Page 103 of Lay Me Down
My chest explodes with an other-worldly pain, and I scream again. DeLuca’s hand leaves my face, and I just let my head fall into the void. My strength is gone. Everything around me starts to fade away, and there’s nothing around me but darkness. The stones, the chair, those vile Italians—it all goes away. Everything but what’s left of her. I can hear my soul calling her name. My mind demands for her spirit as it roars for death, knowing that they’ll be there waiting for me on the other side. Faint, newborn cries echo through the mist, and I can faintly hear a soothingssshhhh.
They’re waiting for me—calling for me. That’s why I can feel her again. They’re alone. She doesn’t like to be alone. Ourparadise isn’t complete without me beside her, and she’ll never get to rest. We need to be together. The universe deemed it so.
Damien…
I draw in a gasp as I hear her voice. The space around me is empty now. It’s nothing but black smoke, with hints of vanilla and spice. My lungs pull in every trace of it possible, willing to only be filled with her. I shiver again when I feel the beads of sweat roll down my limbs, and a warmth covers my face. Her nails graze my jaw, and I can finally feel her lips press onto my forehead. I lean into it again, willing to fall as deeply into the illusion as I can.
“I love you…” I choke out. Whispers play out around me, but I only focus on her voice, desperate to hear her say it back. I’m begging to a God—one that clearly doesn’t exist—to take me to her. I allow my mind to sink so far into the depths that I’m swimming through empty waters. As I sink, the light only grows weaker, but I don’t even reach for it. I’m clawing away the air bubbles so I can sink to the bottom of a never-ending ocean.
But no matter how far I allow myself to slip, she never says it back.
I’ve failed her for the last time, and I’ll never be able to resurface.
Chapter 42
Zeke
‘In Between’ - Beartooth
I'm riding up the mountain towards Ash and D’s house, but I’m going the back way. The security cameras from the bank showed Damien turning in this direction. So, he must’ve taken this way to get home, and not from the other side of the mountain like we all normally take. We’ve driven this way a few times while we’ve searched for him, and no one that’s looked has found anything, but there must besomethingwe’re missing.
There has to be. There’s no way he could’ve vanished out of thin air, and now that we know where he went when he left the Attic, we have a much better idea of what the hell happened. If he said he was coming straight home, then I believe it. Somehow, between the ice cream parlor and their home, he was taken, and I’m going to figure it out. Today.
I’ve avoided this side of the mountain like the plague. Whenever Taylor wanted to go on rides, I’d bring her up thisroute. Our first date was at the lookout here. I would’ve taken her anywhere she wanted, but she insisted that she didn’t want some normal restaurant date. So, instead of taking her to some bougie, five-star joint, I brought her up here. We sat at the edge of the cliff and watched the sun set. It was chilly then, so I gave her my hoodie and watched her as she took in the scenery. Her face melted like it was exactly what she needed, and I knew that she would be special then.
Fuck, I miss her.
I try to remember her that way, and not how I walked in the morning she died. Her vomiting woke me up, and I rushed into the kitchen, but I was too late. By the time I made it over to her, she was already gone. I knew it then. I just couldn’t accept it. I did everything I could to save her, but it just wasn’t enough. A part of me still hates Ashia, but only because she gave me a reason to live when I didn’t think there was one anymore.
My fist almost crashes into my eyes as I wipe the tears away, but I don’t give a fuck. Giving myself a black eye would be the nicest thing I could do to myself. The guilt that lingers under my skin has driven me mad. It keeps buzzing and twitching at the worst times, andnowis definitely the wrong moment. I have to find Damien. He would know how to fix everything. I love my sister, but D knows the pain. He understands the manic feelings and the dark thoughts—he would know how to make them go away. I can’t let them down. Ashia can’t feel this torment anymore. She can’t suffer from the unknown another day. Damien can’t be tortured and put through the type of agony Leanne described.
I can’t let them feel the same pain I do.
There isn’t much room between the forest and the road, but I pull over for every little thing I see out here—pieces of trash, tires, signs, and anything else that might lead to a clue. There’s a good chance that they just took D’s bike with them when theytook him. Obviously, along with our system, they messed with the street cameras somehow. So, it would be simple enough for them just to drive his motorcycle out of town. While I hope that’s not the case, it’s definitely a possibility we’ve considered.
I finally get about halfway up the mountain when I see two skid marks on the pavement. They look wide enough for a car, and there’s plenty of wrecks on this road with how curvy and dark it can be, but something is off. The angles of the tires are different, and one of the marks veers off slightly before the other. It could’ve been a really bad crash, but it’s still not consistent with car wheels. They might just be close enough to match a motorcycles, though.
Excitement breeds throughout my body, and I pull over with a screech. Even up close, the tire marks look strange. They veer off into the trees, but the brush doesn’t look disturbed. There’s a good chance that these are old, and we wouldn’t find anything new if we looked over the crash reports from the PD again. I walk over anyway, not knowing what to expect. I’ve seen weirder things, but I can’t help but imagine a deer or a racoon giving me a jump-scare the moment I step up to the foliage. Nothing happens, though, and now I’m sort of disappointed.
The brush is thick and dense. Each branch and thorn sticks into my palms and forearms as I move it around, causing tiny stings to shoot up my limbs. They’re easy enough to move, though, and thankfully I step through the majority of it after a few minutes. Once I make it into the tree line, it’s fairly clear. I look around and move some more branches aside, keeping an eye out for anything out of the ordinary. Besides animal shit, leaves, and dirt among the sticks and bushes, there’s not much else. Disappointment starts to build in my chest, but I try to shake it away, knowing that I have to keep going.
Nothing instantly grabs my attention, so I go to turn back, but as I move at just the right angle, something silver catchesme from the left. There are a few larger branches, and they’re piled haphazardly like they fell during a storm or something, but it might just be enough to be intentional. I run over and start pulling the branches apart, silently praying that I don’t find a body—hisbody. With each yank and tear, my heart beats a little faster. Fear is starting to take over, and it expands from my chest outward. More and more gleaming gray pokes through with every branch I remove, and that only makes me move faster.
With one final pull, my heart completely stops for a beat or two. It’s D’s bike… Damien’s fucking bike… It’s turned over, scraped up, and the elements from the past few weeks have eroded some of the paint, but it’sdefinitelyhis. I can tell by the chrome, and I remember when he put these mirrors on the handles himself. The side pockets are open, and three now-empty and moldy quart containers lay on the ground.
Holy shit…
Suddenly, I can’t fucking breathe. The air around me has turned into a vacuum, and I punch myself in the chest, just to force an inhale. I immediately pull out my burner phone and dial Alex’s programed number, grateful that I can give him some kind of news—some kind of update that actually fucking matters. My heart starts to pound in my chest, and while I’m elated to finally have arealclue, I’m also terrified of what this means.
“Yeah?” he answers.
“Are you near Ashia?” I hate how my voice shakes a little as I speak, but I can’t help it. Ash doesn’t need to know anything until I have something solid, and if she found out that I found his bike, it might just send her over the edge. I heard what the doctors and nurses were saying, and it’s imperative that she stays as stress-free and relaxed as possible right now. She’s my sister. I may have promised to keep her updated, but protecting her and my niece or nephew comes first. She can be as mad at me as she wants to be.
“No, I'm in the hallway. They’re checking her out,” Alex says quietly.
“Why? Is she okay? Did something else happen?”
“No, she’s fine. They just wanted another look to make sure they didn’t miss a bleed or something.”
