Page 1 of Hostile Saint

CHAPTER ONE

Making Vows

In fear is how I had lived every single day of my life, yet I had never been as afraid as I was the night I knew I was going to die. And, it wasn’t even my death that was terrifying me. It was hers.

Staring into hazel eyes that usually held angelic kindness, I was heartbroken to now see them so empty, the same as they had been most of the long day.

Was it the pain she had endured that caused her mind to drift away? No. We were both very accustomed to agony of all sorts. It was something else. It was something she saw.

In the dark trunk of a car, I gently ran fingers through blond hair that had been savagely cut short…

On our sides, although we faced each other, only one of us was present. Void eyes stared.

Due to who was driving the car, my voice shook as rapidly as did my scared heart. “Lacey, my Pretty Girl, find me.” Her unstable mental wellbeing was causing me just as much fear.

The car’s taillight glowed inside the trunk, just enough to force me to keep witnessing her blank expression of shock. I swallowed down unbelievable guilt for failing her and letting them find us. “See me. Find me.” I whispered the inevitable, “I need to hear you one last time, baby.”

Wheels of fate were turning, but so were the wheels underneath us, driving us to a location where it was all to unmercifully—and mercifully because it would all finally be over— end. Lacey and I were so close to finishing high school but would never get the chance. That’s why I needed to feel her love one more time while on this earth. After that, all I could do was hope there truly was a God and that He would let me and my Pretty Girl find each other again, someday.

We deserved it. We deserved to have our evermore.

Quietly, to not be overheard by them, I pleaded, “Lace. Talk to me, baby.”

When she didn’t respond, I begged the angels I was hoping were with us, Please. One ounce of kindness through all this terror. Let me hear that soft voice, one last time.

Surrender? Peace? Belief? Faith? I’m not sure which one caused the calm to come over me when Lacey’s eyes finally blinked, but it was like a wave of contentment blew through me as she began to focus and actually see me. Even though she was viewing my swollen face and recalling what happened before ending up in this deadly predicament, I was still grateful my last moments would be spent with her.

As her fingertips soothingly touched my bloodied and cracked lips, raw emotion filled my heart. Shakily, I whispered, “There she is.” Her undeniable love was replacing all the darkness in the confining trunk. Her essence was touching me again. Lacey, I love you so much. “You’ve been…” There was no need to waste time explaining she’d been in shock, nor about fatal facts that couldn’t be changed, so I continued with, “out all day.”

When she tried to talk but couldn’t, due to the washcloth I had placed in her mouth, I gently removed it. Her bleeding had stopped. Now there was only a hole in her mouth where there once was a molar.

Soon, the memory of her pain and screams will be gone for good.

Trying to talk again, she winced and held the side of her face where the violent injury laid beneath her cheek. “Where are we?”

Did it really matter? Not to me. All I wanted was Lace. My eyes did their best to soak in every ounce of her natural beauty. Her delicate nose. “I don’t know.” Her blond eyebrows. “They have been driving us for hours.”

That precious little bottom lip, that I had sucked on so many times, now began to tremble. “They’re going to kill us, aren’t they?”

You are so beautiful. I’m so thankful to have had you in my life. “Yeah. They are.”

Pain pierced my heart when her tears began to fall. “I should’ve stayed in the closet.”

Lacey didn’t just love me with the limited capacity a high school girl could have for a boy. She loved me with her whole soul and spirit. That’s why, when she heard my screams from my bedroom’s bathroom, she charged out of the hiding spot I had placed her in, came to rescue me, even though it was fruitless.

Now in the trunk, I told her, “No. You were so brave it made me love you even more.”

After a slight pause, she burst into a sob. “I will miss you so much, Tate.”

It pained me that she was realizing this was it. This was our goodbye, but there was no denying it.

Wanting her as close as physically and emotionally possible, I leaned my forehead to hers. “No. We will be together.” I grabbed her hand that had my blood on it and pulled it to my chest. “Lacey, say it. No matter what, we will find each other again.”

She had just been lost in her traumatized shock but managed to come back to me. Now I was begging her to do it again, in our afterlife.

With so much affection, her hand wiped away tears I was clueless I’d been crying. “No matter what.” She cried, too. “E-Evermore.”

Between our crumpled forms, she held up her right hand.