Chapter 31 - Echoes of a Good Thing

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~Killian~

I forced the rusted handle of the faucet to its left. The water crackled and hissed before it finally came out in a steady flow.

Deep into no man's land, the gas station restroom, one of the types attached to the back of the storefront and not located inside, was coated in a layer of grime so thick that its baby blue tiles were gray-green in the flicker of the fluorescent light overhead.

Predictably, there was no soap. Instead, I scraped at the blood on my hands with my fingernails. Having pilfered a plush towel from the millionaire's mansion, I'd wiped off most of the blood when it was fresh, but even still, dark red filled the creases in my palms.

I'd also snatched two luxury watches from the man's walk-in closet. His collection had been so massive I was sure no one coming to investigate would notice.

The watches were heavy in my pants' pocket. I hadn't stolen from anyone since I was kid, since before Sir found me, but before I left the mansion, I'd stopped, remembering that I would need money to get to where I wanted to go next.

"You're a good person, Killian." Ayla's voice echoed around in my brain as I scratched harder at my skin. I wanted to laugh. If she could see me now, she'd immediately take her kind words back.

But Ayla wasn't here, so she couldn't take them back.

"You're a good person, Killian." They followed me north. They screamed at me in the shop where I pawned the watches. They leered at me from behind the greedy eyes of the used car salesman. They flowed, loud and crystal clear, from the speakers of the vehicle. They taunted me from the back seat as I drove down long, empty highways. The wind whispered them into my ear as I pulled the car onto the side of an overpass and threw my blood-stained clothes into a river. They reverberated off the river banks into the cold atmosphere of the night.

"You're a good person, Killian," they repeated, as if they didn't already know that the only good thing in my life was the person they'd left behind.

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Told y'all this one would be a shortie. Surprisingly, however, it was one of my favorite chapters to write.

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