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I inhaled, holding on to that feeling. Maybe one day, I could move on from the past. Get rid of this darkness inside me. Break down the walls of ice I’d built around my heart.
And I hoped that wherever Fallon was, she’d been able to move on. I hoped that she was happy now.
With everyone’s attention still on my friends, I opened my phone, pulling up the old message thread. Why did I torture myself? Fallon’s account had been inactive ever since she’d left. I couldn’t seem to help myself, though. It was a compulsion. Every fucking day. No matter how many times I told myself it was pointless. That I needed to let go.
Maybe now it was time. Roland Hyde was imprisoned, and everyone else was moving on with their lives. I was doing better now, wasn’t I? I should move on, too.
My finger hovered over the Delete button.
I blinked at the screen.
What the fuck?
I grasped my phone so fucking tightly that it made an ominous crunching sound within my grip.
My world tilted on its axis.
There was a green dot next to her photo.
She was online.
Just as quickly as the dot had appeared, it disappeared. Almost like I’d imagined it, but I knew what I’d seen.
Memories crashed over me, a suffocating wave that dragged me under until I couldn’t breathe. The noises of the party seemed to increase to unbearable levels, making my ears ring.
Fuck.
I had to get out of here.
Stubbing out the joint, I thrust my phone back into my pocket. Launching myself out of the armchair, I caught Caiden’s eye. Without saying a word, he gave me a small nod, letting me know he understood that I needed to get away. He was my best mate for a reason—out of everyone, he understood me the best.
The ringing got louder as I pushed through the faceless bodies, aiming for the front door. The compulsion was there, the need for pain, so strong that I couldn’t focus on anything else.
I thought I was doing better.
I thought I was fine.
Yet it had taken less than a minute for the cracks in my wall of ice to appear.
Less than a minute for my cold, dead heart to be revived, bringing with it an unbearable agony that tore through me, shattering the walls that I’d worked so fucking hard to build.
THREE
“Let me see him.” I stared across the reception desk, my mouth set in a flat line. Natalie stared straight back at me, her glossy blue hair spilling over her shoulders and her arms folded underneath her tits, pushing them up. It did nothing for me. I’d slept with her once, when I was trying to forget about Fallon. It was no fucking use. No matter who I slept with, nothing changed. It had been almost two years that she’d been gone, but I knew I’d love her until the day I died.
I’d been lying to myself for too long, and that had all become clear the second I saw she was online. It had been a week since then, and although she hadn’t shown up again, it was time for me to do some digging. Which was why I was here at Pope Industries in London, the home of Credence Pope’s empire. If anyone could get me the information I wanted, it was Creed. Of course, I’d owe him a favour. But I’d been doing jobs for him long enough…since I was eight, in fact. I’d always be fucking grateful to him for everything he’d done for me over the years, how he looked out for me.
When I was around eleven, he’d started giving me different tasks, bringing me into his circle of trusted associates.
“Here. A fiver each. I’ve got another job if you’re interested?” Creed handed two crumpled five-pound notes to me and my friend Lloyd “Mack” Mackenzie. I shoved mine in the pocket of my jeans before turning back to Creed. He was an older boy, around fifteen or sixteen, who often had odd jobs for the kids who lived on our housing estate, and we all looked up to him. I didn’t know exactly what he did, but he told us he was building his empire, whatever that meant. Mack and I had just delivered some weed baggies to some of the flats in our tower block, and now Creed had another job for us? Yeah, that meant more money, which was always good. My mum worked two different jobs—one as a cleaner and one where men would come to our flat and she’d kick me out so she could do things with them that I wasn’t supposed to know about. We still never had enough, though, and my mum spent too much of what we did have on alcohol.
“What’s the job?” Tugging the sleeves of my hoodie down to cover my freezing fingers, I looked up at Creed.
“See that man over there? The one with the blue coat?” He tilted his head to the right, and I followed the direction. There was a tall man with black hair and a thick beard, wearing a blue puffer jacket and standing against the chain-link fence, talking on a phone.
“Yeah.”
“Good. I want you to follow him and tell me where he goes. Make sure he doesn’t see you, yeah?”
