𝐒𝐞𝐫𝐞𝐧𝐝𝐢𝐩𝐢𝐭𝐲

Chapter 74

— Chapter 74 —
Mariella

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E L L I O T

In the next day or two, I found myself on the doorstep of the less-than-illustrious Joe's Bar.

Noah and Chains were still at Mass General. Chains was due for release any day now, and Angela was busy helping him get used to his crutches whilst Noah planned for Chief's funeral between the four walls of that hospital room.

It was a miracle they let him stay at all, with all the cuts and bruises on his face from his fist-fight with James. I felt sick just thinking about it—and everything that fight had finally told us.

I left to save your life.

The part of me that once loved James was now curled up in a corner of my mind, small and insignificant whilst panic alarms roared from every direction. A dissonance of thoughts—he lied to you. You blamed him. He loves you. He left you. You hurt him. You hurt each other.

Midas tortured him, and you were too self-obsessed to notice.

James never told me what was happening.

You spent five years wallowing in your own hatred for him, and it wasn't even his fault.

He was living three lives the entire time. One swept up with me, one trying to right the wrongs of his twisted family, and another trying to escape them.

Five years, wasted.

What the hell was I supposed to do now?

And Noah—damn it. Noah. He'd been going through Blitz faster than he could get his hands on it, and I never said anything on the off chance that he was right. That it was helping him. With his nightmares, or his pain, or anything else he hadn't yet told me about. And I should have known better.

There's a reason you can't get it over the counter.

Blitz could have killed him.

I cursed to myself, sauntering up the path to the front doors of the bar. It's all going so wrong. How did I let it all go so wrong?

How did we get into this mess? With Midas, street races, drugs, counterfeit money—but just a few months ago, I was a nobody. Some down-on-his-luck loner trying to make ends meet. All I wanted was to go to college, but even that was starting to look like an afterthought.

Noah turned my life on its head. Any sane person—anybody with half a mind would be packing their bags and high-tailing it the hell out of dodge. Me, though? I didn't even care. I just knew that I couldn't live with myself if I left him to deal with it all alone.

I'm insane, I repeated to myself. I must be insane.

Everything was going so wrong.

I didn't even know what I was doing here, at Joe's. It was mid-day, the harsh rays of a yellow sun blaring down on a deserted earth. There wasn't a soul in sight. No cars in the parking lot, no police officers, not even a stray chicken hopping over the neighbour's fence. The active crime scene from a few days earlier was now just a few ribbons of neon tape over the front doors that read 'CRIME SCENE - DO NOT CROSS'.