“Lie down and go to sleep.” I pat the mattress, hoping to coax him down next to me. Hoping it will calm him.
“I don’t want to sleep.” Baz becomes agitated.
“Then what do you want?” I quickly question.
“I want it to end.” He grabs my wrist and yanks me toward him. “I want you to end it.” He slaps a gun into my hand and presses the barrel flush to his forehead. “Finish what you were sent to do. I could never do it, but you can.” Our hands shake as he guides my finger into the loop of the trigger.
I shake my head no as my skin touches the warm, curved metal. “Make it quiet, Stevie. Make it quiet in my head.” His voice is a broken, hoarse whisper. He closes his eyes and tears fall in fast streams down his face.
“Baz.” His name tumbles off my trembling lips. This man. This huge, strong, beautiful, enigmatic man. He has so many layers it would take me years to pull them all away. But this, right now, thousands of those layers are now translucent.
“Baz, please look at me,” I implore, my hands going numb from fighting against his unwavering hold. My finger dangerously close to pulling the trigger. To taking his life. “Baz, please.” My throat is swollen with trepidation.
After a millennium, he finally lifts his lids, and the hollow, haunting, heart-shattering look in his eyes hits me square in the chest like an exploding bullet.
“Stevie,please,” he echoes, pressing the barrel of the gun even harder into his forehead, convincing me he’s tattooing an indentation of the revolver’s mouth into his skin.
“Baz, no,” I argue sternly. “You have so much to live for.” I use the only leverage I believe I have. “You have a child on the way. And he needs to know how wonderful his father is.”
Baz’s eyes tremble. “How do you know it’s a boy?” he asks, and a little seed of hope blooms.
“Just a feeling.” Baz’s gaze drops to my stomach for a fraction of a second. “Let go of the gun.”
“Just pull the trigger, Stevie. I’m no good. Not to anyone. Especially a child.”
“That’s not true. I know there’s more to you than this. The person trapped inside is the reason I couldn’t pull the trigger then . . . and the reason I can’t pull it now. Please, Baz, just let go,” I continue to ramble desperately. “You never gave me a chance. Never allowed yourself to trust me. Let me prove it to you now. Let me prove to you I wasn’t lying. I was going to tell you everything. I wanted to protect you.I want to protect both of you.”
“I’m a burden, Stevie.”
“And I have a boatload of baggage. We’ve all got shit to deal with. But I’m strong enough. I’m strong enough for both of us. For allthreeof us.” If I can survive my past and all the fucked-up shit that’s happened to me, I can survive this.
My words seem to penetrate Baz’s resolve. His grip gets looser, but only fractionally.
Encouraging him with slight head nods and soft words, he slowly releases his hold on my hands and the gun.
When his grasp tires, I lower the Smith and Wesson into my lap then pry it away from him. Flooded with relief, I click the safety and place it behind my back. Baz visibly shakes before me, trapping his head in his hands. He looks traumatized. I have no idea what to do as he begins to rock and mutter unintelligible words.
Then it dawns on me. “Baz, when was the last time you took your medication?” I vividly recall the pill bottles in his medicine cabinet and how he religiously got out of bed at the same time every morning to take them.“I suffer from ADHD and depression.”
“I don’t know. A few weeks, maybe a month.”
Shit, that long? No wonder he’s going off the deep end.
“Do you have any here?” I inquire hopefully.
“It’s so loud in my head, Stevie. I need it to stop.” He ignores my question, pulling at his ears until they’re red.
I don’t know if I should touch him. Or comfort him, or what. I just know, if it was any other situation, with anyone else, I would have pulled that trigger.
I jump out of bed and grab the gun, prepared to go on a hunt. He must have something that can calm him down. I take a stab in the dark and enter the bedroom at the end of the hall, surmising this is where he sleeps. If and when he sleeps.
The bed is made neater than a pin, and the room looks almost deserted. But I check the medicine cabinet anyway. There’s only aspirin and antacids. Damn. I place the gun on the vanity top, and my heart literally cracks in my chest. He chose a revolver to end his life. A firearm that’s loud and messy. Not a neat automatic with a silencer. The kind of piece I was going to use. He wanted to make a statement with his death. Blow his fucking brains out in the literal sense. Tragic. Tragic that someone as warm and wonderful as the Baz I first met could become the man in the other room. A husk of a human being begging for the end.
Out of sheer curiosity, or maybe conditioning, I check the chamber. Nestled snugly with eight bullets, I find it fully loaded.
It was no bluff.
At a loss, I drop my head and notice doorknobs on the vanity. I don’t know what makes me look, but I do. I open the right side and discover a leather toiletry bag with a light coating of dust.
