My Maddie (Hades Hangmen #8)(87)

I opened my eyes and looked at Chris. “That,” I said and pointed at him. “That’s what I fucking need.” I tapped my head that was filled with nothing but emptiness. “This is what I need.”

He smiled and moved to his stash. I watched him like he was moving in slow motion. I felt like I wanted to sleep. I hadn’t slept in so fucking long. Chris gave me a brown bag. I reached into my cut and pulled out cash. I shoved it in his hands. “Don’t tell anyone about this. Don’t tell Rudge. If you do, I’ll fucking cut out your tongue.”

“I won’t,” he swore, and I turned for the door.

“I’ll be back,” I said and walked outside. As soon as the sun hit my face, I stopped. Tipping my head back, I smiled. My face felt strange as I smiled. I had the fucking sun on my face it felt perfect.

I climbed on my bike and rode home. I drove slowly, breathing in the wind as it washed over my face. I rode and rode until the day turned to night. The moon was out, bats flying in the sky above me. When I reached the compound, I drove straight to the cabins. No one was out in the clearing. I got off my bike and walked to the back of Flame and Maddie’s cabin. I sat on the chair that looked out onto the woods. I concentrated on the trees. I waited for them to come. I waited for the faces of the men I’d killed, to come and haunt me. I waited for Slash to come, and blame me for his death, for not taking the bullet I was meant to… but they never came. The fuckers never came.

Tipping my head back, I lit a smoke and closed my eyes. I leaned my head against the cabin wall and exhaled. I would take this shit until the night terrors, as Chris called them, went away for good. No one would have to fucking know. I’d take it until everything was fucking better, until I didn’t need it anymore.

I laughed, thinking how fucking tragic my life had become. How, in reality, shit it had always been. What the fuck had I done to deserve it all? I opened my eyes and stared at the bright mass of stars above me. Out here at the compound, the stars looked more like a blanket in the sky, there were that many. I wondered if there was a God. And if there was, then why the fuck was he punishing me. Always punishing me. How fucking far down did he want to push me? How much more could I take before I just fucking broke, before there was nothing left of me to survive? What was the fucking point of life if it was like this? What was the motherfucking point?

The ash from my smoke fell onto my hand and burned my skin. I tossed the butt to the ground. As I lifted my head, my heart fucking stopped seeing who was sitting in front of me. Sapphira… my fucking Saffie…

No. She wasn’t mine. She would never be fucking mine. I wouldn’t ever sink her down into the cesspit where I lived. Christ, she was perfect. I wasn’t sure there was another bitch on the damn planet that looked like her, that had my fucking lungs seizing like she did. Her cheeks burst with redness. Even in my numb state, the effect of that had my heart fucking ripping in two. She bent her legs, her long pink dress covering them as she balanced her feet on the edge of her chair.

“Saff,” I rasped, and lit up another smoke. Her eyes watched me, studied my every fucking move with those fucking big brown eyes. Her blond hair was a curtain around her small body. Seeing her was like the sun coming out. I hadn’t laid eyes on her in months. She’d remained hidden away in the cabin. Ever since that night when I came out of the woods… the night I’d fucked my first slut. I remembered her face, her fucking betrayed eyes, as she quickly put two and two together, and realized what I’d done. But then the drugs took it away as quickly as it came to my mind. “You doing good?” I asked her, when she stayed quiet.

Saffie’s skin was smooth and perfect. I wondered where the symbol brand was. My blood spiked in temperature when I thought of it, but then the thought quickly got washed away by the numbness. Nothing had ever felt better. Saffie’s head tipped to the side as she studied me. I smirked at the cute as fuck look on her face and her lips as they pouted. Fuck. There wasn’t anyone like her.

I remembered Flame calling Maddie his angel in the woods. Saffie was mine. I was a shade lost in Hades, no coins on my eyes, drowning in the river Styx. She was the soul that watched over me. The fucking angel who watched over me, the demon selling his soul, bartering with the devil for his one-way ticket to hell.

“You look troubled,” she said finally. Her voice was like the ringing of a bell—a church bell, calling its people to worship. I smiled at Saffie but she didn’t smile back.

“I’m good.” Saffie lifted her head.

Her dark eyes narrowed. “I can see through your deception,” she said. My jaw ticked. I needed people to believe I was okay. I didn’t want them to know of all the fucked up things going in my head.

“Yeah?” I said. “How? You never come out of your fucking house.” My words tasted like acid as I launched them from my mouth. Saffie’s eyes widened. It was a fucking bullet to the heart when I saw her head flinch at my cheap shot. Yet she refocused and straightened her shoulders.

“I see you,” was all she said. Three simple words that may as well have been a battering ram to the fortified door the drugs had built around my heart. In one easy hit, she had obliterated the wood and smashed through.

“You see nothing,” I hissed. But even as I focused on her protected gaze, I could see that she could. Like she was holding a giant magnifying glass into my fucking blackened soul. Saffie didn’t move a muscle as my words washed over her. But her gaze never moved from my chest, lodged into my heart… I see you… I see you…