Page 23 of Reanimated Ruin (Hearts In Horror #1)

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Dominic

I WAS ALREADY regretting what I’d said to Cat before I even climbed the ladder up to the roof to send Sadie down. The look she gave me of ‘what did you do now’ only egged on the little voice in the back of my head screaming at me about how giant of an asshole I was. She didn’t even fight me on switching before retreating to Cat’s side to coddle her while she licked her wounds. I know what I said hurt her. I could see it clearly on her face before she turned around to hide under the covers. I wanted to immediately take it all back, but my ego got the best of me and I stormed out.

My words had hit the mark and my only choice now was to commit.

It had been a stab to my chest when Cat had said things between us were so much different from her and Jules. They had feelings involved, something I had nothing to worry about. Lucky fucking me. Usually I’d count my blessings when a girl told me she wasn’t interested in anything long term. Great, we’re on the same page. But when the word casual had fallen from her lips, it had grated every single nerve in my body. The last thing I wanted with her was some fling, burning hot and fast, only to fizzle out when the novelty wore off.

What I wanted from her was everything. Not to sit on the sidelines, only to have a physical relationship with her and wait for her to someday toss me to the side when she was finally ready to commit with Jules. Here I was, giving him permission to pursue her too when I never even had a chance in the first place. She loved him, not me.

I don’t know why I’m surprised even in the slightest. This isn’t new information to me. I had resigned myself to shoving my feelings deep down in order for my two best friends to be happy years ago. It was just the way she had kissed me. I could have sworn I felt something there. I shouldn’t have foolishly let myself get my hopes up that she’d want us both.

I was going to have to learn to get over it. Learn to be only her friend, nothing more. I’d just let myself get caught up in the moment, let myself believe that she felt the spark too. When she’d pleaded with me to touch her, as if I wouldn’t sell my soul for the chance, it definitely fooled me.

I would have done anything she asked of me without a second thought. I was hers. Mind, body and soul. The one thing I couldn’t do though was go all the way with her now, not if we weren’t playing for keeps as I’d thought. I was better off not knowing how absolutely divine I could only imagine it felt to be inside her.

“You gonna tell me what happened or just sit there with a sour look on your face for the rest of the night?”

I scowled at Jules, not at all in the mood to be on the receiving end of his shit. Not after Cat had said she has feelings for him and not me.

“Aren’t we supposed to be quiet?” I said back at him harshly. “Why don’t you go ask your fucking girlfriend, since there’s just so many feelings between you guys, instead of trying to get us killed with your loud ass.”

He got up from the patio chair he was sitting in positioned to look out at the front and came over to where I was sitting, watching the rear. He sat down on the edge of the roof next to me with his legs dangling over the side, getting down on my level so we could talk quietly without drawing attention to ourselves.

I didn’t see any infected milling about, anyway. I just didn’t feel like talking about it. We were in a tiny town with a population of less than a thousand if I had to guess, so besides the girl in the office, we hadn’t seen anyone or anything else since.

“Look, whatever happened, that was between you two. Don’t bite my head off. I can just tell you’re upset and I’m trying to be there for you like you are for me. I’m your best friend. You know you can talk to me.”

I looked over at him and lost some of my steam. He was right, it wasn’t him I was mad at. Not really, anyway. It wasn’t his fault she wanted him and not me. I had no reason to be snapping at him, so I took a deep breath and held it for a moment before releasing it with a heavy sigh.

I stared up at the night sky, the stars bright and clear on the cloudless early fall evening. I tried to search for the words to tell him, not even wanting to admit to myself she didn’t desire me the way I did her, let alone say it out loud.

“I guess I spoke too soon when I said that maybe we’d both be able to be with Cat.” I finally mustered the courage to bite out. “I thought perhaps in a perfect world it’d be a possibility that a relationship like that could work out. That someone with a heart as big as hers would have the capacity to house two that desperately wanted to belong to her. But who was I kidding? This world is far from perfect. Just look at what’s unfolding in front of our very eyes. It feels like karma in a way, to only be wanted in a physical way when all I want is her love. It’s my punishment for all the girls who wanted a relationship only for me to just use them.”

“Dude, cut the shit with the morose ass poetic riddles,” he said, exasperated at trying to interpret my lamenting. “Tell me what happened .”

“After I came out of the shower, Cat basically threw herself at me,” I started to divulge. “I tried to tell her that she needed sleep, offered to tuck her in even. Then she said that she didn’t want to sleep. She wanted me, then started kissing my neck. We made out a bit then she tried to shove her hand down my pants and when I stopped her, she told me not to worry because it was just sex. That we could keep things casual and it’s less complicated with no feelings involved like there is with you.”

I could feel him staring a hole into the side of my head when I stopped talking. I couldn’t bear to look him in the eyes, so instead I continued to look up at the sky, gritting my teeth, waiting to hear what he could possibly have to say to follow that up.

“Yikes,” he finally replied softly. “What happened after that?”

“I asked her to get off of me and tried to get out of there as quickly as possible before I could say something I regretted. But in a not-so-typical Cat fashion, she chased after me and demanded to know what my problem was. So I told her I didn’t want to come in between you guys and she wasn’t my type, anyway. And perhaps I insinuated that I might now try to get with Sadie.”

“Ugh,” he winced at my asinine behavior. “So instead of I don’t know, telling her how you feel, you decided to just nuke the entire thing? Did she just come flat out and say she didn’t have feelings for you? You’re a damn liar, by the way, Cat is exactly your type. I don’t know why it didn’t click with me sooner the way you felt about her. I can count on one hand the amount of times you brought home a blonde like Sadie, instead of a petite busty brunette.”

I shot him a small, knowing smirk. He wasn’t wrong. I found myself searching for her in every girl I met, desperately seeking for someone who could fill the hole she’d left in my chest. No one could compare, though. There was nothing that tasted as sweet as the real thing. I was kicking myself for not having some kind of real talk with her before ever touching her.

I don’t know what would have been worse: to never know what it was like to have her pressed tightly against me, lips moving with mine. Or to now know exactly what it was like, but now also having to live with the fact that I didn’t get to keep her. Not even a small part of her. I didn’t feel like I was asking all that much. I was willing to share. Not even asking her to abandon what she had with Jules, just to also have room for me.

“No, she didn’t, but she didn’t need to,” I said softly. “I see the way she looks at you. Your guy’s history goes way back. You’ve loved each other since high school. That’s the kind of stuff they write romance novels about, not the scheming best friend who wants a piece of the pie too. What I wanted was unrealistic. I don’t even know why I thought it up in the first place. She’s just confused, everything that’s happened in the past couple days has been a lot. I’m just easy to blow off steam with, you guys are the real deal though.”

“I think maybe you shouldn’t take her behavior too personal,” he replied and side eyed me, like he wasn’t sure how I was gonna react to what he was about to say. “I don’t think her trying to ‘blow off steam’ with you necessarily means she doesn’t have feelings for you. Yesterday in the basement, she got down on her knees and basically insisted on blowing me. I tried to tell her she didn’t have to, but she insisted that she wanted to.”

My mouth feel open in shock a little at that, then my mind was filled with the dirty images of her on her knees before him, his cock shoved down her throat to the hilt. I shook them away. If I was ever going to get over her, I had to stop thinking like that.

It did make me feel a little better knowing that, though, that she was acting the same way with him. That it wasn’t just because she thought I was an easy lay who would bed whoever propositioned me. Well fuck, I guess I kind of painted myself in that light after I said what I did about Sadie. Dammit, sometimes I was my own worst enemy.

“When you told me you had feelings for her too, I didn’t know how to react at first,” he continued. “But I get it now, seeing you feel exactly how I felt without her. I don’t want to watch you go through that. I want you to be happy too. It would be selfish of me to expect you to live the life I have for the past four years. I don’t think you should give up yet, just try and talk to her. I mean, after some serious damage control and groveling, that’s for sure. I just wouldn’t count yourself out with her. You say that you see the way she looks at me, but what you miss is the way she looks at you .”

“I don’t know, man,” I sighed and rubbed a hand down my face. “If poly relationships ever worked out, don’t you think you’d see them a lot more? I’m not going to force anything on her, if she wants me, cool, but right now it’s looking like that ball is in your court. All I know is I can’t be physical with her anymore. If she doesn’t feel the same way about me, it’ll fucking kill me, Jules.”

“I get it,” he said, nodding slowly. “Just promise me you won’t stop being her friend. We just got her back and even if there’s nothing deeper between you two, she fucking needs you. Just as much as she needs me. That part isn’t up for debate. She loves you, whether it’s the way you want her to or not, you have a place in her heart. Don’t abandon her again. You’ll never get her back if you do.”

I agreed and with that he returned to his chair to resume watching out front, giving me some time alone with my thoughts to digest all he’d just said. Maybe it was a possibility that she reciprocated the feelings I had for her. If I didn’t just fuck that all up, that was. Perhaps she’d thought it was what I wanted to hear? I know I had a reputation, but that didn’t mean I was incapable of loving the right person. Hell, the reason I couldn’t fall in love with any of the girls I’d been physical with was her, for fuck’s sake.

It wasn’t my fault that no other girl could measure up to her. There were a few that came close, but the nearer I got to them, the more the differences were glaringly obvious. She was the most selfless person I knew. Everyone else I’d met in my life before moving to Efferville had been solely self serving creatures.

One time, when I’d first started hanging out with her and Jules as kids, we’d gotten the bright idea to do a lemonade stand so we could go to the store down the street to get snacks. We lived on the poorer side of town so we’d only had three cars stop all day and only made enough for one king sized candy bar. When we divided it into pieces, she insisted on taking the smallest one, saying we ‘were growing boys who needed the nutrients’ and watched us eat with a proud little smile on her face.

She was always doing stuff like that and after a while, I made it my mission to fight her on it. Even if she didn’t see the value she had, I did. It was as if she saw herself as less than everyone around her, almost like she believed herself beneath them. It led to many squabbles and while I may not have won every battle, when I did, I’d watched her with a huge smile on my face as she was forced to accept something good for herself for once. After getting closer to her and realizing it was a product of her upbringing, it only urged me on to do it even more. She deserved the best in life, and I was desperate to give it to her.

Even now, whatever she wanted is exactly what I wanted her to have. If that didn’t include me, I was willing to abide by her wishes. Jules had said to not give up, but after our spat earlier I knew she’d want distance for a bit. She deserved it. My lashing out was completely out of line.

I was so convinced by her words that she didn’t have feelings for me. After my conversation with Jules, I’d realized that I completely overlooked her body language. She’d deflated at what I’d said right before telling me to go fuck myself. Would she have been so hurt by my words if she didn’t feel a certain type of way? I only hoped she’d be able to forgive me and maybe there was a way this was salvageable.

The girls woke us up at sunrise and I’d managed to get a few hours of sleep after we’d switched over watch to them. Cat wouldn’t look at me then, and she was still avoiding eye contact with me now. She must not have spilled much to Sadie because she was still being relatively cordial to me.

We sat around the room awkwardly eating breakfast, most of the conversation consisting of small talk between Sadie and Jules. Cat was sitting there, hyper focused on her meal as an excuse to not have to look around the room and chance meeting my gaze.

I decided to leave it be for now. Who knew what the day held for us and I didn’t really feel like starting it with a huge blow out argument. Jules and I had gassed up the car while Cat was showering last night, deciding it was better to not waste any daylight today.

After we ate, we loaded up and took to the road. I was grateful that the power was still on so I could charge my cell and for the off-line map app I had downloaded, otherwise I’d have no idea how to navigate around all the shit we came across. Even with service down, at least my phone wasn’t completely useless.

Most of the ride was pretty uneventful. We either stopped to move obstacles out of the road or detoured around them when they were too dangerous to rectify by ourselves. We were about a half an hour away from Efferville when I pulled over on the side of a wooded road for the girls to take a bathroom break. Jules and I got out of the car to keep watch while they trudged into the tree line. A few minutes passed before he came up to me and spoke to me in a hushed tone.

“Don’t make it obvious, but look behind us, there’s a truck pulled into a cutoff in the woods about fifty feet away,” he whispered to me. “I didn’t look too long because I didn’t want them to know I noticed them, but there’s definitely at least three guys in there. They’re watching us.”

I pretended to drop my crowbar I was holding. When I picked it back up, I discreetly looked in the direction Jules mentioned, and there was indeed a truck full of guys watching us intently. At that moment, the girls came back out of the woods, walking back up to us at a pace that wasn’t quick enough for my liking.

“Hey, get the fuck back to the truck. NOW!” I whisper yelled at them.

Their eyes widened, understanding that I wasn’t just being a jerk but something was seriously wrong. We waited for them to get in first before climbing back into the front. I didn’t waste any time before putting the car in gear and peeling away.

“What happened?” Cat looked between Jules and I. “Why are you guys so freaked out?”

“We were being watched,” I said and met her eyes in the rear-view mirror.

When I did that, I also saw over her shoulder out the back window that they were now following us. They were quite a ways away, trying to keep their distance to avoid detection, but it was too late for that. I’d hoped maybe they were just curious and would lose interest, but when the GPS told me to take a right, we got twenty feet down that street when it also made the turn as well. Cat noticed my eyes flicking back and forth between the road to behind us. She turned around in her seat to look out the back and noticed our fan club.

“Fuck,” she breathed out. “Is that them following us now?”

“Indeed, it fucking is,” I responded. “I need to figure out a way to lose them. I can’t do it while I’m driving though. Take my phone, Jules, direct me somewhere with a lot of turns.”

He took the phone and tapped around on it for a second before finding a good spot.

“Up ahead on the left is a housing development. There’s a bunch of streets in there where we can maybe shake them.”

They were starting to gain on us now that we weren’t on a wide open road, making sure they wouldn’t lose us. I had no intention of letting that happen. All the reasons they could possibly have for following us were running through my head, and none of them were good. I took the turn Jules directed and we were then driving through a neighborhood of cookie-cutter houses. They all looked the same, but there were plenty of cross streets as he had stated, so I started taking the lefts and rights as he called them out to me.

We heard the roar of the truck engine, someone punching down on the gas pedal, and then suddenly we were rocked from behind. They were right on our tail and trying to run us off the road now that they knew what we were up to. Cat and Sadie both screamed from the back. I looked in the rear-view mirror at them to make sure they had their seat belts on and punched the gas myself.

We took a few more turns and managed to gain some distance between us because our smaller vehicle had better agility taking the turns. The pick up truck they were in couldn’t take them as fast as us without risking tipping, so it earned us a bit of an upper hand.

We were deep into the neighborhood with Jules trying to navigate us back out when I had to slam on the brakes. There were two cars that looked like they got into a head on collision blocking the road in front of us. I could see the truck rushing up behind us and had to make the quick decision to risk going around up onto the yards, or squeezing through a gap between the wreck and parked cars that I wasn’t sure I’d be able to do. If I got the car stuck, we’d be fucked, sitting ducks. If I managed to get past, though, the gap was too small for them to make it and we’d be able to hopefully lose them.

I thought, fuck it and hit the gas. We barely made it, the car making awful scraping noises on the way through. I look back up through the rear-view and see the truck stopped, not able to get through where we just passed. Then I see it back up and cut through a yard to the left, I’m assuming to attempt to take an adjacent street and then try to cut us off. At that moment, I notice a house up ahead that has its garage door wide open but no car in it. I make the split decision to rip up the driveway, pull into the bay, cut the engine, then fly out of the car to manually pull the door down.

“Don’t make a fucking peep. Get your weapons ready just in case,” I whispered to everyone.

Just as I did, I heard the crunch of tires slowly passing by on the road outside. I waited for the sound to fade a bit before daring to peek out the windows lining the door. They appeared to be tinted, allowing me to look out but no one to look in. I didn’t want to risk giving away our location. When I looked out and saw the truck pulling into a driveway a few houses down, I almost had a panic attack, assuming they were onto what we’d done and were now going to start searching the houses on this block. Then they backed right out and drove back by, continuing on to search other streets for us.

“Come on,” I whispered when I returned to the car. “We should head inside. I don’t want to be here in the garage if they come back and search the houses.”

We walked up to the door that connected the garage to the house and it was open a crack. I lightly tapped on it and waited a good minute before opening it fully and walking through after not hearing any movement. The door opened into a mudroom, with the front door to the right and a bathroom straight ahead.

We walked down the hall that opened up into a kitchen that had a half wall surrounding it, giving it a sort of open concept feel with the living room. There was a staircase off the living room that must lead to the upstairs bedrooms. We’d have to clear those before being able to truly relax and wait out being hunted.

“Uhh, guys?” Sadie called out.

She had been in the rear when we walked in, while the rest of us had continued into the living room. She was frozen, staring into the kitchen at the floor. I walked over to her to get a better look at what she was seeing with the half wall blocking my view. When I cleared it, all I saw was blood. It wasn’t bright red, it had already coagulated into gross piles in certain spots. It looked like an entire body’s worth of blood, but what was concerning was there was no body.

It was dark in here and we hadn’t turned on the lights so as to not give away our position. I turned the flashlight on my phone and saw footsteps leading away to the door to the garage. It looked like they went outside, so I peeked out the window and saw them continue down the block.

“I think we’re good, the footsteps lead out of the house, but we should still clear the rest of the place.” I said once rejoining everyone.

“How long exactly do we plan on staying here?” Cat asked around.

“I think it might be for the best if we wait out the night and leave in the morning, just to make sure they’re not still hanging around. If they don’t find us in a few hours, hopefully they’ll lose interest. We can’t risk leaving while it’s still dark though, our headlights will give us away.”

She shot daggers at me when I said this, crossing her arms across her chest and taking on a defensive stance.

“I saw the GPS. We’re only a half an hour away!” She argued. “How can you expect me to just sit here and let another day pass before getting to Rhiannon? We’re so close!”

“Because there’s a car full of guys out there that saw you two girls and want to do god knows what with you!” I shot back. “I don’t think they’re trying to hunt us down just to chat!”

“I don’t care if there’s twenty cars out there full of fucking infected!” She took a step closer, her arms down by her sides now, hands clenched into fists. “I’m not going to let anything stop me when I’m this close! I’ll go by myself if I have to. I don’t care.”

“Are you fucking kidding me?” I took a step towards her myself, now right in each other’s faces. “They’re out there circling the place like sharks! Are you that stupid? Do you have a death wish? You were so worried about dying before you could get to her. If you go out there by yourself, that’s exactly what’s going to happen. Try to leave out that door. I dare you. I’ll drag you back inside myself and find something to tie you down with until morning.”

“Dom,” Jules warned.

“No, don’t ‘Dom’ me,” I spat at him. “I’m just supposed to let her venture off to get herself killed? If she can’t handle knowing that she’s risking her life, then how would she handle being out there alone?”

“I’ve been alone for four years!” She yelled at me. “You think I don’t know how to survive on my own? The only person I could ever rely on is myself. The only person who ever came to save me was me !”

“Cat, please,” Sadie piped up. “I don’t want to split up and I’ll go out there with you right now if that’s truly what you decide you want to do, but I’m scared. Those guys out there are clearly up to no good, otherwise they would have approached us like normal people would. Even though they can both be total ass hats, we should stay with the guys. It’s already starting to get dark and it’ll be morning before you even know it. I promise. We’re going to get to Rhiannon and she’s going to be okay.”

Cat’s shoulders slumped, giving me one last dirty look before going over to her friend. Sadie opened her arms and folded her into a hug while she just stood there limply in her arms. I left them there like that to go clear the rest of the house with Jules following behind me. I could feel his eyes on me while we walked through the three bedrooms and bathroom, clearing them all, then returning to the hall.

“Please,” I finally breathed. “I don’t want to hear it, I know. I’m digging my hole deeper. I don’t care. She can hate me all she wants, but at least she’ll be alive.”

He just put his hands up as if to say ‘I wasn’t gonna say anything” and walked away from me down the stairs. Now that we were safe for the moment, I just needed a damn minute to myself. I had said the past couple days had been a lot for Cat, but holy shit, were they finally starting to catch up with me too.

I laid back on the bed in one of the rooms and stared up at the ceiling. What was I supposed to do? Let her go out on some fucked up solo rescue mission and let her get herself killed? There were so many things that could go wrong, even without those creeps out there looking for us.

I hoped she’d realize I wasn’t trying to be an asshole by stopping her. It was only cause I cared. Didn’t she realize there was no me without her anymore? I’d lost her once, for what I thought was for good. I never thought I’d ever see her again. As unhinged as it may be, there was no way I was letting her out of Jules or my sight in the world we were now living in.

I’d rather lose my own life than let a single hair on her body be harmed. Everything I was trying to do was with her best interest in mind, I wanted to get her to Rhiannon just as badly as she wanted to. It simply wasn’t safe right now. As exhaustion took me, all I hoped was she could eventually see one day that everything I did was because I was head over heels for her.