Hard to Love

18. Seth

Fuck.

"No, no, no." With my hands running down my face I keep praying to whatever God would even bother to listen to me to make Cami wake up. To make this entire night go away. Erase it from fate's plans. None of this should have happened.

"Please, God," I beg, but no one's listening to me.

Derrick hasn't moved. Not an inch. His body is over Cami's, his forearm resting above her head. His face is near her stomach, and his shoulders heave every so often. I've never seen the man cry in our entire existence, but he cries for her.

"We're too late," I tell him again, with a dry throat and hope he hears me this time. My fist slams against the wall when he tells me "no" like this isn't real. The pain of my knuckles bashing against the wall isn't enough. The pain is miniscule compared to everything else. So I do it again and again, letting the anguish wash over me. The drywall cracks and crumbles so easily.

I don't even realize I'm screaming until Derrick yells at me to shut the fuck up.

Picking up his head, he stares at me, both of us breathless, wounded and guilty.

"This is because of me," he tells me with red eyes. The pain is etched in every feature of his expression. "She's dead because I couldn't—"

"She's dead because Mathews wanted to hurt us. They wanted to steal from us. They wanted to kill her."

"It's on me," he emphasizes, lowering himself until his forehead rests on her stomach. "She died because of me."

"We'll get them back. We'll make them pay."

Time passes in silence.

"Where's Laura?" he asks cautiously. He didn't see the note when we came in. It's the first thing I saw. The blood, the trail of it to the safe. The emptied backpack.

"She took off," I answer him and I swear the confession strangles me. Each word tries to choke me, hating the very thought of it.

"Where she'd run to?" he asks and the lack of contempt, the lack of sympathy... he doesn't get it.

"She didn't run from them; she took off for good," I explain. It hurts more than I thought it would to say it out loud. "She left me."

With bewildered eyes he shakes his head and that's when I turn away from him, leaving him where he is over Cami and walking away. I have to wipe my face with my forearm as I head back to the kitchen and to the front of the house.

I feel restless, anxious, tormented and angry. It turns to pacing, thinking about how to get revenge against Mathews for hurting Laura, for trying to steal from me, for scaring the one girl I've ever loved away from me.

I can picture Laura finding Cami; that breaks me down to nothing. I am nothing when I imagine that scene. I know how she would have reacted. But I can't see her emptying the backpack and shoving the money inside. I can't see her packing up her things. I can't picture her leaving me.

Never did I think she'd leave me. I can't imagine it, even though it's already done.

The ghosts in the living room call to me. She wanted me to leave. I did this. I did all of this.

Another vicious scream tears from my throat as I swipe my arm down the counter. My body's hot, my head feels light and I do it again. The bang and clatter of the broken glasses and pans hitting the tiled floor urge me on.

I destroy everything, everything I touch, why should this place be any different?

It takes me a long moment to realize she took the cash and what the consequence of that is. I needed that cash. We needed every fucking cent of it.

"Fuck!" I scream out the word, but it doesn't make anything better.

This is what it feels like to be at rock bottom.

It takes a long time for me to actually cry. To let it all out and feel the deep-seated pain in the very pit of my stomach. For me to accept that Cami is dead and Laura is long gone.

Getting revenge for Cami is the sole focus of our crew.

That's the only thing that keeps Derrick moving. The guys are silent. Everyone is. No one asks where Laura is either. They know she left; they don't know about the money though.

If I told them, they'd want to go after her. So instead I have to be smarter, harsher, more violent to get the message across.

She screwed me. Laura screwed me over when she left. She left me at my worst, and made everything harder. I have to tell myself she couldn't have known, but that only helps for so long.

It takes hours of standing in a scalding hot shower to try to wash it all away, the pain of what I've caused, the agony of what I lost. It doesn't leave me though. There's no cleansing these sins.

When I fall into bed, I take her note with me. It crinkles when I grip it, no matter how much I try to let up on my grasp. I can't help it; I hold it with everything I've got.

I have her note, and the messages she sent.

The dim light from the phone is the only light in the room, and I stare at it for hours. Reading the texts about her doctor's appointment, then about Cami. I reread the lines she sent, wanting me to come home. Needing me.

Instead I was out, making a hard life even harder. Getting us into deeper shit.

All the while she was dealing with a dead girl whose blood is on my hands.

There's a mix of regret and hate.

As the weeks move on, I get colder, harder. The realization of what I've chosen fuels me to do unspeakable things. Mathews never stood a chance. Neither did Fletcher.

Laura doesn't text me again other than to tell me she's sorry and I don't respond to that message. She doesn't come back to Tremont or anywhere within a five-hundred-mile radius. Well only once, and it wasn't for me. A year had passed and she came back for a single day, hoping not to run into me even though she stepped into my territory, into my bar. I knew it when she saw me there, bumping into me by accident, that she wanted to leave without running into me.

That hurt stays long after she's gone. I thought I wasn't capable of feeling like that anymore, until she showed up.

Derrick keeps tabs on her. He has since she left.

The regret fades. The hate takes over.

I loved her more than she loved me, because I never would have left her.

Every day that passes, I start hating her more.

She said she loved me and she left.

She stole from me and she left.

She never looked back; she just left.