All We Are (8th Sin Book 2) (19 page)

Seeing Nash standing at the door when I get out of my car is quite possibly the best thing I’ve laid eyes on. I need him right now.

And I never understood how much until this day. He’s that thing that makes me feel good. He makes me feel right.

I walk up the stairs and just look at him. Tears are still falling, I’m sure my face is all red and splotchy and there is probably snot coming from my nose but I don’t care.

“Before you say anything I just want to get this all out…” I take a big breath, he’s just standing in front of me waiting for me to say whatever I need to say to him. “I think I love this…I love how I feel when I am with you. I think what I feel every time I am with you is love. You’re the one who makes me feel okay and I never want that to stop.” I sob like a baby right there on his porch steps.

I drop my head. 

And his hand comes down on my shoulder. And I look up at him. “Is that bad?”

He looks at me in a way nobody has ever looked at me before. “No. That’s not bad.”

I wipe my nose against the back of my arm and laugh. “And now you think I am crazy right?” I sit down on the steps. I am so stupid. I have hardly got to know him. Of course he doesn’t feel the same way.

“I think your phone is ringing.” He comes down the steps and stands in front of me. “Why are you crying?”

I pull my phone out of my pocket. It’s Jackson and I don’t ever want to talk to him again. I throw my phone across the porch. “I’m crying because my whole life has been one big fat lie. And my dad has finally admitted it.”

So it’s the least Nash could do is tell me that I mean something to him. It would be the best thing I ever heard. And I don’t care how that makes me seem.

He looks at my phone at the end of his porch and back at me. I look away because I’m a big mess. And a little embarrassed now that he is acknowledging all the crazy I just tossed at him.

“I love this too. All of it. The moments when I feel totally out of control, the moments when I wish I was with you instead of wherever I am.” He reaches for me and I grab his hand. He pulls me up. “I love it all…every part of it.”

He smiles and it makes me smile. He cleans up my face, shaking his head at me. “You look like you were ditched on prom night.” We both laugh.

“Can you please kiss me already before I explode?” I smile again, and he presses his lips into mine, holding my face in his hands. It’s the best kiss I’ve ever had, because for once everything behind it means something that I never thought I would feel.

Nash releases me and we stand there staring at each other trying to think of what to do or say now that we both admitted we have a hell of a lot of feelings for each other.

There are moments in life that you never see coming and this is one of them. Two tiny blinks, the rush of eyelashes, the world goes from okay to not okay just like that.

That’s how quick everything changes. I know as soon as I hear Ike’s voice behind Nash.

“Please don’t,” I whisper.

Nash looks into my eyes trying to figure out what is going on, he sees the fear. He spins around and sees what I’m seeing—Ike.

“You out of all people I trusted. Tell me this is all a lie.”

I start down the stairs and grab hold of Nash’s arm trying to protect him. Ike has a gun and I can see in his eyes just how undone he has become.

I try to make him see that what he is about to do is not the right thing. “Ike, please don’t do this. Let us explain.”

And he starts laughing at me. “What could there be to say? My best friend, my partner in crime, killed my old man and hid it from me my entire life.” He screams, losing it right there in front of us, slamming the gun into his own head. “Tell me you didn’t lie to me about this!”

“Say anything!” Ike yells, he grabs Nash by the shirt and shakes him.

“I killed him. When I was a kid…the night after Christmas,” Nash admits. Ike shakes his head, not believing Nash admitted it.

“Why didn’t you tell me? Why did you let me think my dad took off and left us our whole life?” He is actually crying. “My sister killed herself because of that shit!”

He’s livid. A kind of anger I have never seen before.

“How was I supposed to tell you something like that?” Nash shakes his head. “He wasn’t a good guy. He did something you would have never understood back then.” He’s not saying it. I don’t know if he can.

“To me,” I admit. I don’t know if its going to fix things or change anything. “Nash saved me that night from your father, from what he was going to do to me.”

Ike turns away from us in complete disbelief. “Are you fucking kidding me?” He mutters to himself. “My best friend kills my dad for a girl.”

I look at Nash, he won’t take his eyes off of Ike. I don’t know what I should do. I don’t know if I should jump on him and pry the gun from his hands or scream for help—maybe one of the neighbors will hear me.

He spins back around. “It was supposed to be me and you. And you went and fucked things up!” And just like that he pulls the trigger, firing a shot into Nash.

“No!” I grab Nash’s shirt, fighting to keep him on his feet—this can’t be real. Ike can’t be trying to take everything good away from me. Nash drops to his knees and I look at Ike. “Just stop it. Don’t do this to him… kill me.”

I can see the blood on his shirt, and the realization in his eyes that Ike did shoot him. He squeezes my hand.

“It’s okay, I’m going to get you help.” If it’s the last thing I do I will get him help. I stand up and go for my phone and Ike fires again. And now Nash is sprawled out on the porch.

Ike points the gun at me. And I really think he is going to kill me too. I close my eyes. This is not how I expected my life to end.

“When he told me that Nash killed him, I didn’t believe it…until now.”

I open my eyes. “Who?”

But he doesn’t say anything.

He aims at me and I see my life play out like a movie—every second of it.

This isn’t the first time I’ve been here before. I almost died years ago—maybe I should have.

I look at Ike. If he is going to shoot me I want him to look me in the eyes, I want to be the last thing he sees before he destroys me. I want to haunt him for the rest of his life.

I tense up—waiting.

And he delivers.

And everything turns off. I’m gone—again. Tossed into the black void that we all go to when bad things happen. A place where your no longer allowed to feel anything. A place where for once can feel okay, not worried about the world around you, because the world doesn’t exist here.

And I have to make a choice, the same as before. I have to decide if I want to come back. Or just stay away.

All we are is human. We are flawed and we are struggling each and every day.

And sooner or later it’s fatal.