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But this body in front of me wasn’t Emily.
She was already gone.
Her soul would be in Heaven—what a beautiful place for her. But I couldn’t be there with her as I was here, and her life on Earth had been tragically cut short.
Did I ever tell her I loved her?I couldn’t remember.
Touching her shoulder gently, I pulled her toward me until she rolled over, not even sure I wanted to see what was left of her face and have it forever imprinted in my mind. But I needed to know and be sure. What a pathetic hope to hold on to, that she was some doppelgänger and not really Emily, that Emily was hiding somewhere, waiting for me to find and rescue her.
When I rolled the body over, the eyes that stared open and wide at me were not the deep brown I knew, they were green, and the hair that lay bloody and messy on the floor, wasn’t dark and straight but chestnut brown and wavy.
I choked out another sob. “Cara?”
The room was dark when I woke and snapped my eyes open. I didn’t scream or move but simply laid staring at the canopy of my four-poster bed.
Sleep doesn’t favor me, which is not normally an issue. I rarely sleep, perhaps every two or three days. But tonight, I needed it. I had been awake too long, and it was catching up with me.
But sleep wouldn’t come again tonight, not now after those images.
The heavy curtains on the windows blocked out all the sunlight, and the room was suffocated in darkness. I had laid there for hours, and when sleep eventually came to me, I was haunted by nightmares.
What the fuck did these images mean? Emily was never far from my thoughts, although as every day passed by, her face became harder to recall. I wished I had a photograph of her to remind me why I was who I was and did what I did. I wanted to remember her face before it was blown apart.
Sentimental fool.
What’s past is gone, and there’s nothing I can do to change it.
So what does Cara have to do with this? I felt as though I had found a kindred spirit, drawn to each other through a suppressed darkness. Although, in my case, not so suppressed. There was no point in hiding my darkness because it was all I had now, and if I were going to be cast as the bad guy, then by God, I was going to run with that for all it was worth.In for a pennyand all that shit. Maybe when I died, I’d go to Hell and could spend my days fighting off the demons I hated so much.
Cara.
If only for one night, I would have her.
The people I chose became my obsession, a game I played until I had them, claimed them, and made them my own. But Cara, she had infected me, and if she’d run away afterward like all the others had, then I’d have to take my chance to destroy her and ruin her for all other men.
Because the darkness she claimed was in her was nothing compared to what lay in me.
CARA
“Where did you go?”
“Sorry?” I looked at Maddie, jumping when I felt the cool liquid of the beer overflow onto my fingers. “Dammit!” I hadn’t been paying attention and hastily turned the tap off and poured the beer down the sink, shaking the excess from my hands. The customer raised his eyebrows as I apologized profusely, but I was thankful for the lift of his lip indicating his amusement at my blunder.
Handing him a fresh beer, I smiled. “Sorry about before, sir.”
“That’s okay, love,” he drawled with an accent I couldn’t place before winking and disappearing into the crowd.
Exhaling heavily, I swept past Maddie to rinse my hands.
“You disappeared for a second there.” She glanced at my hands, smirking. “Obviously.”
“Sorry, just thinking.”
“About Emrick?” My hands paused, and I cleared my throat. When I turned to Maddie, she rolled her eyes. Any amusement in her expression had vanished, replaced with a look as hard as stone. “What the fuck, Cara?”
“I’m sorry! I can’t stop thinking about him since he cornered me.”
“Since hewhat?”
