Candles

36 | F A L L I N G

WHEN IT RAINED, IT POURED. I never quite understood why it rained when someone was in agony. It did not care about the situation you were in. Rain only cared about watering the plants below and soaking you as much as possible, even if you were too lazy to move. In this case, I was in too much pain to move. My body was still in shock; therefore, it kept me from moving even if I wanted to. The rain had soaked me from head to toe and, sadly, my suitcase was not waterproof. It laid on the grass beside me as I moved back and forth on the swing slowly. My hair was stuck to my forehead, neck, and shoulders. I was certain I looked a hot mess but I did not care. I was hurting.

I brought the bottle of Harry's tequila up to my lips and closed my eyes as I swallowed. After I had packed everything I could, I took the bottle from the kitchen and left. It was probably wrong of me to just take it but I was currently following my heart, not my brain, and my heart wanted alcohol. He just had it sitting in the cabinet, untouched and alone. It was almost as if the angels from up above were singing to me when I grabbed it and left the house with it. Taking it was most definitely worth it, though.

I wanted to forget for a little while.

Was that too much to ask for?

Probably.

Was it selfish?

Of course.

Did I care?

Only a little.

I lifted my legs a bit to prevent my feet from hitting the ground and took another swig. My heart was slowly breaking into a million pieces and I wanted it to stop. I was only trying to comfort him. How could he push me away like he did? How could he blame me for her death? I laughed and laughing soon enough turned into crying. He knew nothing about me. There was no way he knew why I was here. I had been here for months and nothing bad had happened.

If they were here, I would have known before now.

They never targeted someone without giving me some kind of warning. Even if they were here, why would they go after Jillian? It made zero sense. It would have made more sense to go after Harry, since we were close.

Key word?

Were.

Jillian would have been a pointless target. I knew them well enough to know they did not do this to her. Alexander loved to make his appearance well known. He often left me messages in places where I usually worked or lived. He enjoyed drawing creepy smiley faces on them and every time I saw one, I imagined him laughing somewhere off in the distance. Tyler was very handy with a knife. He, like Alexander, liked to make his presence known. He left knives as messages. All of his knives had golden handles and his initials were perfectly carved into them. He was a carver and he enjoyed carving his victims, like they were pumpkins getting ready for a Halloween night. He never used the same knife twice, saying something about the blood ruining the precious gold. And Dylan, well, he never left me any kind of sign that he was near. He just pulled out his gun and fired. I guessed that was my warning but it was not a very good one. He was the one firing the gun the night Elijah died.

He was the one who killed the man I once loved.

Now, how did I know all of this?

I used to be one of them. I knew every trick in the book when it came down to those three. We worked together, killed the people we were told to kill, and got paid for it. We were family. If Elijah and I wanted to live the life we wanted, we thought that was our ticket to freedom. Unfortunately, we had no idea that once we were involved, there was no way out. We tried turning everyone in to the police but that backfired almost immediately. The people we worked for were powerful and the police were gullible. They tried to arrest us on the spot but we were not going to let that happen. We tried running but it resulted in one of us dying.