Page 99 of Reaper
What's left to lose?
Chapter Forty-Four
Reaper
“If there’s even an ounce of love for me in your heart, you fucking monster, you’ll let me go.”
Those words etch themselves, jagged, raw, into the beating, broken flesh of my heart as I watch Adriana flee the Triad den. When the door slams shut behind her, I stand and start after her, until a hand takes me by the shoulder. I whirl to see Tank.
“Don’t,” he says.
“Don’t? I need to go after her.”
“You’d be making a big mistake, brother. Her world just imploded, and she’s in no condition to talk or listen, just like you’re in no condition to change her damn mind. Let her go.”
Anger flares inside me. Anger and something else, something deeper, that burns at the thought of losing Adriana. I rip free and take the stairs two at a time, the stairs vibrating under my boots. My chest feels like it’s being chewed from the inside. Her voice is still in me, a serrated thing carving deeper with every step. I slam through the door and night swallows me — neon bleeding from a busted sign, wet asphalt reflecting it like an open wound. I catch a glimpse of dark hair, the edge of a shadow, then nothing. She’s gone around the corner, faster than my wrecked heart can manage.
“Reaper,” Tank calls behind me.
I keep moving. The street smells of frying oil and bleach. My eyes scan for her, any trace — footfall, engine, the ghost of her scent. Nothing but the growl of a distant bike and the hum of cheap fluorescent lights.
Tank steps in front of me, square and solid as a cinderblock wall. “Stand down.”
“Get out of my way.” My voice sounds like glass in a blender.
“You go after her now, you blow this for good.” He keeps his palms open, nonthreatening, but he doesn’t budge. “She swung on you, yeah? You felt that? She screamed. She cried. That ain’t apathy, brother. That means you still live in there somewhere. It’s raw, it’s loud, and it ain’t ready to hear you.”
“I can’t let her walk into the dark thinking she was right about me.” I can hardly breathe. The alley amplifies my pulse until it’s all I hear. “She thinks I’m a monster.”
“She’s seeing nothing but fire.” Tank’s eyes sweep the street, then land back on me. “Give it air. Give her ten, give her twenty-four. You chase her now, you turn maybe into never. She asked you to let her go. If you don’t respect that, she’ll make it permanent.”
“I already lost her,” I say, and it scrapes my throat coming out. The idea of not moving, of letting space expand between us, feels like drowning slowly. “Space is just another word for goodbye nobody wants to say.”
“Or it’s what keeps the door from slamming,” he says. “Don’t be stupid.”
I step left, he steps with me. I step right, same. My fists clench and unclench. I imagine catching up to her, falling to my knees in the street, begging if I have to, telling her the parts of me I keep locked away. All I can do is picture her walking farther, and farther, and farther.
I won’t lose her.
Not a chance in hell.
“Get out of my way,” I repeat.
“No,” he says, and his jaw flexes. “Not tonight.”
The small switch in me flips. I don’t think about it. I just throw my right hand like I’ve thrown a thousand. It connects flush with his cheekbone, a shock of pain ricocheting up my arm, heat flaring in my knuckles. Tank’s head snaps, jaw tight as steel, and he eats it with a grunt instead of a curse. He surges back, shoulder like a battering ram, and blasts the wind out of me. My boots skid on wet asphalt. I come back swinging — left, right, a hook that would topple a bull — and he rolls with it, forearms up, takes one on the meat and one on the ear. He answers with a wrecking-ball body shot. My ribs throb, and the world whites out in a halo.
“Stop,” he huffs, already moving in to clinch. “You ain’t hearing me.”
“I hear her,” I snarl, forehead bouncing off his brow in a dirty crush. Pain blooms. “I hear her every second.”
We collide and ricochet into the alley mouth, the dark clutching at us like a corpse’s hand. A trash bag splits under our boots with a stomach-turning rip, sour rot and fry grease curling into my nose. He tries to bear-hug me to stillness, chest to chest, his breath steady in that soldier way. I twist, hook a leg, and slam him into the bricks so hard dust sneezes down. I drive a knee into his thigh, looking for deadness.
“She needs to be mad without you there,” he says between clenched teeth, voice steady even as his cheek bleeds. “She needs to feel it and not have to manage you at the same time. Give her space to grieve.”
“I go now.” My knuckles are slick; my hands are bloody. “I go now, or I never get her back.”
“God fucking damn it, brother. I’m trying to help you. Fuck, you got me talking about feelings, don’t you fucking understand that?”
