“They’ve got you twisted up like a pretzel.” The anger was coming back into his voice and I was grateful for it. I could handle the anger. The sadness—verging on pity—I couldn’t.
I started pacing the room while he kept himself strategically placed in between the phone and me. He was right. I was a wreck; I knew it. He wasn’t getting it though, and I didn’t care anymore about my secrets. He had to understand. I had to leave.
I stopped pacing and tried again to make him understand. “This is my fault. She’s there because they want me. Because I was a shitty fucking human being, who cared more about her career than people. They thought they saw potential in me.” Both of my hands were in my hair, and I felt like I was going to go completely crazy at any moment. “I deserve this, not her.”
He didn’t say anything. “Don’t you hear me?” I shoved at his chest with both my hands, but he didn’t budge. “Don’t you get it? They only have her because of me. Let me go and we can still save her. You’ve never wanted me here anyway.”
“I don’t care what you think you deserve. I’m not letting you do it.” He said it so calmly it only agitated me more. He wasn’t listening to me.
He was unmovable and I shoved at him again as hard as I could. He wouldn’t budge, and I had this irrational feeling that if I could force him from his spot, I could jar him out of his current thinking.
“Why not?”
His hands were on my shoulders then, pushing me up against the wall. “Because I can’t!”
He quickly let go and walked away from me. I pushed off the wall, following him. “Yes, you can. You do everything else you want. Why can’t you? That’s bullshit!”
He spun on me and stopped my pursuit. “You’re right. I can. I don’t want to.”
“Why?”
“Because I’ve seen your death and…” his words dropped off, and he ran his hands through his hair.
All the steam left me. It was the last thing I’d expected him to say. Some crazy part of me had almost wished he had said Harold was forcing him to do this. Or even crazier, that he cared for me.
“How do you know?”
He was leaning away from me, his palms resting on the back of the couch, his head hanging down.
“Because I saw it,” he said, on a long exhale.
“You can’t see our fates.” He was trying to trick me and convince me to stay.
“But, I did.” He pushed off the couch and walked over to the bar, pouring his own drink.
“Maybe it was just a normal dream.”
He shook his head. “I’ve seen it more than once and not while I was sleeping.” He threw back the contents of his glass and then poured another.
“You can’t see my fate. You said it yourself.” I didn’t want to believe him, but I was starting to anyway.
“I know. But somehow I can, at least this part.” He wasn’t trying to convince me, and that lent his words more weight than anything.
“Maybe it was me retiring that you saw.” I knew that wasn’t what he meant though, and he shook his head again, confirming it.
When he looked at me, I saw in his face that he had more details. His expression warned me not to ask.
Did I want to know? When I’d been mortal, I’d debated this very question with Charlie, over a bottle of wine, one night. He’d said he would never want the details of his death. I’d said I would. Theoretical musings were a whole hell of a lot different than the reality of such knowledge. I’d thought I’d known how I would feel, given the option, but I didn’t. And yet, my answer was still the same as it had been that evening.
No matter what Fate told me, it wouldn’t change anything. I’d still leave there tonight, by any means I could, to save Kitty. I guess I just wanted to know if I’d never come back.
“Tell me.” I walked over to his couch and sat, but then immediately got back up to pace.
“I don’t have the exact details. I don’t even know when.” Fate stood in the center of the room, just watching me.
“But you saw me die.” I stopped pacing to glower at him. “If you’re going to tell me that part, then you can’t start cherry picking which details to divulge.”
“You were lying on the ground, in a puddle of blood.” He stiffened as he spoke, anger pouring off him as the words came out.
“Are you sure it was my blood? And I could’ve just been knocked out or hurt badly.” It was just an image. He could be wrong.
“You were dead.” His words sounded as final as their meaning. There was no doubt in his mind about what he’d seen. “Your neck was sliced open.”
I swallowed hard and lifted a hand to my throat. I didn’t even realize I’d done it until Fate’s hand was there, pulling mine away.
“I’m not going to let it happen.”
“Why? You don’t even like me, most of the time.”
“Liking you has nothing to do with it.” His hand dropped from mine and he walked a little distance away.
“This doesn’t change anything.”
I watched as his frame straightened and tensed. “No?”
“I told you. She’s there because of me.”
“And I told you, I’m not letting it happen.”
Chapter 31
Finishing the job.
Fate and I had hit an impasse. The tension was so thick when Lars walked back in that it had become a palpable thing in the very air I was laboring to breathe.
“Did you bring everything?” Fate asked Lars, seeming more at ease than I; or maybe he was just better at hiding it.
Lars lifted his hand and I saw the bag he carried his tattoo gun in, which I’d been too busy to notice before, my attention drawn to the phone vibrating. It was a continuous chain of calls in an attempt to stop whatever was coming. That’s how I knew whatever Fate had planned would be a deal breaker between Malokin and me, and mean the end of Kitty. I had to stop this.
“Is everything in place?” Fate continued.
“Exactly as you wanted.”
Trying to go unnoticed, I edged further toward the door in the smallest movements, no bigger than a shifting of my feet. I didn’t make it more than an inch farther before Fate’s hand wrapped around my wrist. The tiniest shred of dignity I had left was the only thing that kept me from trying to pull myself free.
“Doesn’t look like she wants this though, man,” Lars said, as he took a step backward, physically trying to put distance between himself and something he felt morally questionable about.
“Want what? What are you going to do?” My breathing was obviously labored now, as my adrenaline raced to keep pace with my rising panic.
“She doesn’t even know?” Lars held up a hand and took another step back. “We don’t force anyone. Isn’t that why we broke out? Isn’t that what we’re all about? Making our own choices?”
“She hasn’t made her own choices in weeks.” Fate’s grip on me didn’t loosen at all, even under Lars’s doubts. He was actually pulling me closer, demonstrating his commitment to the choice he’d made.
“I don’t know. This feels really bad. It’ll cut her off permanently.” Lars was shaking his head, clearly conflicted between helping his friend and going against his morals. “When did we start forcing people? You didn’t even do this final step.”
I realized my last hope was standing right in front of me. I hadn’t given Lars enough credit in the past. Maybe he was a better person than I’d known. “Please, Lars, don’t do this,” I pleaded, looking straight at him. “You know it’s wrong.”
I didn’t know what the consequences of being cut off permanently would be, and I didn’t want to know. I was already losing Kitty. Murphy might be next, and who knew who’d fall victim to Malokin after that, and all because of me.
“Lars, this has to be done.” Fate wasn’t asking anymore.
Lars looked off through the windows toward the beach for a minute, but then nodded.
After that, Lars wouldn’t look at me again, and I knew I’d lost the fight. My dignity was officially gone as I tried to pull free of Fate’s grasp but couldn’t.
Fate was slowly pulling me in closer to him, as I started to completely break down. Sobs wrenched my body now, and I must have looked as unstable as he said I was.