Resurgence (Heart of Stone #9) Read online

  There was nothing left.

  Vomit burned my throat when vision after vision assaulted me, stinging my eyes and charring my throat. Puke hit the drab cream tiles and slid down the wall, the whisky I’d consumed filling the steam with pockets of stench and revulsion.

  I watched it disappear with the rest of me, the lumps and slime refusing to fucking go and sticking to the plughole, taunting me with the disgust that lived inside me and wouldn’t ever fucking go away!

  “I’m sorry,” she choked out. “I’m sorry.”

  Ava’s whispered plea in my head had me squashing my skull between my hands, pressing my palms to my ears as I tried to banish her soft voice.

  “Why won’t you let me touch you?”

  More vomit trickled down my chin and I stumbled from the shower, holding onto the walls to keep me upright. I was so pissed. So high. So fucking done.

  Violence slithered beneath my skin. The anger that was always rumbling away with a fury called out to me, taunted me, haunted me!

  My knees hit the floor with a thud and I crawled over to the low table, quickly fixing a line on the mirrored surface. My eyes laughed at me as I bent and snorted, the fierce greyness chilling the marrow of my bones as I made my way through three more lines.

  Until the mirrored glass held nothing but my sickening reflection.

  I was sure even Satan didn’t hold this much ugliness.

  I’d gone to hell and even the fucking devil himself had exiled me.

  Dragging my finger across the longest scar, I watched the skin pucker in the reflection. And another. And another.

  George’s laugh stabbed at me, the echo of his cold eyes staring back at me through the image of my own.

  Glass shattered under my fist, mirrored shards catapulting across the room with the force of my blow.

  But it wasn’t enough. It wasn’t ever enough.

  My body vibrated with aggression as I yanked on some clothes, any clothes. My teeth trembled in my jaw and my blood spat and fizzed deep inside my veins as I tore through the hotel and out into the openness. The openness that held some fucker. Any fucker. Any cunt that would crumble under the weight of my insanity. Only blood would sate this damn fucking rage. Whether it be mine or anyone’s, I didn’t care. So long as it stopped the never-ending scream that ricocheted off every inch of my broken skull.

  ~~~

  Groaning, the sound of a phone humming in the background, I turned over. My face felt sticky, my mouth and nose clogged and thick. My body was heavy, my muscles coiled tight with anger. Yet I didn’t feel as though I was there. Or anywhere.

  Another shrill tone pulsated through my thumping head and I swallowed the stale bile that congested my airway.

  My eyes peeled open enough to focus on the screen of my phone. Missed calls. Unanswered texts. Numerous inbox messages. All from Ava.

  Guilt filled the empty space in my chest, the pain inside me desperate to cut through the organ that wasn’t there anymore, and placing the phone back on the nightstand, I stared at the dried blood that coated my hands. I couldn’t even remember what, or why it belonged there. It dyed my skin, tainted my soul, blemishing me with the evil that was me.

  “Honey?”

  Her saccharine voice made me baulk and I flipped over. Her eyes widened on me when I pressed the palm of my hand against her Botox-filled lips. “Shut the fuck up!”

  Tears filled her wide blue eyes and she nodded wildly, the fear in her another spark to the underlying fury beneath my skin.

  “Get out!”

  She didn’t wait to be told twice. Scooting from the bed, she snatched up her clothes and fled, the door slamming shut behind her before she’d even finished getting dressed.

  Stumbling into the bathroom, I turned on the shower and once again stepped inside.

  They always say that your true colours come out in the wash. Well, as I stood there, alone, in a random hotel shower with the torrent of blistering hot water pummelling my already broken skin, every colour that had lived within me washed away down the drain. My heart, my soul, my emotions and all the very things from life that gave me substance ran down the plug and left a sketch with no defined edges, a blurred outline filled with nothing but muted shades of rage and hatred.

  There was nothing left.

  Nothing.

  Three

  Ava

  Greg didn’t look pleased to see me. He stood staring at me while I stood on his doorstep, patiently waiting to see if he would accept me in or not.

  Eventually, he sighed and shifted to one side.

  Little Mason was sat in a small playpen in the corner and I immediately went over to him, scooping him up to inhale his scent of baby powder and milk. His simple word of ‘Mama’ had me cursing under my breath and closing my eyes for strength.

  “What do you want, Ava?”

  Kissing Mason’s forehead, I returned him to the pen and turned back to Greg. He wouldn’t look at me. I could practically see the rage pouring from him like a waterfall of fury, spreading into the air and making it difficult to breathe under the potency of his hatred for me. “I, uhh, came to see if you needed anything.”

  He scoffed, shaking his head and biting into his lip. “I don’t think so.”

  Nodding, I moved my eyes to the fireplace. Pain seared through me and I bit back the ache inside when Courtney’s huge smile shone from hers and Greg’s wedding photo. It had been such a wonderful day, a perfect day. The happiness that had radiated from my best friend that day would never leave me, it was buried in the box of happy memories I had come to rely on more and more in the last few years. “I miss her,” I whispered with an overwhelming sadness, unable to stop myself.

  I gasped, rearing back when, before the words had completely left my mouth, he was on me. I took his anger. I relished in it, because it was justified, granted in a strange fucked up way.

  “You have no fucking right to miss her!” he screamed at me.

  I curled in on myself, trying to shield my body from his beating while with each breath I accepted it. I deserved it. I earned every crack of his fist in my face, every vicious word he spat at me, every tear that leaked from his crazy eyes and dropped onto my skin, searing me with his blistering pain.

  “You killed her! You, your fucking husband, your sick fucking son. Your fucked upped life killed her!”

  “I’m sorry,” I repeated, over and over, until the pain rendered me mute, and the heartache from the truth broke my will to breathe.

  I felt myself being dragged through his house and the cool air outside hit me, stinging the open wounds on my face when he flung me onto the path.

  “You’re no longer welcome here. You and your fucking family. Stay away from me before you take what little I have left!”

  For the first time in a very long while, loneliness crept in. Ice trickled through my veins, chilling my bones with the heaviness of guilt and despair.

  I sat for a very long time, outside my dead best friend’s house, in a pool of my own blood. Mason hated me. Courtney was dead. My son was dead. Nate and Liv now lived in America, so far away that I knew deep within me that I wouldn’t see them again. Kade loved me but relied on his wife for strength and fuel, as it should be. My life had taken my daughter’s husband from her and all that flowed through her now was a need for revenge. Vengeance for something that my fucked up life had started.

  They had all gone. My friends, my family – my glorious bastard. Misery was as hurtful as loneliness. And loneliness was as consuming as guilt.

  Love. That’s all I had lived for. But in the very end, it was the very thing that would kill me.

  ~~~

  “Hey,” Kade’s soft voice through the phone filled a little of the emptiness that had grown within me.

  “Hi. Are…”

  “Sweetheart,” he called away from the phone. I heard Grace’s gentle laughter in the background and I cringed.

  “I’m sorry, you’re busy.”

  “I’ll call you back la
ter, Ava.” He laughed, Grace squealed and the phone went dead.

  Silence poured through the cottage, icing the chill that had already settled inside me. Placing my phone on the table, I picked up the glass of vodka and cranberry and took a large mouthful, the burn in my throat satisfying.

  Various photos were scattered on the table, and smiling, I picked up one of the twins. They were around five, both of them sat in their underwear in the sandpit. George was laughing and Katie was looking over at Mason who squatted beside them both, scooping sand onto a spade.

  “I’m so sorry,” I whispered as I ran my finger over George’s happy face.

  My heart hurt so much, the pain indescribable as a tortured sob tore from the very core of me.

  “My beautiful baby boy.”

  I just prayed that he had found his peace, that his demons had allowed him rest. I had to take responsibility for what George had done. I was his mother, the person that guided him through life, taught him right from wrong. Yet, what he had done was unforgivable. He had broken my husband, his own father. And he had done it in ways that were not only horrific, but reprehensible.

  It had all gone wrong. Twenty-five years had gone in the blink of an eye. My heart was full of memories, some good, some bad. I thought of my mother as I picked up the only picture I had of her. What would she have said about my life now? Would she have been proud of me? I very much doubted it.

  My thoughts shifted to Dane. Had I been so corrupt that I had made him like he was? Had it been my fault after all?

  “Tell him… tell him it was fun. Tell him he was my brother and I loved him.”

  His very last words trickled into my box of memories and I shut it closed quickly.

  There was nothing left, or what was left was so broken that it would take me years to sift through the debris. What had once filled my heart had gone on to massacre it.

  Tiredness grew within me, not just a need for sleep, but an exhaustion that desecrated every fibre of my being.

  Taking a cigarette, I lit it, inhaled and blew the smoke into the air, my eyes focusing on the grey circle as it rose and dispersed into the darkness of the room. I hated that I had started smoking again, yet, I didn’t care. Cancer had fed on me once, and now, well now there was nothing left for it to devour.

  I had to wonder what was next – what was left.

  I would never survive this life without Mason. And if I was being completely honest, I wasn’t even sure I wanted to endure it. With or without my glorious bastard. Life had taken so much from the both of us that the horizon appeared forever black.

  Stubbing out my smoke, I grabbed my drink and climbed the stairs. My body was weary, my bones aching with surrender and, exhausted, I entered the bathroom and preheated the shower.

  Peeling off my clothes, I stepped in and stood under the river of heat. My muscles creaked, my stiff frame the only thing holding me together now.

  Looking down, I placed a kiss on the tips of my fingers and pressed it to my ‘Mrs Fox’ tattoo that rested just above where my breasts used to be. Remembering Mason’s face when he saw it for the first time on our wedding day, I couldn’t help but smile. The awe on his face, that I had branded myself to him, was placed into the same box of memories I had set the image of Courtney’s wedding day into, along with so many more.

  Turning my face to the spray and taking the razor blade from the shelf, I twisted it in my fingers. It held the only hope I had left. The only future I could envisage.

  “I nearly slept with someone else.”

  Mason’s voice made me jump and I spun around, dropping the blade into the shower tray below my feet. He stood, watching me, leaning against the vanity unit as his eyes roamed my nakedness. The darkness on his face made me, for the first time ever, wary of my own husband.

  “Nearly?”

  “Mmm.” He stepped towards me and I held firm, bracing myself when his dark expression turned into something quite sinister. He was drunk, very drunk. He was also high. Many times I had beheld Mason fuelled on coke and God knows what else, and I had always stayed above water. Yet, this time, I had a feeling things would go very differently. That my own husband would drown me.

  “She had big tits, Ava. Huge tits. Like yours. Well, like yours used to be.”

  My gut twisted and I clenched my fists. Ready. Prepared.

  Slowly, he lifted his eyes to my face. The horror, and the pain, and the defeat in them made me physically wince. “And then I realised, tits or not, there’s only ever you that touches me.” He pointed to the centre of his chest. “Here. Where it matters.”

  Tears burned my eyes as I witnessed my glorious bastard crumble and break before me. His face screwed up as he sank to the floor, his broken sob tearing at my heart.

  “I can’t hide, Ava,” he cried as I scooped him into my arms, dropping to the floor beside him. “It won’t let me hide. I don’t want to see. I don’t want to feel this anymore. Why did he hate me so much?”

  “He didn’t hate you,” I whispered. “He just didn’t know how to love you.”

  “I loved him, Ava. So much. I did try, I tried so hard to make him love me.”

  I nodded, pressing him against me, praying that it was time for the truth. But when it came out, I wasn’t prepared for it, not in the slightest.

  “I didn’t fight back because I know he deserved his own retribution. But I thought, prayed, that if I allowed him that, then he would love me. I just wanted him to love me. Like he loved you, Ava.”

  Shaking his head, he grew angry. “How can someone be jealous of their own wife, envious of the relationship they have with your kid? Does that make me a bad person?”

  “No, it doesn’t make you a bad person. It makes you a parent, a father who loved his children no matter what.”

  “You have to believe that I loved him, Ava.” He was desperate, clinging to me to make me see.

  “I know,” I urged, nodding wildly. “I know.”

  He was silent for a moment and I swallowed my nerve. “What happened, Mason?”

  He winced, hiding his face from me.

  “Did… Did someone… rape you?”

  He stiffened so much that I didn’t need a verbal answer. My heart shattered and I clawed at his face, making him look at me. “You remember after Dane? How you told me that whatever I had gone through, it was only to make me stronger, that no one could touch my heart and soul because they belonged to you?”

  He nodded, the tears in his eyes making my soul drop down and weep.

  “Well you belong to me, Mason Fox. Your heart, your soul, your love, your anger, your wounds, they all belong to me. No one can take them from me, ever. I will fight in this life and the next for you. Don’t you ever forget that.”

  “He laughed, Ava. My own son stood there and watched them rape me, over and over. How is that not wrong? How can I even…”

  “It is wrong. George was too far gone for help, from anyone, baby. He was so lost in his own hatred that he would never have been able to come back from it.”

  He paused, swallowing, before he turned his eyes to me. “Are we so lost that there’s no coming back?”

  Without thought, without consideration, and with complete honesty, I nodded. “Yes.”

  Slowly, he nodded. “Are you tired, baby?”

  “Very.”

  “Secretly,” he whispered. “I hoped he’d end it for me. I can’t do this anymore. You wouldn’t let me go, in the hospital,” he confessed, his weary eyes finding mine once more so I could see the truth in them. “And for that I hated you. I hated you, Ava.”

  “I know.” I nodded. Because I did know. I knew all too fucking well.

  “I don’t ever want to hate you like that, baby. Never. This heart of mine could never live through that.”

  “Sometimes,” I whispered, “I want you to hate me.”

  He nodded. He understood. “But I can’t.”

  “I know you can’t, and that makes me love you all the more.”

  L
eaning my back against the bath tub, I sighed. “Sex, love and hate, that’s all we’ve ever known, Mason. But each one of those is so damn powerful that it gives us strength. Love breathes for us. Hate fights for us. And sex joins us, in ways that nothing else can. And we’ve come to live our lives with those three simple things. But I’m scared that one day they’ll be gone.”

  “And then what do we have?” he finished for me.

  Tipping my chin back with his finger, he very gently placed a kiss to my nose. “I’ll always love you, Ava. But hate, no, I don’t want that.”

  “And that’s just the thing. You couldn’t even hate your own son for what he did. Without hate, there’s nothing Mason, nothing. There’s no fight, no passion. We just move forward, oblivious, ignorant. I don’t want to live like that. I want the passion, the pain, the thrill. But it’s gone. And now there’s nothing left.”

  Standing, he leaned down and took me in his arms, scooping me against his strong chest. Carrying me through to the bedroom, he lowered me onto the bed and came over me. “I want to love you so much.”

  Cupping his cheek, I smiled sadly. “But you’re scared.”

  “I’m so fucking scared,” he sobbed. “I can’t. Not anymore. They took so much from me, Ava. Even that. Even my physical love for you.”

  And now I understood.

  Sex, was Mason and I. All of us. Every fibre of us. And now he’d lost that, he was so empty. So tortured by his inability to make love to me.

  “Then love my heart,” I whispered. “Just love me.”

  Dipping down, he kissed me. His lips were so soft, his kiss even softer. Passion was gone, but dear God, did my man love me with just his kiss. He worshipped me with just the touch of his mouth, caressing me with every part of him. He made me feel him, feel his love, his pain, his grief. I felt it all.