Bittersweet - Book Two

Ch. 3 - Missing Pieces

It's been ages, I'm so sorry. I went through some things in the past couple months; but long story short... I'm done with men and I'll probably be single for the rest of my life.

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'I'm hanging on strings held by fickle hands
My life determined by uncertain clasped fingertips
One second secure one minute free'

***

Whenever I get a feeling in my gut I follow it. It's something that comes in a subtle way and builds the longer I don't make a decision. The more important it is the more intense the feeling becomes. It starts as a warm sensation in my heart then it spreads through my entire body.

The feeling I'm getting now is terrible. Like I just trampled my own heart. He looks at me as if I just insulted the thing he holds most precious. Did I? Was I wrong to assume that the key was worth more than just a special heirloom from his mother? Maybe, I was a little abrupt - this was a special moment between us and I just ruined it. Valentine holds the key between his fingers but his eyes never leave my face.

"I told you," Valentine says through his teeth. "My mother gave it to me. It unlocks one of her greatest treasures."

"It does?" I ask again, trying to find a logical reason for asking him in the first place.

He narrows his eyes at me. "Of course, what do you think it's for?"

"I don't know, I was just curious." I let my shoulders slump down as he picks his shirt from off the floor and puts it back on. I sigh internally and frown. 

"It's not for what you think it is." He says with a cold and dead tone before handing me my own clothes. I groan and let my shoulders drop. I watch him turn around and face the door. Everything I do is a big heaping mess, I can't get anything right.

The longer we go at this the more I become desperate. I know that it would be difficult but I didn't know it would end like this. I'm running out of time but Valentine doesn't know that. He doesn't know that I made a deal with the Demon King to stay alive. In return, I had to help him figure out what truly happened to Scarlett and why she's still wandering. At first, I was told that she killed herself, then I was told that Valentine was the one who killed her.

Was he so heartbroken that he killed her? Or did Scarlett do something else to get herself in that position? Rath said there hasn't been a disembodied spirit in over three thousand years. What could have been powerful enough for something like that to happen?

I'm starting to think Scarlett is but a shadow of a girl who was hiding something a lot deeper than just heartbreak. Why couldn't there be more to know about her? We're simply not digging deep enough. 

The cogs in my mind turn with much energy that I don't realize where my feet have taken me. Valentine leans against the window and looks out as he holds a glass of blood in his hand, it's mixed with alcohol, I can tell - he's made himself a Bloody Mary.

"I'm sorry," I whisper.

"Nothing to be sorry about, I just have tender memories of my mother that make up so much of who I am. This key is what I have left of her," he says in a low, calm tone.

"You're a momma's boy aren't you?" I tease.

He chuckles. "Proud of it."

I smile because I can feel the genuine emotion that he was expressing regarding his mother and I relax my shoulders. Why do I  always worry when it comes to him? I guess it's hard to trust when you don't want to get hurt. Heartache is something very real and something I have felt time and time again.