Demi Lovato Imagines

Come Back to Me

"I can't," you say, a degree of confidence drained from your voice. "If I quit, I die."

She cocks her head slightly to the side, indicating that she's not following. You exhale slowly, figuring you've got at least five minutes before you really do have to leave. 

"Well, they're not just going to let ex-employees roam about with knowledge of the whole operation. You know, the names and numbers of those at the top."

"So, what do you mean?"

You don't want to hurt her more than she obviously is. You don't want to twist what's left of your relationship into the dirt with the toe of your shoe. 

"I mean...I mean that once you're not playing the game, you're a victim of it. Sometimes it takes weeks, months...never more than a year though. Sooner or later, they come for you."

"Y/n, stop it with all of this! Stop giving me these stupid riddles just to scare me! This isn't you, this isn't what you are..."

"But it is! You think all of this is some sort of prank?" you say, showing her the pistol out the top of your waistband, "You think I'm making all of this up?! Everything I've said is one-hundred-per-cent the truth, even about me getting a bullet in my head if I tell them I'm out. They don't leave any stone unturned. They don't take any chances."

She groans, covering her face with her hands and doubling over as if this is all too heavy to bear. You could agree if you hadn't fortified your back with the solid cement of detachment, upright and firm until the end. 

"Jesus, this can't be happening..." she weeps. You swallow hard, your tongue feeling enormous inside your mouth. 

"Just forget I said anything, Dems," you soothe, or attempt to anyway. "Put today out of your mind and we can just go back to normal. We can just-...I don't know...carry on...Have our pizza nights, have our mate-dates at the cinema..."

She drops her hands by her sides again, eyes red and puffy. 

"We can be just like we always were...best friends..." you say, "even-..."

You stop yourself, sensing that this is not the moment. You watch her, waiting for her to breathe a sigh of relief and agree. She shakes her head. 

"No..." she croaks. "We can't...I can't..."

You feel yourself deflate like someone's punctured you right between your eyes. 

"I can't forget this. Funnily enough, I can't forget that you murder people for a living."

She blinks at you once, twice. Your skin prickles again. 

"I have to go," you say, twisting the knob and letting the outside air rush in. Before she even has a chance to say anything else, you're turning down the end of the street, zipping your jacket up against the wind. 

***

It was a clean shot, more or less. Not quite in the head but near enough. He only struggled for a minute, flopping around like a fish on the floor of the deserted office. His blood will stain nicely on the blue carpeting and it won't take a genius to see the smashed glass, the bullet hole in his skull, and put two and two together. You didn't wait around for that, though. You never do. 

When you got home that evening, you skipped quickly up the stairs and checked all the hiding places, counting each weapon twice to make sure. It's not that you thought Demi might have called someone to ransack the place, more that you feared she would have got her hands on them herself. However many lives you've taken, however many souls you've seen bleed out of your victims, the end of Demi's life would be unbearable. It's taken you years to perfect the mechanics of those guns. You don't even want to think...