Page 38 of King: Darker Than Romance

“Eden.” King called my name, his tone heavy with worry. I looked up at him. His face was all distorted. “Give me the gun, Eden,” he coaxed. I raised it in his direction. “What are you, doing, Eden?”

“All of this is your fault, King.”

My conscious was screaming that it was partially my own. I’d begged him to ruin me even after he’d warned me.

But the irrational part of me didn’t care. I aimed the gun at King’s heart, I closed my eyes and pulled the trigger. I heard the pew, which was immediately followed by two bangs. I felt the burn of the bullets entering my chest. I hit the floor hard, my head banging against the tile. I didn’t even fear dying. I was just so fucking tired.

Just as all the pain started to ebb away King called my name. My eyes flew open.

Eden: Where it all began.

“This is your chance to save yourself, Eden.”

I raised my hand to my chest. My heart was pounding, but there was no pain or holes. I looked up at King, he was fine. I looked around the room, no Momma, no henchmen. I let out a heavy breath. I had imagined it all. Maybe foresight is twenty, twenty, or some cosmic being was giving me a way out of a bad future.

“Tell me to leave.” King stared directly at me. His gaze heated my body.

Whatever daydream or premonition I’d had was quickly forgotten. Even if I was one hundred percent sure what I saw would come to happen, I would still choose to do it. My need for him was thick and sticky, clinging to me like honey. I could feel it in my very being, like a visceral force. I shook my head. There was no way I was telling him to leave “I want this, I want you,” I said.

He gave me a hard look. I could see the possessiveness in his penetrating glare. Something in me screamed for me to change my mind, but I couldn’t. I was too far gone.

“No more Ken doll. No other men. Just me and you, Eden. Forever.”

Epilogue

King: Tatted Up Bullet Holes.

2040

My daughter Lilith threw her head back and laughed. “You keep telling me this story and I’m going to start believing it, Father.” She pushed herself away from the sink to turn and face me. I pulled the top of my shirt down, revealing to her the bullet hole we’d been talking about. Well, not exactly a bullet hole, a wound from where a bullet grazed me. Covering it was her mother’s name written in cursive. Her mother who sat across from me knew the routine, she pulled down her shirt revealing an actual bullet hole, right next to her heart, she had a crown tatted over it.

I bit my lip as I stared at her. She was so beautiful. The years had been too kind to Eden. She and Lilith looked more like nearly identical twin sisters than mother and daughter. They both had their newly colored, red hair piled on top of their heads in messy buns. Lilith was just taller and slimmer than her mother and she had my eyes. She was the daughter I’d dreamt about.

Eden rolled her eyes at me before speaking to our daughter. “I wish he would stop bringing this story up, every birthday it’s the same story.”

I shook my head. I would never. After being shot in the chest, Eden didn’t wake up for nearly nine months. Going into labor brought her out of her coma.

“It’s her birthday story, we tell the story on her birthday.”

Lilith made her way to the table, she sat in the middle; she looked at me then my mother.

“Y’all story might be easier to swallow if one of you told me why Mother shot you.”

Eden waved in my direction. “Tell her.” She dared me.

I shrugged. I didn’t care if she knew. I trusted her. She had more of me in her than her mother. She could handle the truth.

“Granny and your mother’s first husband really didn’t die of Covid-19. I paid a medical examiner a lot of money to say they did, then I had them burned. I flushed their ashes down the toilet. I killed the husband; your mother killed her mother. Your mother shot me, because of all the fucked-up shit I did to her when we were younger, but she had her eyes closed when she did it, so the bullet only grazed me. My associates Warren and Jack, who are dead now shot her thinking they were protecting me. She died in my arms but was bought back by an EMT. You know for a fact that she was in a coma before you brought her out, you can look that up. What you don’t know is that the first two years of your life she barely spoke a word to me. She only forgave me after I spent years groveling. She still won’t agree to marry me.” I paused to take a breath before continuing “I also had to pay for her to go to law school and play stay at home dad while she got her degree.” Eden had been practicing law for fifteen years, Lilith was following her footsteps.

“She also told me once that she imagined everything that happened between us in the future, in book form, from both our points of view.”

Eden blinked rapidly at me. She shook her head.

Lilith mimicked her mother, then she stared at me hard for a moment “Something is wrong with you.” She said when she finally spoke.

“She’s the one that says she had premonitions, but I’m the one you say this to. You wound me, daughter.” I teased, with my hand held over my heart dramatically.

She turned to her mother, easily dismissing the truth she asked for and me. “Could you help me get ready for my birthday date?” She asked.

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