31. Theo Glass

Chapter 31

Theo Glass

A woman stood in my living room, her back turned to me. Luke sat at her feet, turned upside down and exposing his belly for some scratches.

“Hello?”

“Oh! Theo! So sorry, I thought you were gone.” She spun around, hands on her chest.

It was Raquel, Billie’s daughter. I’d met her on a couple of different occasions, mostly around the holidays when Billie would host his family for a big get-together. He had three kids, but his daughter was the one who I saw most.

Her eyes were sad underneath her thin glasses, magnified under the lenses. She twirled a silver bracelet around her wrist. “I came in to feed Luke. I saw the letter you left for my dad.” Her voice cracked.

“Is everything okay?” I asked.

“No, no it’s not.”

“What happened?”

Raquel immediately began to break down. She gave one heaving cry, and then the dam broke. Tears streamed down her cheeks. I went to her side, took her into a hug. My world may have been falling apart at the seams, but apparently, so was hers. Something had happened. Was Billie in an accident? Did he fall? I’d have to visit him in the hospital. Maybe I had time to see him before the police came for me.

“It was cancer.”

Was.

Cancer.

“The doctors said he had at least a year left, but it was so much less than that. He was having trouble speaking. I took him to the hospital, and he died a few hours later. It was all so sudden. My mother couldn’t even fly in on time to say goodbye.”

It was as if an invisible fist slammed into my chest. Could this really be happening? Was this some twisted nightmare I was set to wake up from?

“No…”

“I came to clean up his house. That’s when I saw your note. And… I wanted to come and say hi to Luke. Make sure he had water.” She started to cry again. She buried her face against my chest. I could feel her tears soak through my shirt.

I couldn’t cry. I didn’t have the proper headspace to summon up any kind of emotion that made sense. I began to feel unmoored. Like gravity didn’t affect me. I wanted to ping pong off the walls. I wanted to shout from my balcony, wanting to curse every single soul out. I wanted to scream that I was innocent, that I was guilty, that none of this was fair.

But who cared?

No one would understand. And no one would sympathize. Even though I was quickly losing it all. My emotions were just as valid as Raquel’s, but anyone on the outside—anyone who knew the full scope of what I’d done—wouldn’t give a flying fuck. They’d want me jailed. Punished.

“I’m sorry,” she said as she worked to control her tears.

I shook my head. I should cry. It’s what was expected of me in this moment. But I couldn’t will the tears out of my body. I dropped my head, closed my eyes. Inside, I was hollow. A dark and empty space, excavated out by a surgeon’s hand. Hope had left me. Sadness had deserted me. Anger had fled from me.

I was empty. A husk. Would Raquel sense that? I was the last person she should be around during such a vulnerable moment. What if this empty void inside me caused me to snap?

“I should go…”

Yes, yes you should.

“Thank you for checking on Luke. And, fuck, I’m sorry. Billie was a great man. He had a really great heart.”

“He did. I couldn’t have had a better dad.” She choked back another cry. A pang of sorrow echoed inside me, but it lasted for mere moments. I wasn’t even panicked anymore. Something inside me had broken. I wasn’t sure if I was even awake right now. I felt like a walking zombie.

Raquel walked to the door, stopped with her hand on the handle. Her shoulders trembled with the effort to hold back more tears. I was almost jealous of her—if I could feel anything, that was. Even though she was feeling lower than she ever had before, I knew that this moment would pass for her. The dark clouds would shift, and the sun would shine again. Not for me. The clouds hanging over my head were permanent. There’d forever be a storm darkening my horizon.

I had lost Jace. The one man I’d felt connected to. The only person in this world who I felt truly understood me. Who I could dreamily envision a future with, as childish as that sounded. I’d lost him. And I was quickly losing my future as a free man along with him.

Now, Billie was dead. One of my only friends in this world. Even though that word was used loosely. Still. I could count on him to put a smile on my face. To care for Luke if I were gone.

Raquel left, closing the door slowly behind her. Luke gave a tiny meow as he walked over to his cat perch. The sky darkened with the promise of a heavy rainstorm. Fitting. I walked over to my balcony and pulled open the door. I went to the edge, holding on to the cool metal of the banister. The wind whipped around me, as if wanting to tell me something. It whistled in my ears. Or was that my rising blood pressure?

A panic attack edged into my senses. My throat, my chest, every muscle in my body tightened. I could feel myself losing my grip on my sanity. Everything around me was falling apart. Crumbling. My thoughts flashed to the people I’d killed. Their last moments of life, was it as chaotic as I currently felt? Did they know they were also reaching the end? Or did I give them a mercy by making it so sudden, without warning? Sure, there was pain, but I tried to make it as clean and painless as possible, even if those fucking monsters didn’t deserve an ounce of that treatment. They deserved to be flayed alive. I gave them justice and mercy.

Now, life was giving me nothing but hell.

I thought back to being in the elevator with Jace. How he was able to ground me. I tried the same strategy. Focused on five things I could see, four things I could hear, three I could?—

Fuck it. That bullshit wasn’t working. It only worked because Jace was there with me. That was the only explanation. He could somehow make me forget about my entire world spiraling out of control just by being around me. It wasn’t the therapy tricks he’d pulled out or the soothing voice he spoke in. It was his mere presence that could solve all my problems.

I pulled out my phone. Brought up Jace’s number. I wanted to call him. Wanted to beg him to come see me, to hold me, to forgive me.

I wanted to shout it all out in one breath.

I tapped his name. The phone started to ring, but I hung up before he answered.

What would he say to me? That he never wanted to see or hear from me again? That the police were already on their way? He had all the right to tell me to fuck off. Why would he say anything different?

My fist tightened around the phone. I wanted to crack it in half. If I wasn’t scared of hitting a random person on the head and knocking them out, I would have tossed it over the balcony.

“Fuck!” I shouted. It was one long, aggressive, drawn-out shout. I could hear it echo through the concrete jungle, bouncing around the skyscrapers, mingling with the sirens and the busses and the traffic. I should have never done what I did, but it was all too late for that now. There was no going back. Only forward.

And that meant dealing with my father. He was the disease that needed to be cured.

Marielle’s. I could show up at the bar, guns blazing, make him answer for everything he’d done to me and my sister. But that was risky. I had no idea what kind of security he had in place or what kind of layout the club had. Maybe I could scope it out, but did I even have time for that?

Jace… fuck. I’m sorry.

I shouted it. “I’m sorry! I’m sorry! I’m so fucking sorry!”

The wind answered me, whipping all around me. It tried to push me. Pull me. What if it just tugged me over the edge? How simple would that be? Just, what, fifteen seconds of panic? And then splat , it’d be lights-out.

I looked over the balcony again. The call of the void was loud. Louder than the wind that roared in my ears. I could hear its seductive voice whispering to me.

“Jump, Theo. Jump. Make it easy for everyone.”

I tensed. Went on my tiptoes. I shut my eyes.

All I could see was Jace. The night we met, the nights I watched him, the nights I spent with him .

The love I felt for him.

He had fixed me. Albeit, a little too late. But he did. He allowed me to feel like a human again.

I wondered where he was. Could he be back at home? At the police station?

I stepped away from the banister. My heart hammered like a drill in my chest. I was sure it could break through concrete. I couldn’t call him, but I could at least check in on him. Maybe that would satiate my curiosity. It was wrong, but what part about any of this was right? It was too late to be right. I was fucked-up, broken. I might as well lean into it as my last moments of a free man.

Jace’s name was still large on my screen. Instead of tapping his number, I tapped to find his location instead.

Hmm.

His little circle popped up on a map of New York City, but it wasn’t in any of the locations I’d been expecting it to show up. It wasn’t in his apartment, or at Stonewall, or at the police station.

He was somewhere in Brooklyn. What was he doing there?

I pinched the map, making it zoom in on his bubble. The building names appeared on the map. There was a salon and a bookstore and a sneak shop and a… a bar.

A bar named Marielle’s.

His bubble was directly underneath my sister’s name.

Jace was at Marielle’s.

What the fuck was he doing there?