Left Field (New Hope #4)

Chapter Twenty-Five

Blake

After washing the blood off in the shower, I listened to Otto's advice and made myself a drink from the fully stocked bar in my living room. I rarely use it unless entertaining, and I've never consumed alcohol alone. Today is an exception. There's an unopened bottle of Yamazaki whiskey, a gift from the Director of Studio Ghibli. I pour three fingers into a glass tumbler.

Then another.

And another.

After the third, I stop using a vehicle for the amber liquid and consume it straight from the source. I wander my house aimlessly, the neck of the bottle wrapped lightly in my fist. I now understand how my brother became addicted to substances. Of course, Aidan was a partier. I'm a wallower. After mean, it's the second worst type of drunk to be.

My skin feels hot and numb. My muscles are so relaxed, I'm having trouble controlling them. I keep stumbling into things—cabinets, vases, tables—then chuckling when they fall over. My emotions are a heavy blanket, suffocating but also keeping me cozy. They're somehow sharp and dull at once. A pang of heartbreak will burst through the fog of liquor, then recede like the ocean's tide.

Lucy, Lucy, Lucy.

She's everywhere and nowhere. We're cuddling on the couch, watching The Witch. She's rifling through my library, saying I need more romance books for when Jade visits. She's on my bed, crawling across my body to tie a blindfold over my eyes. She's in my kitchen, making wedding soup and hand-rolled breadsticks while I distract her with kisses.

I lost her once, and I thought that was hell, but it's so much worse this time. I can't come back from trying to kill her father. I can't grovel my way into her heart when I'm the one who hurt her in a blind rage.

I don't deserve redemption.

But I can continue punishing myself.

Shuffling into my computer den, I take a seat at my desk and stare at the six monitors curved in front of my face. I hit a few keys, utilizing my code to gain access to North Philly's CCTV surveillance system. I locate the Harrowgate feed, using five monitors to keep an eye on the entire block. On the sixth and centermost screen, I stream grainy footage from a camera on the telephone pole outside Lucy's apartment, which has a direct view of the entrance to her building. It's an invasion of privacy, but my morals are more skewed than ever. I just want to see her.

I lean back in my chair, take another swig of whiskey, and watch.

The day passes, but my internal clock is frozen. The activity onscreen lets me know the world is still spinning, despite the discontinuation of mine. Commuters and vagrants traipse the sidewalks, pausing on a street corner to answer a text, or sitting on the curb to light a cigarette. But there's no sign of Lucy.

Is she home, or still at the hospital?

My den has no windows, giving it a cave-like ambience. I keep the lights off and the air cool to prevent the machinery from overheating. The LED screens burn my eyes, though I'm used to it from decades of staring at them. My optometrist suggested wearing protective lenses, but I always loose them. Soon, the blue light will permanently damage my retinal cells, but I'll climb that hill when I get to it.

Sometime in the evening, a businesswoman sits on the bench outside the gas station, removing a tablet from her purse and tapping her finger on it. It's a testament to how impaired my brain is that I didn't realize this beforehand.

The Wraith has a GPS tracker installed to prevent intellectual theft.

Exiting one of the CCTV cameras, I dedicate a single monitor to my unlimited access to 215 Tech's servers. I pull up the list of Wraiths currently in use, finding the one assigned to Lucy. The system locates the device within seconds, showing a blue blip on my screen.