“I do!” he cried out, frantically clinging to the reunion that he had imagined and not the one that was actually taking place.
“If you had meant it before you left for Treepoint, we wouldn’t be in this position. I won’t leave Burn, because he did for me what you were never willing to do.”
Reaper closed his eyes in agony. “Taylor ….”
“Good-bye, Gavin.”
“Please don’t leave … Stay and talk.”
“I can’t.”
His feet rooted to the floor, he made no attempt to stop her. He couldn’t. He yelled out her name for her to come back, while relieved she had done what he hadn’t been able to do for himself. She showed him that she was strong enough to walk away from him and find happiness without him. She didn’t need him. She never had. She would be happy with Burn in a way that she would have never been happy with him, because Burn was strong enough to survive without The Last Riders, and his one attempt of separating himself from the club had shown what a failure he had been.
Groaning in despair, he reached for the television remote, throwing it at a framed picture of The Last Riders on the wall that Peyton had drawn for him. “Taylor, come back!”
It was the twenty-five-year-old Gavin who started for the door, unable to merge back with the reality that the love he’d had for Taylor, the only life preserver keeping his head above water, was gone.
He was pulled back as he reached for the door handle.
“Taylor, come back!” Infuriated that he wasn’t strong enough to jerk away from Calder’s restraining arms, he desperately tried to make his way to the door.
“Let me go, Calder. I don’t want to hurt you, but I will if you don’t. Taylor! God … please don’t leave me.”
“Gavin, she’s gone. Don’t make it harder for her.” Calder tightened his grip on him.
“Harder for her? What about me? She’s the only reason I’m alive.”
Listening to his own words coming back at him, he stopped struggling against Calder. If she loved him, she would have come back when she had heard him calling out for her. Even if he no longer loved a woman, he would have come back and talked to her if the positions had been reversed.
Blindly, he sat down on his bed, staring at the blank wall where the picture had hung. Slate had told him that Taylor wanted him back. In his mind, he could see Slate laughing at him.
Incoherent words tried to filter through Slate’s maniacal laughter. Slate’s imaginary body grew in size, blocking him from reaching out to the voices that were trying to call him back. Drowning in a sea of Slate’s malicious taunts, he had no way to rise to the surface. Even if he did, he had no way to remain afloat without Taylor.
He didn’t fight as hands laid him down on the bed, or when he felt a needle prick, grateful for the oblivion that came, not caring if it didn’t come with the same rush as the ones that Butcher had given him, allowing him to find the only escape he could—through sleep.
* * *
He sat outside, senselessly staring out at the white concrete that kept him inside these walls. It was the only barrier left to protect the world from Reaper and what he’d once believed was the only thing that had kept him from Taylor.
Single thoughts swirled through his consciousness, and every one of them were as fucked up as the things that were done to him in that basement.
I wish they never found me.
Then I would have never known she moved on.
That she was carrying a child that wasn’t mine.
I could still be down there.
Just die there like I should have.
And those tapes … would have died with me ….
Each thought became harder to form in his listless stupor as warmth radiated from a hand placed on his shoulder. It was like he was being pulled up from the darkest depths of the ocean until he floated just beneath the surface, seeing the sun glowing brilliantly through the water.
A heart-wrenching song filled the water, calling to him. The mournful voice that he had heard that day in Lucky’s church had him wanting to find the solace the beckoning voice promised … until he finally reached up … breaking through the water.
Reaper shook his head as if blinking water out of his eyes and found himself sitting at the table on the balcony, and a man was sitting in the chair next to him. Normally, he would have asked why the hell the man was there, but he felt a sudden peacefulness that kept him strangely calm.
“I recognize you. You came with Shade one time when I first arrived here.” Reaper remembered the brief meeting. The man had come, but after being introduced, he left quickly, saying he would wait for Shade in the car.