Page 85 of Inked in Devotion

The voice sounded closer. I sped up. I made it past the clearing, concealing myself in the canopy and shadows of trees. My feet throbbed. I think I sprained an ankle. My entire body was screaming with pain. I encountered barbed fencing, but that didn’t stop me. My fingers felt a hole in the fencing like someone had already cut through and tried to escape.

Barbed wire pierced my flesh. A strangely liberating pain. The need to bleed. The need to redirect my senses to physical agony other than the crippling compactor chaos of voices mashing my skull until I wanted to howl.

I burst through only to skid to a halt.

A cliff. That was what the fence was guarding against. I peered over it. No water to break my fall. Just a yawning emptiness with no end in sight. Yet it beckoned with tendrils of peace…or the promise of it.

“Chloe…”

I was weary of my existence and my name. I glanced over my shoulder. “You win. My son is yours.”

“What are you talking about, princess?”

I turned around.

Kolya was inching closer. I couldn’t interpret his expression. It was too dark. We were all shadows under the gloomy sky of a clearing thunderstorm. Lightning continued to wreak havoc in the distance. Now and then it cast a sinister flash across Kolya’s face.

A few feet away, parallel in approach, was Theo.

“I’m an unfit mother.”

Kolya squeezed his eyes shut. It was hard to discern his expression from my declaration, but his despair reached out and touched the hollowness at the center of my chest.

“No, you’re not.”

“You said so.”

“I most certainly did not. For fuck’s sake, Chloe, don’t move!” It was the first time I’d heard panic in his voice. Kolya never lost control.

“I need to end it.”

“Oh dear God, don’t, Chloe,” Theo pleaded, desperation punctuating his words. “Don’t. We can talk about this.”

End it. Jump. It’s the only way.

“She said it’s the only way.”

Stop the drama. And just jump, bitch!

I spun around and stepped into the abyss.

Chapter

Nineteen

Kolya

“Noooooo!” Theo roared.

We both surged forward, but I was ahead. I anticipated the exact moment Chloe decided to jump. People who were committed to dying didn’t give you extended platitudes.

They just did it.

So I sprang before Chloe took that fatal step. It wasn’t enough to prevent us from skidding off the edge, but by some luck, it’d sloped into a narrow ledge with jutting tree roots. I clung to one while my feet caught purchase on slippery rocks and loose soil, my back against the wall of the cliff. The rain made the terrain more treacherous. There was no telling if the root would break or the ground beneath my feet would erode.

“Kolya…” Chloe cried. She wasn’t struggling. My left arm and my dogged determination to save us anchored her entire midsection against me.

“Let me go, please. I don’t want you to die.”