No one stays.
“You came because you needed to see for yourself.” I grind my teeth so hard they ache. The little cunt draws closer and every step she takes has me clenching the bottle tighter. Just her mere presence has me wanting to commit mass murder. I expect the bitch to stop beside me but she carries on, walking past me. When she nears where they are, I push to my feet and sway. I suddenly hate being drunk.
“Don’t,” I warn as she closes in on them. She looks back at me over her shoulder. Her blue eyes seem to glow in the moonlight, her blonde hair wet and loose. Her face is clear of blood but the evidence of her anguish is clear as day in her eyes. They are puffy and red from crying over the piece of shit I killed in front of her. I take in the sight of her standing there in a fucking shirt thatclearly isn’t hers. She wears a pair of jeans beneath it but the sight of her in some other cunt’s clothes has my blood boiling. Unlike all my other feelings I can’t slam the door on this one.
“I’m past the point of listening to you,Devlin.” The way she says my fucking last name like she has the right pisses me off.
She continues forward, the closer she gets the harder I find it to breathe. Her being here is a slap in the face to them. She has no fucking right to show her face. It’s because of her fucking family why they are here!
My legs move on their own accord so I can chase after her and stop her from getting to them, but then I slam to a stop when I see them.
The headstones are smaller than I expected.
That's the first thought that hits me and I hate myself for it, hate that some stupid, mundane observation is the thing my brain latches onto instead of the fact that my two best friends are rotting six feet beneath my boots. I stare at the carved letters of the first name and my jaw locks so tight I feel the bones in my skull creak.
I take a swig from the bottle. Then another.
“So this is where they put you.” My voice comes out flat. Dead. Good. That's what I need right now… dead. I can do dead. Dead is easy. Dead doesn't make your hands shake or your chest cave in or your eyes sting like you're some weak little fuck.
I read the second name and something ruptures.
It's not dramatic. There's no scream, no explosion of rage. It's worse than that. It's quiet. It's this tiny, almost imperceptible fracture somewhere deep in the center of me, like a bone that's been carrying weight for years finally giving way. I feel it spread, hairline cracks spider webbing through everything I've built to keep myself standing.
No.
I look away. I look at the sky, at the trees, at the dead grass, at anything that isn't those two slabs of stone sitting side by side the way they always used to sit beside me. Left and right. Always on either side. Always with me.
Stop.
“You shouldn't have died.” The words are out before I can catch them and they don't sound like me. They sound like someone younger. Someone I killed a long time ago. I take another drink and the burn doesn't help this time. Nothing's burning hot enough to scorch this thing out of my chest.
I crouch down, and I don't know why. I don't believe they can hear me. I don't believe in any of that shit—no afterlife, no heaven, no peaceful fucking paradise where they're smiling down at me.
They're gone.
They're bones and dirt and nothing, and crouching in front of their graves like some grieving widow isn't going to change a goddamn thing.
But my knees bend anyway.
And my hand, my bloody, glass-torn, swollen hand reaches out anyway.
My fingers touch the top of the first headstone and the cold of it hits me like a bullet.
Cold.
Stone cold.
They were never cold. Neave ran so hot he'd sweat through his shirt just sitting still and Miles was always warm, always had that stupid body heat that made him a furnace in the winter and unbearable in the summer. I used to shove him off me when he'd throw his arm around my shoulder because he was too goddamn warm and now… Now he’s cold.
They're both so fucking cold.
My hand is trembling against the stone and I'm watching it like it belongs to someone else. That's not my hand. I don't tremble. I don't shake. I'm Xaden-fucking-Devlin I'm the guy who doesn't flinch when bullets fly, who carved his empire out of blood and bone, who has looked men in the eyes while the life drained from them and felt nothing.
So why can't I stop shaking?
“You were supposed to be here.” It comes out broken. Cracked right down the middle. I swallow hard, once, twice, three times, trying to shove the thing in my throat back down where it belongs. “You were supposed to be right fucking here, right beside me, you selfish, you stupid?—”
My voice gives out.
