I can hear him scream out from the few feet away, still on the phone. The clatter of the phone falling to the ground as I stare at her lying with my gun in her hand.
“What the fuck!” I hear him shout as his feet begin to slap the pavement.
I know what’s about to happen. He’s looking at me like this is all my fault.
Quickly, I grab the gun from where it lies, scrabbling backwards, and pushing myself up on my feet. He clears the distance to where she’s lying before he turns around and screams something that I can’t quite make out. I’m kick over the bike and peeling away from the scene.
Away from them…
Away from her.
As she lies with my bullet in her head.
?
SADIE
He walks in through the door, and I immediately can see the heaviness that weighs on him. “Ro.” I whisper out, rushing down the stairs and across the room towards him. The blood covering him. “Oh my god. Where is it.” I start to pull at his clothes looking for the source of the blood that’s soaking nearly all of him. He slowly stops my hands, grasping them in his own and he slowly shakes his head, his face telling me that he’s not really all there. “You don’t have to tell me.” I whisper to him. He looks down at me, and I see the line of blood that splattered his face through his visor. “Don’t explain or if you need to then do. Either way it won’t change a fraction of my opinion of you. I know this life is fucked up and I know that you’re at war right now. And all I want is for you to come home. As long as you walk through that door every night, then I don’t give a fuck what you had to do to get here. I love you. Yours is the only blood that I give a fuck about.” He blinks at me several times and I realize that I just confessed that I loved him for the first time. His eyes fractionally soften, and he nods his head. “Now take your clothes off.” I tell him as I tug up the shirt. “Boots too.” He toes them off and then unbuckles the belt, letting his jeans drop to the ground. “Go take a shower. I’ll take care of this.” I turn him around, pointing him up to the stairs and he nods his head, still in shock from whatever happened.
As soon as he starts up the stairs, I walk out of the door into the backyard. Opening the shed I grab out the small barre, dragging it into the backyard, I place his clothing and shoes in and then grab the lighter fluid dousing them with it, last, I grab the lighter from the grill.
The clothes engulf quickly, completely burning up in a matter of minutes. Sure, the amount of fluid I squirted on it probably helped.
Fingering the keys in my pocket, I grab the handle of the barrel and carry it around the side of the house to the car. Starting to place it in the trunk, I flinch as I start to sit it down on the floor, as my finger sears against the hot metal of the side of it. Not completely cool, yet. “Fuck.” I mumble to myself as I lift it back out of the trunk and sit it on the ground next to the car. Walking back up to the house, I walk inside, up the stairs. I can hear the shower running when I walk into the bedroom.
Moving into the bathroom I look at him as he stands in the shower, not even aware that I’m not in here. “Ro,” I call out to him, “I’ll be right back. Linc’s asleep if you could listen out for him.” He looks up at me and slowly, his rich dark eyes, and he nods his head.
Placing the barrel in the trunk, as it’s now cooled enough, I get back into the car, and move down the driveway, towards the ocean.
Oz once told me that this life wears on even the toughest. That it seems to slowly chip away at your soul until you’re nothing. He had told me that was why Ol’ ladies were so important, since they were half the soul, they kept them safe from losing all of themselves to the machine.
I laughed at him when he had told me. Told him he was full of shit, that soul mates didn’t exist, but now I understand. Because I need to pull Ro out of whatever is happening. I need to keep him tethered. Keep him whole.
He thinks it’s his job is to lead everyone else, to protect them, to save us all.
My job is to save him from himself.
I slide to a stop, pulling the emergency brake, and then grabbing the barrel out of the trunk. Closing the distance to the cliff, I open the barrel, and dump out the ashes before I move back over to the car. This time placing it in the front seat.
I stop, parking the car, and wiping down the outside of the barrel before I step out of the car, and chuck it over the large chain-link fence and watch as it lands in the land fill.
I’m not even gone for an hour until I’m back at the house and walking through the door, locking it behind me. I can already hear the noise before I’m up the stairs and then I’m rushing past the room where Linc is sleeping, checking in on him once more to see that he is still sound asleep. Flinging open the door, I can hear what sounds like a saw coming from the closet.
“The fuck…” I trail off as I continue to hear the muffled noise. “Ro.” I say as I push the door open and step inside the closet. As he turns around, shirtless and with the sweatpants hugging low on his hips, the saw stops, and his eyes are wide as he looks at me.
“Good you’re back. Come here. I want to make sure.”
“What?”
Instead of answering my question, he reaches out for me, and pulling me close to him. I see the opening in the clothing that’s hanging in the closet. The small cutout in the wall. The cutout only moves up the wall 3 feet and that’s all the door there is. “Get in.” He nods at the wall.
“What?”
“I want to make sure there’s enough room.”
“Room for what?”
“For the two of you.”
