Page 14 of Vow of Vengeance (Destruction & Vengeance Duet #2)

twelve

Soren

Declan rubs lazy circles over my skin with my body wash, and I marvel at the fact that I haven't yet run out of hot water.

Time hasn't exactly been a priority to me here, but I know we've been under the water long enough for our skin to prune.

.. and it ran long before that as Declan ate me like a starving man who'd found a steak meal in the desert.

My head is still buzzy with the orgasms, the steam, the pills I've been taking to try and stave off the depths of the depression I could feel trying to grip me.

I started taking my old meds once we got back from Costa Rica, afraid that if I let the despair get ahold of me again, it would never let go.

The unfortunate side effect is that I’ve been exhausted—not just mentally, but physically.

It’s hard to stay awake after getting home from work, and hard to wake to go to work.

Declan seemed to have backed off, recognizing that he may have taken things too far by making me watch the videos of my husband torturing and murdering women.

My head has still been a mess, but the cocktail helps level me out, keeping me from feeling the barbed agony of knowing what an absolute fucking demon I was married to.

Or not married to, according to Declan. I haven't checked him on that fact.

I haven't done anything since we've been back, other than try to reconcile who the fuck I even am.

The entire foundation of my life has been uprooted, and I'm not sure how to even get back to a place of knowing myself... let alone trusting other people.

It's clear to me now that Vin was a predator, in more ways than one. He set his sights on me when I was a child, and I was too naive to see that. And then I was too in love with who I thought he was to acknowledge it.

The relationship that has defined my entire life was a house of cards built on a web of deceit.

It’s a lot to reconcile, and I haven't made much progress toward it.

Thankfully, the pills help me sleep without being tortured by dreams, so at least in sleep, I get a reprieve from the violent thoughts in my head.

"That bathroom," I say suddenly, turning to Declan to see him watching me intently. "It's where I woke up... the night he died."

He stays silent, prompting me on. I've hated these memories. I've wanted to separate them from me so badly that I was willing to die to not have to recall them. But nothing has helped. Maybe sharing the burden with him will make it hurt just a little less.

"I woke up in the bathtub and everything hurt.

It was a hurt unlike anything I've felt before.

.. well, maybe once." Waking up on the riverbank with a collapsed lung after being thrown through the windshield of my mother's car had been pretty fucking agonizing too.

It was indisputably a different kind of agony though.

"Parts of me that I didn't know could hurt.

I didn't remember anything; I thought maybe I fell, that I hit my head and had just gotten twisted up in the tub while I waited for consciousness to come back.

There was no water in it, but I was wet, covered in blood.

" I close my eyes, feeling sick at the memory of all of it, so thick and cold, slippery and dark.

"It took me a minute, but I was able to crawl out. "

I remember the bloody handprints on the porcelain.

"I got out but I couldn't walk. The pain was too much— it took me to my knees the minute I tried to stand.

It was hard to focus, when I felt like I was being ripped in two.

The cramps were hell; I was screaming, trying to find my phone.

I knew something was wrong, that I was losing my baby. "

I swallow around the barbs in my throat, needing to share this information with him.

I need him to know everything, not just to try and take some of the pain away, but so he can help me put together the pieces of what happened.

"I prayed. I don't know who I thought I was praying to, but I prayed for someone to save my baby.

I promised to do anything, to trade anything, to take its place.

That didn't even make sense, since if I'd died, so would my baby.

But I couldn't think past the panic. I crawled around the side of the tub and that's when I saw him. .. Vin."

My stomach twists at the memory of him so brutally murdered.

At the time, it had been a wicked shock.

Vin was kind, fair. He wouldn't hurt a fly, I'd thought.

I had to kill spiders because he told me they were living creatures, too.

Once when we hit a raccoon that ran in front of us, he was in a funk for days after.

He had only ever loved, so the thought of anyone wanting to hurt him was inconceivable.

Now, I know that he made a habit of hurting people in the worst ways. Now I know he was the fucking devil, that whoever killed him may have even done me a favor.

But whoever killed him hurt me. They made me lose my baby.

"I screamed until I lost my voice, tried waking him up even though he was clearly dead.

He was already cold by the time I got to him.

" I shiver at the memory of his unseeing eyes on me, as if he'd been watching me bleed out in the tub as he died.

"By the time I crawled out of the bathroom and made it to my phone, I was too weak to call 911.

I dialed Marissa, because she's my speed dial number 3 and my hands were too covered in blood to hit the right numbers. "

Declan presses a kiss to my shoulder blade, a reassurance that he's still there, still listening.

"She called the ambulance for me before she rushed over, but she just thought it was the baby.

She walked into a crime scene, found me lying there.

The police questioned me from the back of the ambulance, where they treated the superficial wounds.

At the ER they did an ultrasound, and when there was no heartbeat, there was no reason for me to stay.

I refused treatment, answered police questions, and left.

Marissa and Khan cleaned the mess for me.

Did you know the police don't do that?" I laugh, because why would they?

But it was still an unsettling thing, knowing my best friends took it upon themselves to scour mine and my husband's blood from the grout.

"I stayed with her the first few days, because she didn't want to leave me alone. But we had to go get more clothes, so she brought me back here. She had an emergency… work, I think. I don’t remember, honestly.

Khan was on his way before she left. She told me to lock the doors and made sure I was alone before she left.

I got the knife out when she did, just in case. "

I really didn't put much thought into grabbing it. It was like a compulsion, an idea that popped into my head so I went with it.

I didn't expect anybody to come for me, but having the knife gave me a little peace of mind.

"I don't really even remember deciding to put the wedding dress on, but I was getting my clothes together when I saw it hanging there.

I was just looking around my room, thinking about all the memories, and I somehow ended up in the bathroom.

They'd cleaned it all up. But when I opened the door, all I could see was the blood everywhere.

" I shiver at the image imprinted into my mind.

"I thought maybe it would help me remember if I tried to retrace my steps, so I got in the bathtub. "

I remember like it was yesterday, my body moving automatically.

I may as well have been a doll, controlled by someone else as I moved around that bathroom, looking for anything that the police had missed, anything that would jog my memory.

I remember sinking into that tub, feeling so much relief when my back rested against it and I didn't have to focus so much on staying upright, tilting my head back to look at the chandelier overhead, the sunlight that glinted off of it reminding me of the stars the night I was dying on the riverbank.

I remember realizing, all of a sudden, that I'd brought the knife with me into the bathtub, that it was still in my right hand.

My reflection was distorted when I held it up to get a look.

I remember the relief of seeing blood when I dragged the blade across my skin.

It dripped onto my dress when I switched hands, on the walls of the tub when I cut into my other arm, onto the floor when I laid my arms over the side of the tub and eased back, feeling comforted by the crimson rain falling from me.

I don't remember Khan beating down the door downstairs or running into the bathroom to pull me out. I don't remember him screaming or calling an ambulance. I just remember waking up in the hospital wearing a paper gown that felt offensive compared to the wedding gown I'd fallen asleep in.

"Khan couldn't help clean up my mess that time. He found me, and it was too hard for him to go back there. So, Marissa cleaned everything up again, by herself this time."

I lick my lips, which suddenly feel dry. I know I wasn't lucid, that I wasn’t in my right mind when I made the decision to do what I did. But it was wrong of me. What kind of person makes her best friend sponge her blood off the tile?

"She's a good friend." Declan says.

It feels like a victory of sorts, having him validate one of the only good choices I've made in my life.

"Yeah," I muse. "They both are."

"I'm surprised she's let you stew this long." Declan chuckles, his warm breath setting off a shiver between my shoulder blades.

"She probably figured it was your job now." I laugh.

"I'd think she would have ripped you off the couch by your hair a week ago."

I smile a little, because he's right. I love that he's already figured her out so well.

The smile doesn't last long, though. It slips off my face entirely when his words sink a little deeper.

He doesn't fight me when I push past him, stepping out of the shower still dripping wet.

I barely wrap the towel around me before I leave the warmth of the bathroom, running to the couch where I've been living for the last few weeks.

I drop to my knees and curse my wet fingers as I try to unlock the screen, my hands shaking as the pit in my stomach deepens.

I feel Declan before I see him, before he even speaks.

"What is it?" He asks.

I get the phone unlocked and navigate to my messages, looking for the thread with Marissa, the string of texts I never replied to.

We never go more than four hours without one of us sending the other a message.

I've been bad about not getting back to her lately, wallowing in my disgust. I haven't even been opening her messages, but now I scroll rapidly through them.

I click the last one, looking for a time stamp.

My heart squeezes violently when I see it...

Three days ago.