Page 84 of Reaper and Ruin

My wife and I had brought our kids here on vacation. More than once we’d walked these streets as a family of four. She’d loved the ocean and everything in it, so we’d spent hours at the aquarium, staring at brightly colored fish and listening to her talk about documentaries she’d seen on saving the turtles and what we could do to help.

The kids had listened to her every word, and so had I, not because I cared so much about marine life, but because I’d loved the way she’d lit up when she was passionate about something.

I’d loved the little smile on her lips she’d gotten every time she’d realized I was watching her.

The memories played on in my head. But they felt different than how they had in the past.

I realized with a start that while I would always love the woman I’d married, I wasn’tinlove with her anymore.

I couldn’t be.

Because I was so stupidly in love with Violet.

And, if I was being honest with myself, with Levi.

Julia was my past, and those memories of her, Tyler, and Kennedy, the two beautiful children we’d had together, would always be there.

But I’d spent years being angry. Years taking out that frustration with guns and knives and sex.

None of it had ever been enough.

Not until Violet and Levi had come along.

Suddenly, everything felt different. Better. Some of the anger had drifted away, and I didn’t want to spend all my time killing or fucking. It had never filled the void the way their arms did.

“Fuck you, Levi,” I muttered. “Fuck you for giving me something worth losing.”

I didn’t know where I was going, walking the streets, clutching my new clothes in a bag so tightly my fingers were losing sensation. I found myself outside a church, a little A-frame out in front advertising that Alcoholics Anonymous was meeting inside.

Without even really thinking about why, I walked along the narrow path and up the old stone steps of the church. I let myself in quietly and took a seat at the back. A few heads turned my way, but nobody said anything, the meeting in full swing and a man at the front speaking to the group.

It wasn’t the first meeting I’d been to. I’d never had a problem with alcohol, but after my family had been killed by a drunk driver, I’d started going, hoping this kind of therapy could work for the hate and despair I’d been holding on to so hard.

Hoping it could keep me from taking out my frustrations with a gun or a knife.

My first cold-blooded kill had been a man who I’d met at that group. One who’d claimed to be clean and sober, a ninety-day chip firmly in his fingers at every meeting. But who I’d followedback to a bar every night, where he got so drunk he could barely stand, then got in his car and drove home.

I’d only been able to watch it three times before, one night, he hadn’t made it to the bar. Or to his car, ever again.

But I sat at the back of the meeting now and realized that wasn’t a life I wanted to go back to. Being alone. Stalking victims at night, trying to fill the hole of my pain with someone else’s.

I left before the meeting ended so I didn’t have to talk to anyone.

There was nothing here for me anymore.

Not when everything I wanted was out there.

Igot to the club owned by Nyah’s brother, Cedric, less than thirty minutes after it opened, but even so, there was a short line out front. I had a text on my phone from Violet, telling me they would be a little late because they were picking up Dax, but he’d only just gotten back from getting his new tattoo and hadn’t had time to change.

I’d just written back a simple, “Okay.” I’d wanted to check out the place before they got here anyway, so I wasn’t expecting them for another thirty minutes. I probably had more like forty-five now.

The line inched along slowly, but I made it to the front and was eventually let in.

I rolled my eyes in the dim space that had barely any people inside. Clearly the line was a tactic for making the place seem popular. But I was glad to see I didn’t stand out like a sore thumb in the outfit I’d haphazardly bought that afternoon. I definitely hadn’t packed to be going to a club, but I’d also been so distracted by my argument with Levi that I hadn’t really paidattention to what I’d been shoving at the clerk in my rush to get out of there and away from Levi.

At least the shirt fit.

And nobody could see my nipples through it.