Her Moons Denouement (Fallen Angels Book 2) by Max Hardy Read Free Book Online

Especially when that was where her guilt over Jacob came from.  The same kind of relationship where I couldn’t tell her about the demons living behind the rickety doors in my rickety rooms.  A crap relationship.  And I thought I knew her.  Shows how much I really knew.  Nothing.  God, to have gone through childbirth, to have held your dead baby in your arms.  I thought looking into Jacob’s vacant empty eyes was despair, but that, how the hell did she get past it.  I suppose she never did get past it.  What was it she said… 
    Mumbled words and distant shrill noises begin to invade my swirling thoughts.
    ‘There are things that happened in my past, things I don’t ever think I will come to terms with.  They still haunt me now and cast a shadow over you and I.’  I see her tear stained face reciting those words, standing in my studio two weeks ago, giving me my freedom, giving me her blessing to go and love another woman, to be with Jessica.  I betrayed her in every conceivable way and she still loved me.  Loved me enough to want me to be happy with someone else.  To be happy with Jessica.  Jessica’s beautiful, sensuous face screams into my mind, dispersing the image of Sarah.
    Her lips are moving and I can hear mumbled words.  I feel something shake my arms.  I hear a car horn, coming closer.  I strain to hear what she is saying and as I try to move closer to her face, in my mind, her image starts to fade as the words become clearer.
    ‘Are you OK?  Sir, are you OK?  We should really get out of the road.’
    Jessica dissipates and my vision snaps back into focus, back into now and there is a very concerned woman standing in front of me, gently holding my arm.
    ‘Are you OK Sir?’ she asks again.  I look beyond her.  Jesus.  I am in the middle of the road, holding up a line of traffic.  There are horns blaring, irate faces sneering at me from behind fly smeared windscreens.  Crowds are gathering on either side of the street, a myriad of faces with a myriad of feelings: pity, concern, humour, anger, Jessica, empathy, derision, sympathy…
    My head darts back. Jessica.  I saw Jessica. I raise a hand in apology and say ‘Sorry.’ over and over again to the drivers and the woman as I lurch away from her, my eyes frantically scanning the faces of the crowd to the left, looking for Jessica. 
    I see expressions turn to worry, people stepping back from the kerb out of the way as I approach.  I can’t see her.  People start to leave, to go about their business.  I see the back of a redheaded woman walking away down a side street.  She is the same height as Jessica, the same build.  Jessica didn’t have red hair.  But Madame Evangeline did.    
    As I try to run, excruciating pain shoots up through my legs from the wounds on my feet, meeting the agony from my damaged scrotum as it jiggles from side to side under the exertion. I slow into a crablike hop, trying to keep a pace, but trying to keep the pressure off my injuries.
    ‘Jess!’  I shout after the receding figure as I enter the side street, the crowd now fully dispersed.  She turns into an alley halfway down the street, not acknowledging my call.  My heart thumps furiously.  With the exertion, with the pain, but also with the overwhelming conviction that it was her, it was Jess and she is not dead!
    I reach the entrance to the alley just in time to glimpse a slender leg in a red stiletto turn left at the end of the alley onto a main street.  Hobbling as fast as I can I reach the same place in about ten seconds, sweat pouring down my face with the effort.  I stumble into the main street and turn left immediately, frantically looking at the melee of people walking up and down the street. 
    I can’t see her.  I shuffle on, head darting to the shop entrances, staring in, staring through their windows.  On to the next, still nothing.  Looking across the road, looking up the pavement, looking back into the shops.