GUN IN MY HAND

CHAPTER 79: NOT THE END

'My time, my wine, my spirit, my trust

Trying to find a part of me you didn't take up

Gave you too much but it wasn't enough

But I'll be all right, it's just a thousand cuts'

*SPENCER'S POV*

Here we were. The second to last part of the plan.

The article about the Thorntons' illegal traffic was ready, sitting in my bag under the passenger seat. My hands were tight around the steering wheel as I drove in the direction of Subrose, my knuckles as white as the horizon through the windshield, and I had left Dorothy behind with... her boyfriend? Was she already calling him like that?

It didn't matter when she'd made her choice, and it wasn't me.

Dorothy and her boyfriend, that was what it looked like in the rearview mirror, and even if their silhouettes quickly disappeared in the blur, the glimpse was enough to show how perfectly they fitted as a couple.

I should have seen it before. I had actually, the first night we'd arrived at the cabin, when she'd been sick and crying, and she'd crashed into Blade's chest.

She hadn't been aware of it herself. It had been instinctive, like everything with Dorothy, but her instincts always came from her heart, and in her most vulnerable state, she'd chosen his arms to hold her. It was saying more than a thousand words.

Yet it didn't mean that hearing her pronouncing those words out loud hadn't shattered my heart into a thousand pieces. It didn't mean I hadn't hoped to be wrong.

I'd hoped with all my already-cracked heart that she would have run back to my arms, that it had been only a temporary rush, while we were Dorothy and Spencer forever. I'd told myself that since I'd first heard the rumors about her 'hanging out with a murderer' and I'd followed her when she'd sneaked out in the middle of the night to see him. I had been too confident in our love, too hopeless, too blind.

Now, here I was, months later, my eyes wide open and dry after shedding too many tears.

I still loved her with every painful breath I took, and I couldn't even hate him because if someone could love her almost as much as I did, it was Blade.

This murderer turned out to be really caring, and if I wouldn't have trusted him for many things, I trusted him with Dorothy's and the baby's lives.

He'd proved it that first night at the cabin too, when he'd holden her like his life had depended on it, and he'd been too focused on soothing her to even taunt me. Though I'd preferred when he'd tried to kill me with his knife.

No stab, no snide remark could cut as deep as watching her relax a little bit more in his embrace, and I'd ended up with too many wounds, on which I'd put hope like acid, too many glances I'd turned a blind eye on, too many half-inches she'd always leaned closer to him.

It wasn't that Dorothy hadn't been careful to treat Blade and me equally. I would never reproach her that.

She'd been lost, confused, and overwhelmed, and yet, she'd always tried to make things right for everybody and keep the atmosphere friendly – which, with Blade and me, wasn't easy – on top of handling the guilt, the fears, and the pregnancy hormones.

However, while she really saw me as a friend, she looked at Blade with a spark in her eyes.

'It's just that... there's not that spark.'