Devil May Care - Deckerstar

Chapter 14: The roots of the apple tree

Sorry for the delay, I was away on vacation. Also, I'm updating as I write, so it might take longer (or not) for me to post. Follow me on IG: @crime_solvingdevil where I update you all about my writing and the fandom.

Here you have chapter 14. Lots of love!

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He had to stop the car at one point, he just couldn't keep on driving. His hands wouldn't be able to shift gears as he should, they would shake with every single breath he took. He was ashamed to admit he couldn't get the car up and running on some occasions, which led to several angry honks from the people behind him.

He pulled over sometime between the moment when Clover woke up and started crying her lungs out, and the moment when the coat of tears over his eyes grew too thick for him to know where he was even going. He needed to stop, he needed the pain to stop.

He got out in the middle of the highway, not caring one single bit about the tickets and fines he would get, and he finally let the first tear out. The first of many. A tear so bitter, so angry, so... hurt. He didn't want to be crying, he didn't want to feel the void of betrayal, the void of losing someone he once considered his everything.

Sometime after the first tear came out, his fist punched a crater on the car's door, leaving a dent so deep and atrocious that it almost compared to the feeling compressing his heart. Almost being the keyword. The sound and inevitable motion of the car as he punched it, not once but twice, startled his baby girl even more, making her cry in a way he'd never heard before, not even in Hell.

"Why, dad, why?!" He shouted to the darkening skies, feelings so ugly and unbecoming easing their way into his heart as if they owned the place. "Why would you put her in my path for this?!" He cried silently, since his daughter was doing all the screaming for him. "Of course, to keep on breaking me! Well, you got it now!"

The motto he'd lived by for the entirety of his life as the devil was 'If you've got nothing to lose, nothing can be taken from you.' He now knew he was wrong, and however unbecoming the weakness may be, Clover was the best thing to ever happen to him, and he wouldn't trade her for anything. Clover would always be his little sun, the apple of his eye, and if for her he had to go through everything Chloe Decker entailed, then he should be more than happy.

Other than he wasn't happy. And he honestly didn't know if he ever wanted to be happy.

Clover made him happy, she was his sunshine, but so was Chloe. Or rather, she had been beginning to be. His hope, his trust, everything that Chloe had ever meant to him had been shattered past repair, and he truly didn't know if there would ever be a way to fix things between them, nor was he sure he hoped there were.

"I'm broken! Is this what you wanted!?" And as if his father had heard him, an unexpected rainfall was God's answer. "You meteorologically-inclined bastard! What does that even mean?!" He asked in despair as his father poured heavy rain on his shoulders, blending them with his tears and soaking him up entirely.

A couple of sighs later, ones breathed out in a futile attempt to calm himself down, he picked his daughter up, cradled her against his chest, and with nothing other than one last, angry, hurt look at the heavens, he departed. He hung his duffel bag on one of his shoulders, unfurled his unwanted wings and flew himself to his penthouse, a place he no longer could call his home. He had nowhere to call home.

He landed about thirty seconds later on the balcony of his very lonely penthouse. Maze had been staying at a beach house of his, per her request, so no one had resided there in more that two months, which explained why everything was covered in bedsheets and there was an unfathomable amount of boxes piled up by the elevator doors. At least he wouldn't have to worry about having stuff for Clover, since he had been compulsively online-shopping for her since her birth, and more times than not he forgot to change the delivery address.