28. Jace Holloway

Chapter 28

Jace Holloway

Theo was Nevermore.

Nevermore was Theo.

Theo Glass was a serial killer.

I had slept with a murderer.

I had fallen for a killer.

Theo. Nevermore. What the fuck? What the fuck?

Nothing about this made any sense, and yet the moment Theo confirmed it, the entire picture became clear. He’d been toying with me. Even though he said he wasn’t, he was. He’d been playing a game with me the entire time.

I had fallen asleep next to a serial killer.

Holy fucking shit.

What the actual fuck?

I could hardly see straight, could barely think straight. Everything in my body was shouting out at me to call the police and have them race here, where they could snap handcuffs on Theo’s wrists and drag him away. It would be the right thing to do. But another part of me didn’t want to give him a chance to escape, to hurt me.

He wouldn’t hurt me.

I was a fool for even thinking it, but then again, Theo had proven me a fool from the start.

No, I’d walk him to the police station myself and make sure he was locked up. I’d watch them take him through the door and book him. I’d guarantee that this saga was put to an end.

“Let’s go,” I said, keeping the shake out of my voice by a thin miracle. There was fear inside me, for sure, but there was also anger. He’d played me. He knew I was working the Nevermore case. Did it get him off to have me fuck him while he knew I was also the one hunting him down?

“Jace… I’m so sorry.”

Surprisingly, he did sound extremely remorseful. And that spiel he gave about his victims being monsters, that part could have very well been true. I didn’t want to take everything he said at face value, but I could confirm some of the reports. Even the FBI had reached out to me about what they found on one of the victim’s hard drives. They had been quite cooperative throughout the entire investigation, and I was sure I could ask to see if they had any information on the other claims Theo had made.

But what would that do?

Theo was a killer, and there was no getting around that.

It didn’t matter how complete he had made me feel. How much of a spark he had returned into my life. How could that matter when he was off extinguishing the sparks of other people?

“I can’t believe this,” I said as we entered the elevator. The door closed. Silence surrounded us, broken up by the old elevator struggling to bring us down to the ground floor.

It was at the third floor when the elevator gave a sudden jerk, and a loud creaking sound followed. I looked up at the fluorescent lights, now flickering.

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.”

Theo leaned his head against the wall. The elevator had stopped. I pressed the ground-floor button, but nothing happened. I pressed it again and again. I started to hit it with my fist. I was trapped inside a cage with a loose lion. I continued to hit the ground floor. Theo put a hand on my wrist, but I pushed him back.

“No! Don’t fucking touch me.”

Theo’s eyes opened wide. His breaths were rapid, heavy. He was clearly a hair-thin thread away from a full-blown panic attack. His eyes searched mine.

I could hardly recognize this man.

And yet…

“I can’t fucking believe this.”

“Jace—”

“Don’t say anything. Don’t fucking say anything.”

I hit the emergency button, a shrill alarm sounding up and down the elevator shaft.

“They’ll get this fixed. It’s happened before. It shouldn’t take more than fifteen minutes.” I was talking to myself. Trying to rationalize this. Make sense of at least one thing in my life. Because everything else had been blown to bits. This was all so fucking wrong.

“I swear, Jace, I’ll never do it again. And I never— never —thought once of hurting you. I’d never. Never.”

Never. Hah. Nevermore. Never, never, never.

“I don’t want to hear it. You can explain yourself to a judge.”

“And I will. I don’t expect forgiveness. I understand what I did was abhorrent, but so were those people. I stopped them from hurting anyone else.”

“And who’s supposed to stop you? From hurting anyone else?”

Theo chewed his bottom lip. Blood pearled on the pink skin. There was an odd, immoral reaction in my chest to reach out and comfort him like I’d done before. To tell him that it was going to be fine, that I was here.

I silenced that impulse, fought it down. I turned to the elevator door, trying to will it to start working again. What if Theo snapped inside the elevator? What if he wanted to tie up one last loose end before he was permanently locked up?

Goose bumps pricked at the back of my neck. I turned to face him again. “How? How could you have done any of this?”

“I’m a broken man. I’ve made choices that I can’t say I’m proud of.”

That got a twisted laugh out of me. “Seriously? ”

“I understand how ridiculous that all sounds. But it’s true. I can’t make excuses, but I can beg you to please, please understand. I had a moral code I worked off of. I also had an end goal. I wanted the same thing you do, to bring down the blackmail ring and make these people pay. That’s all.”

“You killed them.”

Theo had nothing to say to that. He dropped his head, rubbed the back of his neck.

Again, I wanted to reach out and comfort him.

Again, I chastised myself. Foolish. I was being a complete and utter fucking dumbass. That was putting it lightly. Of course this would happen. I knew I was out of my league from the second I accepted the case, and Theo only proved that fact. How much more incompetent can you get than fucking the man you were chasing down? I was a complete and utter failure of a man. I had made a critical mistake. I let my guard down; I let Theo in. How had that happened? Ever since my last boyfriend broke me, I had promised myself to never allow anyone else that same power. And yet, that’s exactly what I’d given Theo. I handed him over the gun he could use to shoot me with.

Stupid, stupid, stupid.

“Is your name even Theo?”

“It is… but my last name isn’t Glass. It’s Rodriguez. My mother’s maiden name.”

“Fucking great.”

“I haven’t lied about anything else. I’m messed up, yes, but I’m also not a liar. I really meant it when I said I’ve fallen in love with you, Jace. As twisted and fucked-up as it sounds, it’s the truth. I never imagined this happening, but it did, and I can’t fight it or lie about it.”

“You can ruin it.”

“I know I already have.”

“You have.”

“I’m sorry.”

“You keep saying that, but have you apologized to any of the families you fractured? Any of the souls you took?”

Theo swallowed. Tears shone wet at the corners of his eyes. He gripped his elbow tight. I could see the circulation being cut off.

Stop. Just stop.

“If I ever got the chance, I would. I’d apologized. But I wouldn’t change my actions. I stand by my belief that I made the world a better place through my decisions. That’s all I wanted. It’s all Em would have wanted.”

“You could have volunteered at a nursing home, donated to charity, given out food at a food bank. There’s plenty of fucking shit you could have done to ‘make the world a better place.’ But you chose to kill those people.”

“I did…”

My heart raced as if I’d been hit with a massive dose of adrenaline. I looked back at the door, the light flickering above me, my reflection blurry in the dented steel. I hardly recognized myself.

“Fuck, Theo, fuck!”

“I know. If I could turn back time, just to make things right with you… You have to believe me, Jace. This situation is sick, but your love, your being, it cured me. It really did. I can’t fully explain how I feel when I’m around you, except ju st that I feel right . For the first time in years, I find myself feeling like I have wings around you. Like I can go anywhere, do anything, be anyone.”

“Wings…”

Theo blinked. He likely realized how bad his choice of words was. He shook his head, let it fall back against the dingy elevator wall. He rubbed at his chest. “It’s so tight in here. I don’t do well in confined spaces, Jace.”

The irony of that being that he was going to spend a whole lot of time confined.

But still, the pain in his voice, the way his throat tightened, almost strangled out my name. Fuck.

I pressed the Ground button again, repeatedly. The emergency call button wasn’t working, so we couldn’t speak to anyone. Just had to hope they heard that alarm go off.

Theo slunk to the ground. He wrapped his arms around his knees and brought them close to his chest. He started to hyperventilate. Was this another ploy? Was he trying to get me to go close to him so he could knock me out?

“Just relax,” I said, still keeping my distance—as much of it as I could inside this six-by-six-foot metallic box suspended from the ceiling.

“I fucked up. I fucked up. I fucked up.”

“You did.”

“I’m sorry,” Theo said. He started to cry. It tore at me, even though I knew it shouldn’t.

It was all an act.

But it sounded so real.

“I can’t breathe. I’m having trouble breathing. ”

“Just take deep breaths.”

“I—I can’t. I can’t.”

“You can. It’s just a panic attack.”

“I fucked up.”

And so did I because I moved to his side and sat down next to him. This was wrong. So wrong. I needed to be banging against the doors, shouting for help, shouting for the police.

I put my hand on his knee. Took it off. He continued to rub his legs. His neck turned cherry red. He was clearly having trouble catching a breath.

Fuck.

I placed my hand back on his knee. “Calm down.”

“I can’t. I can’t.”

“You can. Listen to my voice. You fucked up, yes, but you are clearly open to fixing it… somehow. I can see that. And I—Jesus. I know you. I thought I knew you?—”

“You do know me. You know the real me.”

“The person that I know, the Theo that I know, they can handle this. They can, somehow, come back from this. I don’t exactly know how, but maybe that can be figured out later. Just breathe. Trace the path of oxygen. Ground yourself.”

“I feel like I’m losing it.”

“Focus on five things you can see, right now. Say them out loud.”

Theo pried his eyes open. “Elevator door. Buttons.” He scanned the space. “Graffiti. Lights…” His eyes settled on mine. “You.”

“Good. Now, four things you can hear.”

“My breaths, your breaths, my foot tapping against the floor, my own heartbeat.”

“Okay, now three things you can feel.”

“This cold floor, these smooth walls. Your hand.” His grip tightened around my hand. I wanted to pull away but didn’t. This appeared to be working.

“Two things you can smell.”

“Musty air. Your cologne.”

“One thing you can taste?”

Theo swallowed. He closed his eyes. A tear slipped down his cheek, over his lips. “Salt.”

“Good. How do you feel?”

“Better,” he said, eyes still shut, hand still gripping mine. I felt like I was being split in two. Half of me saw this as completely irresponsible and stupid; the other half saw this as the right thing to do. One half was slowly overpowering the other.

Memories rushed into my head. The night we met, the nights we spent after, the relaxed dates we’d have walking down the High Line or strolling through Central Park. The day we grabbed pizza and watched a last-minute show on Broadway. The movie nights, the sex, the intense passion, the undeniable connection.

He’d burrowed under my skin. He’d made me his.

Nevermore had made me his.

Could I… no. I had to bring him to the station. Had to give him up.

“Thank you, Jace… I love you. I really do.”

I couldn’t answer him. Couldn’t say the words that were on the edge of my tongue. They’d make me sound just as insane as he was. I couldn’t bring myself to speak.

A gear started to grind somewhere above us. The elevator jerked again, pushing downward. It had been fixed. But this life still felt so irreparably broken.

The elevator stopped on the ground floor. It opened to a lobby full of people who had been waiting for it to start working again. The property manager was there, speaking to the fire department.

“You alright?” she asked us as we stepped out. “So sorry about that.”

“We’re okay,” I said. I had a loose hand on Theo’s wrist. The door to the street was just to my left. The police station would be a short fifteen-minute walk away from here. Fifteen minutes for this saga to end. For this storybook to be shut tight, thrown into a furnace, never read from again.

Or…

Fuck.

Fuck, fuck, fuck.

I couldn’t let myself crack. I had to stay strong.

But… his reasonings… maybe… with a little more time…

I froze. My shoulders were tight. I ran a shaky hand through my hair. My lungs felt like they’d been filled with cement. It was as if time slowed to a complete halt.

I promised to serve justice, so why couldn’t I make myself raise the alarm?

Because I’ve touched him, I’ve tasted him, I’ve felt his heart beat beneath my palm. I can’t let that go—even if it damns me.

This was a decision that would haunt me. I understood, in that moment, there was no turning back. I was picking a side. I could call for backup. I could scream ‘murderer’ into the night. Instead, I closed my eyes.

I know this is wrong, but I know losing him might be worse.

“Actually,” I said to the property manager. “Can I chat with you in your office? I have a question about rent.”

“Of course, come.”

Theo’s jaw dropped. He looked at me with an apprehensive expression. I just closed my eyes and took a deep breath.

“Wait for me here.”

We both knew what I really meant by that. There wasn’t a doubt in my mind as to what I’d find when I finished talking to the property manager.

And, sure enough, when I came back to the lobby, it was empty. Theo was gone.

I’d let Nevermore go.

I’d proven myself a failure, a fool, and I’d have to live with that realization for the rest of my life.