Skeletons of Us (Unquiet Mind Book 2) (41 page)

“Isn’t this something? You’d both die for each other,” Eddie mused. His jaw was hard. “Tell you what, Lexie, while I think on this, I need you to do something for me. I need you to sing.”

I glanced up. “What?”

“You heard me. Either way, one of the men who love you is going to die tonight, and I’m not a cruel man. If it’s to be him”—he nodded his head to Killian—“he deserves to hear your voice one last time.”

“No,” I choked out through the splitting of my newly healed heart.

The gun left my temple and pointed in Killian’s direction. He didn’t even jerk. In fact, his body relaxed slightly the moment the gun left my head.

My hungry gaze roved over Killian, over the boy I loved who’d turned into the man who inhabited my entire being. He was frozen like a statue of himself, a snapshot of this moment in time, fury and fear paralysing him. I knew this because of the way his fists were clenched at their sides, at how the muscles of his biceps seemed to pulse and the veins above them were raised, almost bursting from the skin. I imprinted all of this into my heart, drinking him up and letting this image chase away the last of my pain and fear. I centered my gaze on his strong chest, knowing my name was tattooed on there and the words from my soul trailed on his ribs. And when my eyes finally met his, time stopped. The world paused and it seemed the universe gave us that one moment away from the horror of reality, the imminent and permanent separation. It was just us. I tried to tell him everything I could with that gaze, pouring every word that would be left unsaid into it. Tell him how much he meant to me. Problem was, that would take an eternity. We didn’t have that. We had the handful of minutes, the length of a song. I knew, from the way my skin seemed to lose its warmth with every passing second and how the pain that had been excruciating was fading away, I was dying. 

“Sing,” Eddie commanded. He shook the gun at Killian in a warning gesture. “Sing or you watch him die.”

I struggled to sit up, my body taking a second to obey my commands, even then it was like moving underwater. There was still pain deep down, enough to make me suck in a breath, but not enough to give me hope. I knew now, what pain was. Pain was life. Whether it be excruciating from a bullet tearing through your flesh or an exquisite pain from loving someone and losing them, pain was the dictator of life. The trademark. 

Killian’s jaw jerked as he took in my small gesture of discomfort, his eyes tearing away from mine to sear into my blood-soaked torso. For one split second, pure panic and terror cloaked his beautiful face. That look sent ripples of agony through me, worse than a bullet. Because that was Killian’s pain, his fear. He knew. He knew life was leaving me, and I got the glimpse of what he would be once I was gone. It terrified me enough to try and grasp that pain and use it as an anchor to cling to this world. To Killian.

The moment of terror was gone and Killian’s face went cold and dark. I knew his darkness took over for him. His demon. “I’m going to kill you,” he informed Eddie, his voice arctic. “It’s going to be slow and enduring and never ending.”

I shivered at the promise in his tone. Killian stepped forward, as if to make good on his promise, not fazed by the gun pointed at him. For one horrible second, my panic mirrored Killian’s at the thought of Eddie squeezing the trigger at Killian’s advancing form. Thankfully, this was short lived as the barrel found its home at my temple once more.

Killian froze once again.

“You don’t move,” Eddie said, unflinching in the face of Killian’s fury. “Because if you do, you’ll get to feel the warmth of her brains against your face.” His voice was even, conversational. It was chilling, a hallmark on just far down the rabbit hole of insanity he had tumbled.

How had he hid it? How had I not noticed how sick and twisted this man was?

Killian’s face hardened, so much so I feared it might shatter. “You don’t need to point that at her.” His eyes were focused on the gun. “You want to use it, use it on me, like a man.”

Eddie sighed dramatically, like a father might when his child wasn’t listening. “We’ve been through this. You’re not in control here.” Eddie used his free hand to push the hair from my clammy forehead. I glared at him and flinched from his touch. He chose to ignore this. “I’m in control. I’m finally here for Lexie. You’ll do as I say, won’t you?”

I swallowed the grit in my throat. “If you don’t hurt him, I’ll do whatever you say.”

“Freckles…” Killian’s tortured voice hung in the air, but I schooled myself and kept Eddie’s gaze.

Eddie smiled. “So kind. It’s what I love most about you.” He paused. “No, it was your voice that did it, that connected us. The first time I heard you, I knew. I knew you were singing to me. So I want you to sing, now before my patience runs out and I shoot him.” He nodded to Killian.

Silence descended after his words. Not the beautiful silence that had settled around me ever since I’d let Killian back into my soul, but stagnant, bitter silence. The silence of sorrow. The silence of good-bye. 

I closed my eyes, unable to live in that silence, unable to accept that these were the last moments I had with Killian, in the company of a killer, while I bled to death right in front of him. So instead, I went somewhere else, to that beautiful silent place that was introduced to me six years ago in the parking lot of a garage.

And I sang. Not for Eddie. Not for the gun at my temple. For Killian. For us. To try and tell him everything he needed to hear that I only had three minutes to say. Brooke Fraser’s “Hymn” floated into the air and I poured the last of my life into those heart-breaking words. I used every inch of energy I had left to sing the last words I would ever sing to the man I loved.

The cold grip of death left me as I let the warmth of memories wash over me. As the song entered my soul, the terror left me. Unable to sing in darkness any longer, I opened my eyes. They immediately met ice blue eyes drenched in sorrow, in despair. In love.

A single tear trailed down Killian’s beautiful face as I sang the last of those words to him. The last good-bye. As that bitter silence replaced what had been beautiful with the end of the song, I clung to Killian’s gaze like a life raft, needing his eyes to be the last thing I saw before I succumbed to the darkness creeping at the sides of my vision.

I felt the loss of his gaze when his eyes flickered back, behind me. If I hadn’t been moments away from the final silence of death, maybe I would have noted something in that gaze. Maybe I would have been able to cling to the hope it held. Instead, the moment his gaze left mine was the moment I let go of that grip I had on life. On reality.

Then there was only darkness.

It took him a moment to notice them. Longer than it should have. Long enough to make him hate himself more than he ever could. Because maybe that moment might have made a difference, might have been the difference between life or death. For Lexie. For him. Because as soon as her light left this world, that was the moment all light was gone from him. 

Perpetual darkness. 

Infinite hell was what awaited him if his worst fears were realized. It was what he got a taste of the moment he walked into this fucking stadium and saw Lexie, saw her blood spreading from a fucking gunshot wound in her gut. One that was draining the life from her every second he stood there, unable to do a fucking thing. His girl, his life, was sitting right in front of him, bleeding, dying. And he
couldn’t do a fucking thing. 

He was willing to face the bullets. He’d walk through a shower of them if that’s what it took to save her. He’d gladly take her place without a moment’s hesitation, if that was possible. The fucking problem was, this worm was pointing that gun at her head. And the crazy in his eyes was something Killian recognized, something that chilled him to the bone. Because it was functioning crazy, a lucid type of crazy. It was love, but not the kind he saw twinkling in Lexie’s beautiful eyes as soon as he locked gazes with her.  

No, this was love warped and disfigured by an evil and unhinged mind. Love that promised disaster and death. 

But it wasn’t going to be Lexie’s, not while Killian still had breath in his chest, not while his heart was still beating. And it was. For her. 

Then it stopped. It stopped the second Lexie started singing, the moment her husky and throaty voice sang to him. The words hit him like a knife, like a thousand knives. It wasn’t because it wasn’t beautiful. It was. Even pale from blood loss and terror, Lexie’s beauty lit from within.  

It wasn’t that. 

It was because she was saying good-bye. That song was meant to comfort him in the face of her leaving this world. The words were meant to soften the blow that would come the moment she took her last breath. When she sang her last word. 

The length of that song was the last she had left, Killian knew. He was frozen in the spot listening to her, watching her. Then when she opened her eyes, everything in him paused, everything froze. Time stopped and he tumbled into the world beyond this, one she created with her words. 

With her good-bye. 

That’s why he took longer to notice. Because Noah and Sam advancing behind the fuck holding the guns to Lexie’s head were in the world of reality. Of death and loss and pain. Since the moment Lexie began that song, Killian wasn’t in that world. He was in the one Lexie created with her melody. With her soul. 

But then it flickered out, like the flick of a switch. Killian watched it with paralyzing horror as the light drained from her eyes as she sang her good-bye to him. That’s what jerked him back into reality. That’s what made him see Sam silently climb the steps to the stage, his face blank and his gun pointed at the man who deserved to die a thousand deaths. 

When Killian’s eyes flickered back to Lexie, his breathing seized. It had only been a split second away from her gaze, but it was enough for her to fade away. For her eyes to close and her body to slump against the chair and the pallor of her skin to turn to gray.  

The creaking of the floorboard was enough for Killian. The fuck, the one he would kill a thousand different ways, had been slack-jawed and in his own sick world of crazy throughout Lexie’s song. Not enough embraced by insanity to drop the gun from her temple, but enough for his entire form to move, creaking the floorboard. 

The second the gun lowered slightly, Killian surged forward, adrenaline and pure rage pumping through his body. It was laughable how easy he could take him down, laughable and fucking heartbreaking. Because this wily fuck, even struggling like a banshee, was no match for Killian. It was like subduing a child. The gun was ripped from his hands in an instant, and Killian plowed his fist through his face, knocking him out cleanly.  

A couple of seconds, Killian guessed was what it took to neutralize him. 

A couple of seconds, but he’d spent five excruciating minutes trapped by the man no stronger than a child because of how he’d held Lexie’s life in his hands. 

Killian itched to continue his assault on the man’s prone body, to not stop until his skull was crashed in. 

But even in his rage, he found sanity. 

There was a dull roar in his ears as he scrambled over to the chair and lifted Lexie gently, as if he hadn’t just unleashed pure violence on a man moments before, as if she was made of glass. 

Her body was limp and lifeless in his arms. 

“Freckles,” he choked out.  

He belatedly heard a scuffle and muted voices as someone kneeled beside him. He didn’t move his eyes from Lexie’s face, because the last time he did that, the light in her eyes disappeared. Lexie disappeared. 

He pressed his hand to the wound at her stomach, ignoring the blood that drenched her entire torso. Having to ignore it because he was afraid he might lose his tenuous grip on sanity if he thought about that blood and what the amount of it outside her body meant.

“Come on, baby,” he murmured. He pleaded. 

“An ambulance is five minutes away,” Noah half whispered in his ear. His voice was choked, almost silenced with fear. 

Killian clenched his jaw. She didn’t have five minutes. He didn’t know if she had five fucking seconds.