“Debt has been paid. I hope to never hear your voice again.”
“Right back at you,” I said with a low chuckle.
“Take care,” he said to me and then he was gone.
I wondered for a half of a second if I’d ever hear from him again. Then I decided it didn’t matter. We’d each served a purpose in one another’s lives and now that was over. In the end, I believe we both got what we were looking for.
I killed the phone, taking out the SIM card then smashing it against the edge of the dresser for good measure. Then I walked into the other side of the room and dropped it in the wastebasket.
What the hell was I going to do with myself now?!
Holy fuck. I hadn’t really thought that whole thing through. I just gave up everything. Well, not really. I didn’t need the job anymore. And I didn’t want it, hadn’t since the moment I started, really.
I became a contract killer because I saw no other way. I saw that it was a lame excuse. I wasn’t in a good place back then. I still wasn’t now, but at least things were starting to feel like they were right. My life was headed on the path that it should have been all along.
I wasn’t going to waste another second thinking about it. After all, I had my woman waiting for me. My very naked and wet woman. Oh yeah, I wasn’t going to miss that opportunity.
I slipped into the bathroom, the place already filled with steam.
“Took you long enough,” she said to me with a sexy smile as I pulled back the curtain enough to step into the shower.
“I had something I had to take care of.”
“Oh yeah?” she asked with a raised brow. “Like giving up everything you’ve worked hard to earn for the last fifteen years?”
I eyed her playfully. No, I didn’t care that she might have eavesdropped on my conversation. I had plans to tell her everything anyway.
“You heard that, did you?” I asked.
“Maybe just a little of it,” she admitted looking a little sheepish. “Is that something you can really do? There won’t be, like, people after you for wanting out?”
I tried to hold my chuckle back but failed.
“This isn’t like the movies,” I told her with a smile. “I’m my own boss. I don’t owe anything to anyone. I’m out when I say I’m out. And… I’m done.”
“So, you’re leaving it just like that?” she asked and I could see that she had hope in her eyes. Maybe it wouldn’t fix all the things I’d done over the last fifteen years, but it was a starting point for something new.
“Are you okay with it?” I asked. Yeah, maybe that was something I should have talked to her about before I went and made a decision.
“Is it what you want?” she shot back, her arms going around my neck.
“Yeah,” I answered with a smile as I gazed into her eyes. “I want to see what a life with you would look like. I don’t need anything else.”
“That’s not entirely true,” she told me as she raised up on her toes and lightly kissed my lips.
She was right.
I needed my family.
Maybe as much as she did.
But that was kind of the whole thing that I’d been thinking about.
I gave up the life not only for her, but for me as well.
I wanted to start this thing out the right way.
I think I’d at least gotten that part right. I knew Jessica couldn’t have been happy with that part of my life. She hadn’t come right out and said it but I could see the look in her eyes. It was like she was fighting with herself inside her head. Going back and forth on how to justify that I was somehow different from all the other bad people that had come into her life.
