The Hunter's Prey

Chapter 50- WHATEVER YOU WANT

ROWAN HUNTER- The Angel's Darkness

I stood a few meters off the entryway to the club, far enough to avoid interaction, yet close enough to still hear the loud booming music whenever the doors opened.

I heaved a sigh, a mild regression of memories swaying through my head as I stood quietly under the moonlit sky, engaged in a losing battle with the icy New York night breeze.
Glancing over my shoulder, I watched solemnly as the crowd trolled into the party, my brows furrowing with confusion at the number of unrecognized people lined up at the guarded entrance.

"Intimate gathering my ass." I scoffed, returning my gaze to the empty street in contemplation of whether or not to return to my fiancée's graduation event.
For a man who owned several clubs, I often found myself avoiding its parties.
And while Cassidy's graduation rendezvous was thankfully turning out into a blossoming success, I found myself more concerned in the moment about how we both got here in the first place.

From the second she stepped on that stage, watching her felt like... a dream like I was being given a tiny little taste of the joy and pride I would experience with her for the rest of my life.
     When I proposed, I... a lowly sinner, down on one knee amongst the dredges of respectable men...
   I promised to always be by her side, to love her, to protect her, to choose her.

    And every time I looked into those palpably devious blue eyes of hers... all my heart could tell me was that there wasn't a line I wouldn't cross, and a life I wouldn't take just to keep those promises.

      For a considerable moment as I wallowed in my undisturbed solitude, I wondered what it would have been like had I not known her... had I not approached her at the club, had my father not died and I'd married Vivian.

    I wondered what it would have been like had I not shot that man that day.
  I scoffed, I'd have a less burdensome conscience, that's for sure.
Perhaps we would have met under better circumstances... perhaps she wouldn't have gotten hurt because of me.

And if she had lived her life without meeting me at the club that day? Perhaps a simpler life would have awaited her. She would have graduated college, gotten a good job, married a nice, easygoing guy, and maybe endured an uninspired youth.
Rather than experiencing the one thing she truly wanted as a constant in her life...

Freedom...

  The thrill, the excitement, the euphoria... all of it, I was ready to give her in a heartbeat.

So regardless of the unnatural circumstances of our meeting... I never doubted for a second that we were truly meant to be together, if anything I found myself fighting against the inevitable, being afraid that I was less than deserving of her.

Shifting my gaze downward, I stared at the faded cigarette stick between my fingers, subtle traces of smoke disappearing from its blazing tip as the breeze fanned away the ashes.
     I put it to my lips and drew back, the doors to the club simultaneously opening from the distance behind me, loud hip-hop music instantly seeping through the cracks of the soundproof building.

    I paced down the short distance of the pavement, quietly inhaling a mixture of both the crisp night air and the toxic tobacco fumes.
     I spent the better half of the next five minutes in my undiluted thoughts, after which I paced back up the walkway.

Having arrived at a now empty club entrance, I figured all who wished to join the party either found their way in by now or probably gave up and returned home.