need his help, but I hadn’t realized how much. About an hour after I received the black card, Seven sent me a message. All it read was, “Make it look real and your ass might still get saved. PS: Put some Cocoroons in the pantry.”

It was just as vague and infuriating as the man, but it gave me a small sliver of hope. There was no plan attached to the message, so I continued with my own.

When I’d first talked to Seven and he hinted he would help me out of my shit, I never attached much hope to it. That would have been like being low on rent and buying a lottery ticket. At the time, I wasn’t just behind on payments, my loans were defaulting and the sharks were swimming at my heels. Then Seven came down at hour twelve like some dark angel.

Without Seven I would have been dead and, yeah, maybe that would have been better. Still, it wasn’t my family’s fault they’d hitched their wagon to a broken horse. I was back from the dead now, and I was going to fix my fucking mistakes.