Reckless (55 page)

A fallen angel.

Darkness.

Alone.

I couldn’t just sit still. I needed to make sure Christos was okay. Maybe he’d finally gone back to his house?

I needed to check. I threw on clothes and ran to my car. If I could see him with my own eyes, see that he was safe, everything would be all right.

As long as I still had Christos,
everything
would be all right. I didn’t care about his trial, or jail, or my parents. None of it mattered if I had Christos.

He had no idea how deeply I loved him. He wasn’t a criminal. He was a beautiful man.

He was my angel.

My savior.

I needed him.

I drove to the Manos’ house fearing the worst. I told myself it was nothing, just nerves. I tried to imagine the soothing calm I would feel the second I laid eyes on Christos. He would be sleeping peacefully in his bed. I would crawl into bed with him and curl up beside him. I would whisper to him that everything was going to be all right, that we would get through this dark journey together.

As long as I could feel his touch, his warmth, and his love, I would be fine.

We were going to be okay. No matter what.

I shook my head, smiling to myself as I turned onto Christos’ street. Any second, I was going to pull into his driveway and see his motorcycle parked beside the house.

When I drove up, the driveway was empty. That was okay. His motorcycle was probably in the garage.

I’m sure he was fine.

Dread.

When I parked my VW, I jumped out and ran into the entry court. I pounded on the front door. There was no answer.

I ran out of the entry court and looked up at the front of the house. All of the windows were dark, each one a black pit echoing the dread in my heart.

Dread.

I ran back to the front door and pulled out the key Spiridon had given me. I had never had to use it because either he or Christos had always been in the house.

Dread.

The door creaked open ominously as I crept inside. The entry hall and living room were dark. Only a light in the kitchen cut through the gloom.

“Christos?” I called nervously. “Spiridon?”

My words were sucked into the darkness of the house. It was eerie being inside this place alone. The sense of emptiness was heavy and foreboding.

I went from room to room, calling out.

“Christos? Are you here? Is anybody home?”

Dread.

The studio was cavernous and empty when I flipped the lights on. It had never seemed so barren. I don’t know why, but I half-expected to find Christos curled up in a corner, staring into oblivion like a mad man. I dismissed the notion as crazy. Yet I feared my dark vision was preferable to what the storm in my stomach told me I was going to find.

There was no one downstairs.

I trudged up the staircase to the second floor, lifting each heavy foot, almost afraid to go farther, to find out what awaited in the darkness. Images of what I would find flashed through my mind.

Christos in a pool of blood, his body torn and broken beyond repair…

I cringed, pushing away my terrible thoughts. I tried to focus on something else. My mind went straight to…

Bitch. Slut. Whore.

No!

I got rid of you!

Emo. Goth. Suicide Watch…

Leave me alone!

Suicide Watch…

My old pain, my damage. It was all still there. I had never healed any of it. I’d wanted to think I had. But it had barely been two months since I broke my silence about Taylor Lamberth.

Who was I trying to fool? I was still broken.

The stress of this moment had brought it all crashing back. And it was going to rip my head and heart apart.

Suicide…

The only thing that could possibly hold me together was Christos. I had to find him. And he was…

An insane laugh was about to rattle out of my throat. I stifled it down, worried that if I allowed it to escape my body, it would take my sanity with it.

I took a deep breath, trying to calm myself. I was acting crazy.
This
was crazy. Christos was fine. He was probably out with Jake or, or, or…

No!

Christos was fine.

He was fine!

I walked calmly down the upstairs hallway, toward his bedroom. The door was closed.

I winced as I touched the doorknob, fearing what I’d find inside.

I could do this.

Christos was fine.

Christos was…

—I yanked open the door—

…not in the room.

I checked the bathroom, just to be sure. Empty.

I searched the rest of the upstairs.

“Christos? Spiridon?”

No one was home.

I returned to Christos’ bedroom and sat down on his bed. I tried calling him. He didn’t answer. I sent him a text,
 

<3 Please call me. I love you. <3

I’m sure he was fine.
 

I crossed my legs and leaned my forearms on one knee, slumped over, preparing to wait. My foot started bouncing. Christos was probably out someplace having a good time with Jake again. He was…

Christos’ sketchbook caught my eye. It rested on the night-table beside his bed. I leaned over and picked it up. There was a pen keeping place in the middle of the book.

I opened the sketchbook all the way.

The marked page was the last one with anything on it.

On it were written the following words:

“Alone

I must brave this day

Alone

I have sealed my fate

Alone

I will touch the sky

Alone

I must die”

Beneath those words was the date. Today’s date.

Oh no.

Suicide…

“Christos?” I whispered to the empty room.

Dread.

Epilogue

CHRISTOS

I stood on the edge of an abyss. Not a metaphorical one.
 

A real one.

Ten stories below me, cement death called my name. I gazed down at it like an old friend. I’d been up here, balanced on this exact railing, countless times in the last six years.
 

This was my favorite destination when the pain in my life became too much.

After speeding up and down the Five freeway at 175mph had failed to produce any novel results this evening, I’d come here.

The dormitory building was called Nyyhmy Hall. Its sister dormitory, Paiute Hall, stood next to it. Both were named after indigenous tribes that inhabited the area surrounding Mono Lake, located just east of Yosemite Valley.

These dormitories were the main housing for undergraduates who attended Ansel Adams College, one of the sub-colleges that comprised San Diego University. Adams, as the students called it, was named after the pioneering environmentalist photographer Ansel Adams.

Each of SDU’s sub-colleges had their own particular architecture, educational requirements, and student culture. Samantha’s cute little friend Kamiko attended Adams. When I was an undergraduate, I’d attended Adams too, because I’d liked its hippie, naturalist vibe.
 

That’s when I’d discovered the tenth-floor balcony in Nyyhmy.

I knew for a fact that a small number of SDU students had jumped to their deaths from this very balcony. The pressure of college and the metamorphosis into an adult was an intense process for lots of kids at SDU.
 

I understood where they were coming from.

I was surprised that after all these years, you could still open the tenth-floor sliding glass doors that let out onto the balcony. There was no safety cage, like on the observation deck of the Empire State Building. Sure, this balcony wasn’t an 86-story drop, but ten stories would still kill you, and both buildings had their own brooding history of human melancholy.

I took a deep breath and looked at the twinkling lights far below.

I was standing here to remind myself I wasn’t dead, that life hadn’t killed me yet.

It was a control thing.

I’d come up here to remind myself who was in control of
my
life. Not the courts, not the jurors, not my clients, not Brandon.

Me.

Whenever I stood on this railing, I always took my boots off and did it barefoot. Boots made your feet blind, and you had way more control with your toes free. Most people didn’t realize that toes and fingers had a lot in common. But when your toes spent a lifetime locked up in cumbersome footwear, you forget how to use them.

My toes were quite adept at gripping the 4-inch cold steel-tube railing mounted in the waist-high cement wall that was the dividing line between a glorious view of the Pacific Ocean and a three-second trip to oblivion.

The only reason guys like me became daredevils was because they were running away from something. Usually that something lived inside them. I knew of what I spoke.

Ever since my mom had left, it had been like this.

Pain was a powerful motivator.

A body wanted to run away from pain. If a flame was burning you, you pulled away. But you couldn’t pull away when the pain was inside you.

That’s why I needed to come up here and remind myself that
I
was still in control.

I could make the pain go away in an instant, if I wanted to.

Or, as long as my balance was good enough to keep my ass from slipping to my death, I held the keys to my future.

I did.

No one else.
I
was in control of my life.

The only problem with my logic was that not killing myself, while it seemed like the ultimate control, was not the same as controlling my pain.

I could ride my bike at 175mph all night long or stand on this railing until the sun came up.

But it didn’t change the simple fact that a jury of twelve was going to decide whether or not to fuck my life up. Then Samantha and her parents would know I was a piece of shit.
 

If she was going to lose me, maybe it was best if she thought I was a fuck-up. Then it would be easier for her to let go.

Pain hit me again, like every cell in my stomach had exploded simultaneously with black cancer, and I was consuming myself in a dark demise of self-destruction.

My smart phone jangled in my pocket. Before Your Love by Kelly Clarkson played from it. Samantha’s ringtone.
 

I started to slip.
 

Hello, cement.

I adjusted my hips and spine while my arms made small, erratic circles, until I recovered my balance. I loved that feeling when my stomach climbed up to my throat.

It meant I was still alive.

I stood motionless until my phone went to voicemail.

Telling Samantha everything earlier had been a mistake. It was too much to ask of her with all the shit her parents were heaping on her. It may have helped me release some of the wildfire tormenting me from the inside out, but now I felt selfish, like all I had done was burn her life into ashes, just like mine. What did it matter if I felt better? Her future was what mattered.

Mine was in the toilet.

I didn’t want her worrying about me. I was a waste of time. I wanted Samantha to be free from my agony so she could build her own life.

No reason to drag her down with my shit.

I lifted one foot off the railing and raised my leg to the side, shifting my hips over my knee to counter-balance my weight.
 

Nobody was going to control my fate except me.

A cool breeze rustled the tops of the Eucalyptus trees far below. My standing calf buzzed with tension as I levered myself up onto the ball of my foot.

I was in control.

No one else.

When I closed my eyes, it felt like flying.

I’ll always love you…

…
Agápi mou…

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Find out how what happens next in:

Painless

the sequel to RECKLESS

coming early 2014

Personal thanks from Devon Hartford:

Thank you, dear reader, for taking the time to live with Samantha, Christos and the gang for awhile! If you enjoyed Reckless, please leave some positive feedback on Amazon, Goodreads, or any book blogs you frequent. Be sure to tell your friends about it!
 

If you want to drop me a line, you can find me at any of the links below. I love to hear what you have to say, and I love to talk books!

-Devon

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Devon Hartford spent most of his life in Southern California, frequenting many of the locations in Reckless. Devon also paints. His background in the arts was the inspiration for this book.
 

OTHER BOOKS BY DEVON HARTFORD:

Fearless (The Story of Samantha Smith #1)

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

First and foremost I need to thank fellow New Adult author Elle Casey. She has gone above and beyond in her efforts to help me promote this series and get it into the hands of you, the reader. You should definitely check out her work!