“Let me go.”
He closed his eyes and waited.
He saw her on that barstool trying not to let him catch her watching him. He saw her walking down the aisle, smiling at him so big, already crying happy tears and she hadn’t even made it to his side. He saw her bending to the oven, taking out yet another fucking tray of cookies.
And he saw her hanging from the hook, suspended in the sling, taking another man’s cock.
“Let me go,” he repeated.
She didn’t let him go.
The bitch never did.
* * * * *
Deacon sat in a dingy, old roadside diner, a cup of black coffee in front of him, the place deserted because it was three in the morning, his eyes out the window, focused on the dark sky.
It never happened so he didn’t know why it did then. He didn’t give a shit about music. He didn’t give a shit about anything. Jeannie taught him that just as Cassie did everything she could to teach him something else.
But the song playing in the diner hit him, every word, each stabbing like a knife in his chest.
He didn’t know why he did it but he picked up his phone, the real one he never gave Cassie the number to mostly because he was going to dump it when he left the life and get a new one.
He hit the Shazam button, an app he’d never used. An app Raid’s woman, Hanna, loaded on to it, teasing him, “Everyone has Shazam, Deacon.”
Shazam listened and told him the song was Passenger, “Let Her Go.”
Let her go.
Let.
Let.
That’s what he’d done. He’d done it. He’d let Cassie go.
He took a sip of his coffee, leaned forward, pulled out his wallet, threw some bills on the table that would make the night of the lonely waitress in her short skirt and ridiculous cap, who, by the look of her, needed to retire twenty years ago.
He left the diner, got in his Suburban, and drove away.
* * * * *
For some fucked up reason he didn’t get, the minute he got to a place that had Wi-Fi, he went out, bought an iTunes gift card, and downloaded “Let Her Go.”
He listened to it often, every word defining him in a way that was troubling, as if the man who wrote that song read the words carved into his soul.
It was torture.
But it was a break from the torture of playing Cassie’s song.
And he’d take that.
Because it was all he deserved.
* * * * *
Knight Sebring
Knight hit Raid’s contact and put the phone to his ear.