Say It's Forever (Redemption Hills #2)(110)

Marcello went to toss it, and Jud rushed. He knocked Marcello back to the ground, had his foot on his throat with the barrel aimed at his face. “Don’t.”

Marcello cracked a grin. Tossed the lighter behind him.

The demon writhed.

There was no remorse when he pulled the trigger.

When blood splattered and his body slumped and Marcello no longer existed.

But it was too late.

The cans caught.

A whoosh.

A flame.

An explosion.

Heat blasted across Jud’s face as the inferno sparked to life in an instant.

“No!” he shouted.

He dropped his gun beside Marcello’s lifeless body and ran for the flames.

They had already consumed the back wall, eating up the wood and lapping at the ceiling.

Smoke billowed. A heavy darkness that filled the air and choked out hope.

Consuming.

Disorienting.

A black plague that annihilated everything in its path.

Still, he broke through the back door, searched, fumbled through the abyss from one room to the next.

Nothing.

Nothing.

Fear crushed, as suffocating as the smoke that filled his lungs. He pulled his shirt over his face, his eyes wide and unseeing, the world a blur of fire and white-hot pain.

It didn’t matter.

He pressed on.

Pushed.

Forever passed.

A second.

A moment.

Misery the time that ticked on the clock.

A roar rose from the depths of him. “Where are you? Please. Fuck. Can you hear me?”

The whooshing of the flames screamed back.

No, this couldn’t happen. He wouldn’t let it.

He pressed deeper into the smoke-filled house.

He was on his knees. Blind as he searched.

A bed.

No.

A crib.

He felt along the spindles.

He gulped when he felt it. When he knew. When he curled his arms around the limp body.

So light. So small.

He took it into his arms, pushed to his feet, and stumbled through the flames.

Searching for a way out.

A window.

He lifted his boot, kicked it, busted through.

Glass shattered and rained and tore his flesh. But he didn’t slow. He lumbered out into the night.

Refusing the pain.

Refusing the agony.

The fire raged behind them, and he ran to the edge of the yard.

Cradling the tiny frame, he dropped to his knees and gently set it on the ground.

The boy child.

His arms shook.

Shook and shook.

While the flames roared and wood crumbled and the structure gave.

No hope for life from within.

Torment wailed.

As loud as the sirens he heard coming in the distance.

Frantic, he breathed against the child’s mouth. Breathed and breathed. His hands too big and clumsy against his tiny chest.

Tears blurred, burning down his ash-covered face.

No. Please. No.

Heavy engines roared up the street, sirens blaring, flashes of light in the night.

“This way! Help! Please!” He shouted it when he saw a paramedic round the side, when the man came up short at the bodies strewn across the ground.

The man’s eyes widened when he saw Jud wailing over the child.

The man jogged across the yard.

One second later, Jud was gone.

Just another monster that disappeared into the night.



I jolted awake to the dream, flying upright. Sweat drenched my skin, and my heart ravaged my chest.

I squinted, disoriented, waking up to the barest light filtering in through the windows.

For years, I’d woken up alone, lost in a nightmare that would forever haunt my life. It tortured me with what I’d been partner to. With what I’d had no power to stop.

Her hands found me in the pinked rays of morning light.

That energy crawled and clashed.

Comfort and torment.

I swung my legs off the side of the bed while Salem crawled to curl herself around me from behind.

The way she’d done before.

This girl with so much understanding.

Way she saw me in a different light. Like maybe she could hold this burden with me the way I was going to hold hers.

“You’re in so much pain,” she whispered, pressing her lips to the marred flesh of my back. Where I’d sustained the burns that had marked me for what I’d done. Scars that reminded me each day of the senseless loss, the kind born of a wicked life.

“She left me when I told her.” Yeah, I’d told Salem this before, but I thought maybe she got it then. My shame. How I was going to ask her to bear some of it. How I needed her to.

She curled her arms tighter around my body. “I see who you are, Jud.”

I could feel her spirit.

Her compassion. Her love. Her worry.

“I hate that she left you over something that hurts you so much.” Her voice was a whisper of compassion. Of strength and belief.

The confession clawed at my throat, though fear tried to snuff it out, to hold it back.

“I’m right here,” Salem promised. “It’s okay. You can talk to me.”

I guessed it was the love in her voice that opened the gates for the words to get free. “Even though Kennedy didn’t know the full details of my past, she’d known there was something.” I huffed out a self-deprecating sound. “Guess it’s written on me. Fact I’m wicked.”