Cursed Fate: Cursed Series #4 (2 page)

“Etty, what wrong?” He asks pulling her into his arms.

Shaking her head she backs away and moves toward the end of the bed, falling next to my legs she buries her head in her hands.

“Etty, you’re starting to freak me out. What the hell is going on?” I ask in a stern tone.

Silencing her sobs for a brief moment, she lifts her head and stares back at me.

“You did this to him, this is all
your
fault,” she screams launching her body at me.

“Etty, whoa,” Linc says while trying to pull her off of me. “Are you nuts? Can’t you see he’s a fucking mess? What the hell as gotten into you and why are you blaming him?”

She looks to me with a death glare and then back to Linc.

“Are you kidding me right now?” She spits out, a look of confusion and loss spread across her tear stained face. “If Steve would have been paying better attention he would have seen the truck coming…then none of this would be happening and Dault wouldn’t be gone.”

My jaw drops, my mouth hanging wide open as Etty’s body falls to the ground. 

Dault is gone…like dead gone?

“Linc, smack some fucking sense into her. What the hell is she talking about?”

My breathing becomes erratic, my heart pounding through the thin material of my hospital gown. The beeping sound of my monitor echoes through the room as a nurse comes barreling through the door.

Looking around the room, she moves in closer to my side.

“I’m sorry, but you two have to leave. My patient needs his rest and by the look of things, you’re not doing much to help. His blood pressure is skyrocketing and his pulse is off the charts. You have to leave
now
.”

My gaze sets on Linc who is helping Etty get to her feet.

“I’ll be back in later. Let me find out what’s going on with the others.”

Nodding my head, I watch as they leave the room.

“You’ve experienced quite a night, Mr. Zotto. You need to keep yourself calm and get some rest. I’ll come back in a few minutes to check your vitals. If you need anything or if the pain becomes too much to bear, hit the call button.”

“I will. Thank you.”

She places her hand on my shoulder and flashes a sincere smile. Watching as she moves through the room and walks out the door, I feel my anxiety take over.

I haven’t a clue what the hell Etty was talking about and it’s driving me nuts not knowing what she meant by “
He’s gone
.”

Closing my eyes and allowing my head to sink into the pillow I let the pain meds take over and fall back into a deep sleep.

Lying in bed, I can’t remember how I got here last night. The only thing I recall is Jenn hanging up the phone and me sitting on the kitchen floor. Looking around the room, our bed is empty…she never came home last night.

I screwed up again and I have no one to blame but myself. The past few months have been difficult to say the least. My drinking has increased and the drugs I’ve been taking to numb the pain are just making things worse. I don’t know how or why I started to slip into this life, but my poisons are the only way I’m able to function. They help me forget about the real world, yet they’re making me a man that I never thought I’d be.

The sound of the front door slamming shut pulls my attention to the bedroom door, someone’s here. Trying to sit upright, my head begins to spin and a pounding pain shoots through it too.

Sliding my legs off to the side of the bed, my head snaps up to the bedroom door, to see Jenn and my mom standing before me.

Without a word from either of them, I watch as they move through the room grabbing a suitcase and all of Jenn’s things.

I’ve fucked up big time. She’s given me so many chances to change and now…now look what’s happening.

“Jenn, wait, don’t do this,” I plead.

Turning her body to face me she lets out a groan of frustration and rolls her eyes.

“Please, let’s talk. We need to talk.”

Standing up from the bed, I take a step toward her. She stops me in my tracks by lifting her hand in the air.

“Don’t, Steve… it’s too late. I’m leaving and there’s nothing you can say that will change my mind.”

My heart is breaking, tears falling from my eyes while I fall to the ground before her.

“I’ll change, I swear I will,” I continue to beg.

A subtle laugh comes from the far side of the room where my mom is standing. I look over in her direction to see her glaring at me, her hands on her hips.

“Steven, get off the floor and stand up like a man. You’ve pushed us all away for too long. You’ve left your wife all alone with nothing. Can’t you see that you are nothing but a curse to all of us? When will you grow up and be a man? Your father would be devastated to see who you’ve turned out to be. I’m embarrassed and torn by your actions. This is not the son I raised and I won’t stand by and watch you destroy your life.”

“Mom!” I shout.

Jenn moves to her side and places her hand on my mom’s shoulder.

“Mary, it’s fine. Don’t get yourself all worked up over this. We came here to get my things and that’s exactly what we’re doing.”

“Jenn, please…don’t do this to me. I need you.”

I can barely breathe, a constricting pain collapsing my chest as she looks to me with pure hate in her eyes.

“Steve, the last thing you need is me. I’m leaving and I won’t be coming back. You’ve abandoned me for the last time. I need to move on.”

With that, she turns and walks out of the room.

I slouch to the floor, in shock of what I knew would eventually happen. My body is numb, my heart is crushed, and my soul is destroyed.

Chapter 1

Four Months Later

As I sit in my chair, my eyes stare a large hole into the wall of my parlor room. These walls, filled with inspiration, are what have helped to create works of art. Now all they bring back are painful memories. It’s been four months—four of the longest fucking months of my life. Cursed Magic hasn’t opened its doors since the accident, the night we lost a member of the crew and I still can’t seem to pull my life back together. I feel more lost now than I did before getting sober. Gripping onto the long neck bottle I laugh to myself, what a fucking joke that is…
sober
.

Not me.

Not now.

Not ever.

I’m the one that caused this, had it not been for me, we’d all still be here working together as a team. Now our business is dying and no one is willing to set foot in this place. It’s crazy how four best friends can turn a corner and fall apart in the blink of an eye. First we lost Dault, then the news that Linc isn’t expected to regain full movement in his arm pushed him to leave town. So much hit us at once that there was no way for us to pull Cursed Magic back together.

This was the one place I could go to find myself, yet now it’s the place I go to hide from myself. Taking another sip, I pull the bottle away from my mouth and stare through the transparency of the glass. Knowing drinking alone is wrong, I debate tossing it into the trash…nah, I’m already drowning in a mental state of depression— might as well finish what I’ve started…hell, I’m no quitter.

Leaning my head back against the cool leather of the chair, I raise the bottle to my lips again and take a long sip. A bitter taste fills my mouth as my tongue sweeps out to lick a drop of the amber liquid from my lip. I’m falling hard and fast, not knowing if I’ll be able to pull myself back out again.

I swore to myself I’d never let it get this bad again, my life was ruined once before. But now I fear it could be worse than ever.

The sound of the bell from the front door pulls me out of my fog as I jump to my feet.

Shit, did I forget to lock the door?

Who the fuck could possibly be here?

No one knows that I’m even here…or so I thought.

Tossing the half empty bottle into the trash, I move through the room and out into the hallway. The shop is dark except for the neon lights shining in through the front windows. A female silhouette begins to walk toward me and my heart skips a beat.

It’s her, the one woman my heart ached over for such a long time. The physical connection is like a magnet pulling her body closer to mine. I can feel her long before our skin begins to touch one another. Her presence is so close, yet she feels so far away.

I don’t know what we were thinking. It could never work; we were just a fix of convenience when we both needed the comfort of a warm body. The only problem…my soul craved for her again and led me to feel things I haven’t felt in a long time. She was my safety net, or so I thought.

“Steve, what are you doing here?” She asks, as her small frame stands before me. “Have you been drinking?”

Shaking my head and blinking my eyes, I try to focus on the beauty standing before me.

“How…w-why…ww-what are you doing here?” I stutter in response.

Her warm hands reach out for my arms as she trails her fingertips along my triceps.

“Don’t ignore my question, Steve. Why the hell would you start drinking again…after all you went through to get sober?”

She pauses for a brief moment and I can feel the guilt pulling all the air out of my lungs. Looking into her hazel eyes, I want to tell her how I’m feeling. The pain of everything is just too much to deal with—I need something to take it away. It just sucks that the only cure for my illness is in a bottle.

“We need to talk, Steve. I’ve been looking for you all day.”

Trying my damnedest to fill my lungs with air, I take a step back from her and look down to the tile floor.

“Ashley, why the hell would you be looking for me? We haven’t seen, let alone spoken to each another, in weeks.”

As she removes her hands from my arms, a sigh of air puffs from her chest.

“That’s not my doing, Steve, and you know it.
You
left me in that alleyway…
you
walked away from me when I told you what I wanted. In fact,
you’ve
closed yourself off from all of us.”

Moving past me, she pushes through into my room and flips on the light. My eyes squint shut due to the intensity of the florescent lights.

“Why are you here?” I ask in a harsh tone, rubbing my eyes while they adjust to the brightness.

Turning around to face her, I catch the glaring look she returns in my direction. With one hand on her hip, she rests her other hand on the back of my chair. She has no right coming into the shop or asking me why I’m even here. Who the hell does she think she is anyway?

“I’d like to ask you the same thing, but that’s not why I’m here. I wanted to say
goodbye
before I left.”

Unsure of the words that just came out of her mouth; I try to pick my jaw up off the floor.
Goodbye
…I should be used to that word by now. First Dault, then Linc and Jo, now her too, damn it I need a drink.

It seems as though everyone is jumping ship and leaving town...or maybe it’s me that they’re choosing to leave.

“What do you mean say goodbye? Where are you going?”

My chest begins to tighten as my eyes follow her body while she walks around the chair to take a seat. She can’t do this to me…not again.

“Not that it really should matter to you and by no means do I owe you any kind of explanation after how you’ve acted the past few weeks…I just felt I needed to close down all connections here in Birmingham before I left to go back home to Cleveland.”

My walls feel as though they are about to crumble; my chest aching to think that I could lose her forever.

“Ash, not you too… We just found each other again, you can’t leave me.”

Turning her head to face away from me, she rests her head in her hands.

I’m lost as to what is transpiring right here in front of me. We haven’t spoken in weeks, yet the pull I feel toward her is still as strong as the first day I laid eyes on her. I can’t imagine her leaving for good, knowing that I may never see her again. I lost her once; I can’t let it happen again.

Taking a step forward, I rest my hand on her shoulder. Her body quivers to my touch as she pulls her head from her hands. As she turns to face me, I can see the tears welling up in her beautiful eyes.

“Give me one good reason I should stay, Steve.”

As much as I want to confess the way she makes me feel, I can’t. I stand there motionless looking into her hazel eyes as the tears begin to fall down her face.

“I’m….”

Before I can complete my thought she cuts me off.

“Don’t bother. I shouldn’t have come here in the first place. I just couldn’t leave without saying goodbye, especially to you. I must be an idiot for thinking you’d want to talk me out of it. You’ve stayed away from me and everyone else for so long, I guess I was hoping I’d get a different response from you.”

Staring into her painful expression, I have no words. My hands fall from her shoulders and I begin to feel like a worthless piece of shit. I have nothing to say, yet the thoughts running through my mind are screaming for me to beg her to stay.