Page 80 of Forever Only Once

Chapter 19

Hazel

“That’s all for now,Miss Noble. We’ll get back with you if we have more questions, but from a personal standpoint, I want to apologize that any of this happened. I’m sorry that you had to go through this.”

I looked up into the kind eyes of the detective and nodded, giving him a smile that I knew didn’t reach my eyes. It didn’t matter. I wasn’t feeling much of anything at the moment.

When the detectives left my hospital room, the questions done for now, I looked down at my hands and wondered why they weren’t stained with blood.

They should be. After all, I had killed a man. I had been covered with more blood than my own over the course of the evening, and no matter how much antiseptic shower gel slid over my body, it would never be enough to wash it away.

I had Macon’s blood on me, perhaps some of Chris’s, Cross’s, mine, and then Thomas’s.

So much blood.

When the cops came, everything moved so quickly, it had taken me a moment to catch up.

Somehow, they had gotten the story of what had happened without arresting me in the process.

I was a little surprised about that. Apparently, Frank, whoever that kind stranger had been, had explained everything to them.

And they had taken me away to heal up, not to jail. They had hurried Cross into surgery. Macon, as well.

Chris was dead, a bullet to the head with his brains splattered against the wall.

And Thomas was now dead, too.

I had pierced his heart with a single bullet, hot, molten steel sliding through his body as it took his soul, his life, and a part of me with it. Not because I loved him, but because I’d been the one to take the shot in the end.

I had killed a man.

And I didn’t know what to do about that.

I could remember every single abuse and injury that I had sustained when I was with Thomas the first time.

I couldn’t remember every little shove and degrading comment, but I remembered most of them.

That had been a part of my life for so long. Somehow, I had found a way to move on and become a new person.

But then he’d come back, and now here I was, covered in his blood—even though it had been washed away—coated in the blood of so many. Perhaps there was no coming back from this.

How was I supposed to live in a world where I was a murderer? I knew they wouldn’t call me that. They would say that I had protected myself and others, that it had been self-defense. I would never see jail time because how could I when it wasn’t my fault?

But that was a lie, wasn’t it? This was all my fault.

If I had stayed away, not gotten involved with Cross, then Thomas wouldn’t have become so jealous. Clearly, he had already found me. I should have known that he wouldn’t be content to only use texts or his friends to harass me.

He had become jealous and wanted me back in any way he could.

He had found Chris, a tie to Cross. Had somehow convinced him to come to his side. Although, in reality, maybe it hadn’t taken too much convincing. Just dollar signs for a man who thought he was already losing everything when Cross dissolved the partnership.

But now Chris was dead. There would be no more partnership.

Chris had cloned Cross’s phone to lure me to the shop. Had likely known somehow, deep down, what would happen to me, but he hadn’t cared.

Still, I didn’t want the man to die.

I didn’t want death on my hands at all. But now, I was covered in it.