Blood to Dust

“I’ve got no more strength.” I’m quivering so violently, I bump into parts of his body without even noticing. “I don’t have any more fight in me.”

He cups my face in his hands, so that I can’t escape his penetrating gaze. “Then I’ll give you some of mine.”

Shaking my head, I suddenly feel hot. So hot. Too hot. I hate this place. This room. This life. I worm out of his touch.

“They’re monsters, but they’re going to pay for what they did to you, all of them. One day when this is all over, one day, sometime in the future, you’ll have it all. I promise. A big swollen belly from the man you love.”

You, I want to shout. You’re the man I love. Only we promised each other we’d say goodbye. Knowing I’m way too screwed up right now to face rejection, I still put myself in the most fragile situation I’ve ever been in. Rejection might kill me, but I have no choice.

I lift my eyes to meet his and my lips flatten.

“I want to come with you. Forget Iowa. Forget my stupid dreams. Can I come with you, Christopher Delaware?”

His gorgeous face pulls into a badass smirk and my heart stutters in my chest.

“Why, Miss Cockburn, I thought you’d never ask.”

I’m too exhausted, shocked and irritated to smile. But he picks me up honeymoon style and carries me to the dirty bed. We’re holding each other’s stares like neither of us believes we’re good enough for the other person to stick around. Somewhere underneath the painful reminder of my pregnancy. . .I’m at peace. I have a home now, and that’s with Nate.

We fall asleep like two dead people sometime after the sun breaks over the skyline. I don’t think I’ve ever been so sad in my entire life. But also happy, and confused. Hopeful and hopeless. I’m a mess. I’m his mess. And that’s something.

That’s a lot.

And as I drift off to sleep I wonder. . .could it possibly be everything?



Blindsided by the whole pregnancy ordeal, I find myself staring at her as she snores softly, exhausted by life. Jesus f*ck. This girl has been through and seen so much in her twenty-five years of life. Her baggage must weigh about five hundred tons. But I’ll happily shoulder whatever shit she carries in her heart if that means spending time with her.

She wants us to stick together. I want that too. Even though I know that, it doesn’t change the fact I need to piss out of the state, out of the country, before the end of the week. Today’s Sunday—one day after she killed Sebastian—and she doesn’t look ready to get out of bed. Actually, that’s a bit of a f*cking understatement. The truth is, her face is buried in the pillow, crying, crying, crying. Amazingly, she doesn’t run out of tears.

“We need to get up.”

“I want to see my brother.”

“We’re killing Godfrey first.”

“No. I want to go to Vallejo, now.”

“No f*cking way, Cockburn. Erase the idea from your head. We ain’t getting near that place until we finish Godfrey. It might be a set-up.” It is a set-up. She’s too distracted by grief to see it. “Pack up.”

“No. I need Preston.”

Goddammit.

I’m starting to suspect that she’s on the verge of depression. I can’t let it happen. She needs a dose of adrenalin, and since I can’t try to f*ck my way into improving her mood, I have a better idea. An idea that can do us both a lot of good, even though it’s a very bad deed.

“Get the f*ck up. We’re leaving.” I throw her backpack on the bed she’s buried in. She doesn’t respond, so I order her again. Still, nothing. I can understand her state of mind, even what she’s feeling. I lost my mother, after all, and couldn’t even attend her funeral. But we don’t have time for her sulking. She can sulk all she wants when we’re done. I grab her by the arm and yank her up, pulling her flush to my chest.

“You’re getting over it, hear me?” I growl in her face. She doesn’t look at me, just slumps her shoulders and lets me guide her to the door and into another car we stole to cover our footprints. This time I chose a Camaro. For our next act, we’ll need something fast.

We drive toward Danville, going east. At some point, she stops her sulking and turns to me. I can see how devastated she is by the way her cheekbones are sunken and her eyes are shut off. Prescott’s eyes used to glitter in the dark for me when I came down to the basement every night.

“Where to?”

“Blackhawk.” I twist to the backseat, still driving, and pull out the two masks from the Walgreens bag. At this point, the damn bag can write a f*cking memoir about us. “Put it on after we go through the gates.”

Blackhawk is a gated community, but Prescott breezes right in. She’s a resident. Actually, I’d be able to walk right in too, considering I’m still technically employed there. But we’ll have to be quick when we run away, because rich people are pretty sensitive about getting their shit stolen.

And I’m about to steal some expensive f*cking shit.

She rubs her face, looking up and sighing.

“What are you up to?”

“No good, just as usual.”

I’ve been sexually harassed for months. Not with the kind of brutality Prescott has been handed, but still enough to feel a tad less guilty about it.