Page 123 of The Finish Line

“Tres—” my tongue is coated in copper, my words blocked as Tyler curses and a picture flits through my mind—a memory, my feet pounding on the pavement, as Eddie Vedder sings about a sun in someone else’s sky. I’ve just lost everything that mattered in my own. My sun, my moon, every fucking burning star between them. I want the moon back, even if it mocks me, and it won’t matter to me, because at least I’ll be with her. But I wasn’t...

I was running. I was running when . . .

Awareness drives into me like a freight train as I jerk back into reality while Tyler stands above me, his hand pinning me back as the girl speaks to me in an attempt to calm me. But she’s not Cecelia.

Cecelia wasn’t here.

She was never here.

My eyes blister with the truth as I close them, feeling the full weight of it as hot anger leaks out of me, and I let out a soundless scream.

Those bullets failed me.

“Jesus Christ, man,” Tyler croaks. “Please, brother. Please don’t.” He hovers above me, his red-rimmed eyes filling as he reads the truth in my own.

I don’t want to be here.

Anywhere but back here. Not anymore. Not without Dom. Not without her.

Cecelia.

I was in the street as a group of strangers gathered around me, their faces a blur as I fixed on the cloud-filled blue sky behind them, relieved. Because I didn’t have to force the lie of living anymore as I bled out on that sidewalk. Relief was coming. Maybe Dom would meet me. Maybe my parents.

But those bullets fucking failed me. They fucking failed me. And I’m back here, without her. I’m breathing again without a reason to. I don’t want this life. I don’t want any life. Enraged tears sting my eyes, and I stop struggling, utterly defeated as he presses me back against the bed.

“Fuck,” Tyler rasps out hoarsely, his eyes darting over to the side of the room where I know Sean is sitting, looking on at me with the same pity. I avert my gaze because I know they see the truth. I’m not the same man anymore. I don’t know who I am. And I don’t care.

Those goddamn bullets failed me.

*

Pearl Jam’s “Black” fades as I pull my earbuds out, and walk down the driveway, the memory of the day I woke up in the hospital fresh in my mind. I exhale to try and clear my head, bracing my hands on my knees as sweat rolls down my temple. My heart rate starts to even out after another attempt at facing what haunts me. I was listening to that song when I got shot. At times I force myself to relive it, hoping eventually its hold will lessen. And for the most part, it has. The irony is, it doesn’t lessen the memory of the heartache it evoked when I came to at the hospital.

But now the moon rises in my favor. Now I can reach out and touch her, and I don’t need morphine or disillusion. She’s with me, in my arms, every fucking night. It’s no longer a dream. It’s our reality.

That acknowledgment is cut short as Julien’s phone rumbles in my pocket. Trepidation seeps in as I pull it out to see the same text I’ve gotten the past three and a half weeks.

Quelle est la situation?

I wait the appropriate amount of time before I shoot off a reply.

Pas de changement.

I add two pictures I took, similar to those sent in the past. One of Cecelia working through the window of her café, and one I had a bird shoot of me walking out of the hardware store, hoping they satisfy him, and I fucking hate it.

It only takes a few minutes for a response. Immediate dread circulates through the rest of me as I read the reply—a time and flight number. Antoine wants him home.

Any control I had is now slipping through my fingers. Control is what I need in order to function, in order to protect her, to keep my sanity.

The minute I put him on that plane, I’ll be flying blind, with no idea what his plans are or how to proceed.

Whatever he’s decided, it’s clear he’s not going to let me finish my life out in domestic bliss with Cecelia. And I’ve felt like this once before, the night before Dom died, hours after Cecelia and I were discovered by Dom and Sean. The night my brothers shunned me, turned their backs on me.

George Michael’s “Father Figure” filters through the trees, a clear message for me as I pace the clearing, utterly torn on what to do. She’s had the song on repeat, blaring it through her commercial-sized speakers out on her balcony since I showed up here an hour ago, attempting to come up with the right words to explain my deception. She knows I sent them away and lied to her repeatedly, but she doesn’t understand the full extent of why I went to such extremes. Her emotions due to my actions will make it impossible for her to fully grasp the why of it all or understand the years of sacrifices I’ve made, some of them to keep her safe.

And with the way she looked at me earlier, I’m not sure I can get through to her. I’ve lost any chance I had at earning her trust, and all I want to do is grab her and flee. Take her away from everything that’s threatening to come between us. She’s already packing, to flee from me, from the situation, minute by minute, convincing herself that what we had was just another lie. Every minute I hesitate in explaining myself is a minute lost.

Have I lost her already?