And now it’s too late.

God, no, no, no, no, no! Don’t let it be true!

My Aunt Glady sighs again. “Denial isn’t the way to go. Trust me, it’ll only make this more painful.”

“I’m not in denial.” My voice wavers and I squeeze my eyes as tears burn. My lungs have forgot to function, but my heart is overly functioning, pounding, thrashing, battling the pain with it’s erratic rhythm. “I’m just...” I suck in a large breath of air. “How? How did he die?”

“He was shot… by one of the Dellefontes men,” she says quietly. “I guess the had put a hit out on him a while ago for something… I’m not quite sure why—you’re father was really vague on the phone.”

“No, there’s no way… Layton is smarter than that… He would have ran from Stefan Dellefontes if he had put a hit on him.” The pain spreads through my body, blazes like fire, hot, scorching, burning me form the inside. If this is true, then it’s my fault for freezing up and forcing him to step up and kill two of the Dellefontes men that night. My fault. All my fault.

“I saw the obituary in the paper,” she says in a gentle voice. “And an article about the Everett’s losing another child to the drug war going on. I’m sorry honey, but it’s true.”

I start to tremble, shake with rage, pain, heartache. I can’t get oxygen into my lungs, can’t get my heart to settle down. Part of me wants to die right here and never move forward in life again. “This is all my fault… I never should have left him that night—I should have begged him to come with me when I ran. I knew after we made the kill a war would break out with my family and it could also fall back on the Everett’s… I knew yet I still ran.”

She’s quiet for forever, probably because she probably has no idea what I’m talking about. “I’m sorry… maybe you should come here for a while. Come visit Uncle Shelton and me. We’d love to see you and you’d be safe here.”

“I’ll be found if I go there.” I press my fingers to the brim of my nose as I curl up into a call. God, it hurts so much, more than when I killed someone. I want to curl in a ball and die.

“Honey, no one’s going to come looking for you here. We’re out in the sticks. Hardly anyone knows we live here.”

“Are you sure about that?”

“Of course.”

I exhale and shake my head before I open my eyes. “Do me a favor and look out your window.”

“Okay… but why?”

“Just do it.”

I wait, attempting not to picture Layton lying in a pool of his own blood, but it’s all I can see. Blood everywhere. Blood on my hands, like the night I took a life.

“Lola, I don’t see anything,” Glady tells me with confusion.

“How about to the left out in the woods beside your house?” I know her house like the back of my hand, having spent many summers they’re with my mother before she died.

“Hold on. Let me look. Although I’m not even sure what I’m looking for…” She trails off and I think jackpot. “Wait, I think I see someone out there… hold on… okay it could be just a person camping or something, but… okay. Weird. They ran off when I waved.”

I sigh tiredly then force myself to sit up. “Don’t worry. I’m sure it’s just one of my father’s men. They won’t hurt you.”

“But why have I never noticed before?” she wonders. “If they were here I should have noticed.”

“You weren’t looking before,” I explain as I stand up. Every part of my body groans in protest, wanting to lay back down and just go to sleep. Things would be so much easier if I did. Shut my eyes and never open them again. “I’m guessing they’ve been there on and off since I ran away. I’ve actually been suspicious for a few weeks now when you told me that weird story about that man walking up to your house to give you your mail he so kindly picked up from you mailbox.”

“Jesus, how could I be so stupid,” she mutters under her breath. “I should know better.”

“It’s an easy mistake to make.” I look out the window at the clouds covering the sky and showing the land. “And you’re not used to this kind of stuff.”

“Still… why do you think they’re here…” She pauses, then exhales. “He thinks you’re going to come to me for help.” It’s not a question, but a revelation about my father. “Lola, just how much trouble are you in? Please just tell me what happened. Maybe I can help.”

“It’s better if you don’t know,” I tell her, then swallow hard. “In fact, I think it’s probably better if I don’t call you anymore… I don’t want to bring you into this mess anymore.”

“Lola, I want to help—”

I cut her off. “Bye Glady. I love you.” I hang up before she can say anything else. Then I pull the battery out of the phone and toss it into the garbage can, knowing it’s what I have to do to protect not only myself, but the ones I love.

Everything single part of my body aches, like my bones are splintering apart, my lungs shriveling—dying and taking my heart right alone with it. It feels like I should be crying, but instead I feel cold. Numb. I want to get revenge. Track down Layton’s killer and kill him myself. I wonder if I could do it? Kill again. If I was this dead inside them maybe.

Go back.

Stay.

Run.

What the hell should I do?

There’s so much emotion flaring through me, hot, potent, just like the night I killed someone. It’s too much. Life is too much. I want it gone.

Shut if down. Shut if down. I don’t want to feel the pain of death again.

I was able to do it before, when I killed someone, but this time, no matter what I tell myself, no matter what I refuse to feel, Layton is dead and that fact in itself hurts more than anything else I’ve ever experienced. The guy I grew up with, who made me smile, who protected me from everything, even myself, the guy who told me he loved me and I couldn’t say it back is gone forever.

I could have loved him, but now I’ll never know. I wouldn’t even let him kiss me. God, if he was here again, I’d let him kiss me.

As that thought replays in my head over and over, I feel part of myself die too. And I know I’ll never be the same again—that part of me died right along with him.

So I do the only thing I can.

I run.

Refusing to look back.

Refusing to ever feel anything again.

18 months later….

Lola

I’m not sure who I am anymore. Lola. Lolita. Good? Bad? Somewhere in the middle? All this time running from death and I think I might have landed somewhere in the middle. One of those women who see in blurry color, half good and half bad. Half alive, half dead inside.

God I feels so dead inside. But it’s good. It’s what I deserve.

During the day when the sun is up, I’m Lola Benntingson, the secretary at a car dealership. I wear longer skirts, collar shirts with sleeves that conceal my tattoos. My hair is either loose at my shoulders or pulled back in a bun. So sophisticated. So proper. This is how I have to be, in order to survive life. And the same goes for so my nightlife. The one that I make a lot of money fast, the one I feel more comfortable in because it helps take the pain away for a moment. The one where I’m, Lolita Leigh, the escort who men pay to take out and then have sex with, following right in my mother’s footsteps I guess. It’s life I can’t let anyone know about, because if I allow too many people know Lola Leigh, draw too much attention to myself, then they discover my real name, which is neither my day or night name. And if the wrong people found out my real one, I’d be dead. Dead like Layton.

God, every time. Stop thinking about him!

“Earth to Lola.” Marla Walterford, a secretary at Danni and Dony’s Hot Deals Dealership, waves her hand in front of my face, jerking me out of my daze.