Sparrow(99)

For the first time in my life, I was going to do the right thing, and I wished it felt better, because the truth was, it felt like fucking shit. It felt like hell, like torture, like a sharp butcher’s knife digging into my chest, piercing into my heart and pulling it out slowly, breaking each and every one of my ribs on its way out.

I knocked on the door softly. If she was asleep, I didn’t want to wake her up. She’d looked so frail when I found her. With blood running from her temple all the way down her face like a veil, her leg completely fucked and twisted, her foot the size of a basketball. She was freezing, too, in nothing but thin yoga pants and a Dri-Fit shirt.

An injured Sparrow.

The first thing I wanted was to tend to her, and then and only then to kill Brock slowly and painfully.

But I couldn’t do it the way I had wanted it to happen. Because Brock needed to be finished before he could give away the fact that I buried Robyn and Flynn right there, in the woods. I had no doubt he’d spill the beans to Stratham the minute the cop took him into custody. Every moment he was alive and at a close proximity to the detective, my life as a free man was in danger.

That was fine. By the time I stopped Detective Impotent’s vehicle in the middle of the woods and bolted out, all my urges and need for vengeance were irrelevant.

My quest was useless and irrelevant.

There was no time for revenge.

Everything darkened, and the only thing illuminated was her.

So I killed him quickly, coldly, efficiently, but not merrily. Still, I wouldn’t change it for the world, because I managed to save Red, and that’s all that mattered.

“Come in,” she said from the other side of the door, and by the edge of her voice, I knew she figured it was me who came to visit.

I let her keep the rotting rag I wrapped her mom in before I buried her. In a way, digging holes for her mom and for Flynn were the darkest moments of my life. They both didn’t deserve it. Even if I wasn’t the one to kill them, I denied them a proper burial, and that was a lot.

In fact, it was so much, that in a way, not paying Robyn Raynes respect had cost me everything.

More specifically, her daughter.

I pushed the door open and walked to her bed. She had shit load of tubes in her wrists, and her leg was in a cast. And she was still nothing short of divine. My girl, my lovebird. The prettiest. Not because she had the pinkest lips or the greenest eyes, but because she was made for me. Tailor-made to make me laugh, to piss me off, to make me lose my shit. Hell, to make me feel.

I placed the Godiva chocolate box on her stand, right next to the orange gladiolas. The florist girl said they represent strength of character when I bought them.

I told her she had no idea.

Chocolate and flowers. That corny shit. But only for tonight, and only for Red. I hoped she’d find it funny, with her sarcastic sense of humor. I wanted to jump on bleachers and sing her a song. She deserved the whole nine yards.

But I also knew it was too late.

She looked at the flowers and chocolate and closed her eyes, taking a deep breath.

“Thank you,” she croaked. But it was me saving her life she referred to. Not this stupid shit.

I took a seat next to her bed, looking down at my hands, or maybe my shoes. I wasn’t even aware of what I was looking at, but it sure as hell wasn’t into her eyes, because I couldn’t deal with what was behind them.

“Don’t mention it.”

I was going to do it. I was really going to do something selfless for once in my life since Cat and Brock happened. The last time I did something altruistic, it became my ruin. I was about to do it again, knowing it would hurt ten fucking thousand times more than it hurt when I broke off my engagement with Cat. Because, looking back, the pain of Catalina’s infidelity was nothing compared to the pain I felt knowing I inflicted misery on my wife.

And I was still going to do it, precisely because of that.

I really was a masochistic motherfucker.

“Are you all clear with the police and everything?” She sounded worried, but I didn’t fool myself.

“Yeah.” I inhaled, closing my eyes and falling backward on the chair with a soft thud. “I’ll be fine.” Sort of.

I opened my eyes and watched her for the first time since I walked into the room. She licked her dry lips, staring at the box of chocolate. This was us now. After doing the impossible and becoming something, this was us. Two strangers in a clinical room, looking for words that wouldn’t do justice to what we really had to say. Again.

“My mom…” She sighed. “I can’t believe you did that to her.”

“Me neither, Red.”

“Your father made you marry me. Why did you? Was there money involved?”