Total pages in book: 113
Estimated words: 106422 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 532(@200wpm)___ 426(@250wpm)___ 355(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 106422 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 532(@200wpm)___ 426(@250wpm)___ 355(@300wpm)
In had swooped Joss like the vulture she was; she’d led an already struggling and grieving young man to the edge of the abyss, then nudged him over.
This time when her ghost tried to whisper in my ear, I shut it down.
Joss had made me who I’d been the night she died—a man who, after a year of her working on him, had finally been willing to walk deeper into dissipation, let the drugs dull his pain. What happened next was her fault. I’d only killed one woman in my life, and it wasn’t Jocelyn Wai.
“She did drugs, got messed up, and went over the balcony,” I said, my anguish over the death for which I was responsible a visceral thing that hadn’t faded even after all these years. “It’s that simple, but because she was beautiful and charismatic, people want to believe there’s a greater story, that it’s not the same sad and predictable one as that of the addict on the street.”
A nurse bustled in. “That’s enough,” she said to Ackerson. “He needs to rest. Come back tomorrow if you want to interrogate him more.”
“We’re just chatting.” Ackerson scowled, but the nurse was having none of it, and honestly, I was grateful.
Exhaustion had begun to wash over me in waves, and I was asleep a bare minute or two after the cop left the cubicle.
I dreamed of curls of smoke on the carpet, my mind filled with a whispering hum that said,…lied for you.
Chapter 78
Susanne
“Don’t go,” said the beautiful boy she’d watched turn into a loyal, empathic man at her side. “Please, Suzi W.”
He was the only one she’d ever let get away with calling her Suzi. She was Sue to her friends, Susanne to everyone else, and had always thought Suzi rather low-class. Until he’d made it fun and flirty and young.
Suzi W had gone dancing with her lover in a club so dark that no one could tell the disparity in their ages, and Suzi W had sat on the back of a motorcycle with her arms around him as he zoomed around Singapore.
Suzi W had lived.
Now Tavish’s eyes filled with tears, his hands trembling as he clasped them around one of hers and lifted it to his mouth. “Stay a while longer.”
She ached to do so, but the rest of her…there was so much pain. “Sometimes, Tavish, the doctors get it wrong.” The last scans she’d had done had shown that the tumors were progressing as predicted—at a rate that would give her another year or so of a good quality of life.
But her body had decided different, and she didn’t need a scan to confirm it. She could see it in the blood she was coughing up, in the fact that she couldn’t breathe well enough to even climb two flights of stairs, when only a couple of months ago she could’ve run up them without a hitch.
“In a way,” she said, “it’s a blessing. No long decline but a quick fall.” She ran her fingers through his overlong hair, pressed her forehead to his. “Thank you for what you’ve done for me.”
He wouldn’t meet her eyes.
Taking his jaw, she made him look and shook her head. “Don’t you ever feel guilty for it. Because of you, I’ll die as I wish.” Not twisted up and covered in vomit because she’d taken the wrong combination of pills.
And not caught in some horrific in-between because she’d damaged her brain without managing to stop her body.
He, this man who’d grown up in a world where drugs were passed around like candy, so many beautiful people dead by twenty-seven that there was a terrible club named after them, had gotten his hands on something that would give her a sweet slide into the final nothingness.
She’d be found with her hair and makeup done, dressed as she wanted to be dressed when she was discovered—she’d decided on the dynamite red dress that was her favorite. Paired with hot red lipstick, of course.
Why not go out like the diva she’d been in life?
“I’m killing you.” It was a rasp.
“No, Tavish. You’re setting me free.” Taking his hand, she pressed it to a part of her that should’ve been soft and smooth. “Feel that? It’s a tumor.” So small on the scans, it was now a hard rock she could feel through her skin. “This thing is eating me up until I won’t be Susanne much longer.”
His breath hitched, his throat moving. “You’ll always be you.”
Stubborn, loving man. “No, Tavish. Because I won’t be able to maintain my dignity.” That, to her, was worth more than life.
After kissing him one last time, she pushed at his shoulders. “You know what you have to do. Get that bag, get on a plane, and make sure you’re on plenty of security cameras on the other side.” She wouldn’t end her life by making his a hell. “I’ll wait until you call me to say you’ve landed safely. Grace will be gone within the hour, too.”