Chapter 20 Oren
CHAPTER TWENTY
OREN
Clutching the box in my hand, I didn’t know what to do with the pieces. Part of me wanted to toss them in water or burn them completely, but another, more vulnerable part refused to do something so tainted.
I needed to do it to remove that weakness from the equation forever. I’d become the perfect soldier, the perfect son; I’d never seen my dad smile at me like that before.
Like I was actually worth something.
I was going to be a commander. A commander to people I used to call friends, but didn’t they go along with it, too? Did they even fight for me when I didn’t show up that morning? Did they care?
Did anyone?
I raked my hands across my face, muddying the feeling of loneliness… of wishing I had someone, but that wasn’t going to happen. Everyone around me betrayed me or fucking died.
What good is freedom when heartache, disappointment, and pain are all that exist? What good are friends if they just get taken away?
Thorne… Thorne had washed it all away, and I knew I’d fallen into my father’s trap. I wasn’t stupid… an idiot like he believed me to be, but what choice did I have?
I was tired, broken, a shell of nothingness.
It was either succumb or deal with his manipulation, his presence, his… his torture alone for days.
That’s why I ran, because I was a coward.
Thorne Graves fucking called me out, and I punched him for it.
It’s why I looked for a university outside of the country. Why I covered myself in fashion, makeup, and jewelry, because I hoped he wouldn’t recognize me. That I’d be so repulsive he’d never want to be associated with his son.
And then… and then he broke me. Rendered me to that bathroom floor in a few simple words, but I wasn’t alone.
I had Simon, Matthew, and Liam. I had my friends to rely on to keep from falling into my father’s wishes. But when he removed them, made me stay alone? I had nothing to propel me forward, because what does a coward do when there’s no one to fall back on?
“Oren?” The utterance of my name cut off my internal spiral, the depth of the utterance only belonging to one steady force.
Matthew.
“I-I don’t want to talk,” I said as I pressed my fingers into my forehead, hoping to quiet the noises of my weakness.
“You know, you may have him fooled,” he started, the comfort in his voice still there even though I’d become nothing but a monster. “But not me.”
“I’m not fooling anyone,” I spat. “I don’t need this.” I shoved him out of the way, nearly dropping the box as I caught it before it broke.
He caught my arm, ripping me back toward him as he kicked the door to Thorne’s room shut, locking us inside.
“Bullshit,” he snarled, his finger drilling into my chest. “This? This isn’t who you are, and you fucking know it.
You’re falling apart internally, because you are fully aware of what you’re doing, Oren.
Stop pushing everyone away when we just got back home. ”
“You don’t think I know exactly what I’m doing? I made a choice to prevent myself from breaking… to hurt the man who thinks it’s fine to play around with others as if he’s the—”
He cut me off. “If that’s what you think, if that’s what you’ve come to believe after seeing Thorne beneath his mask, then you never cared for him to begin with. What was he, Oren? Just another quick fuck for you?”
“Wasn’t it for him? A quick fuck to follow my father’s orders? For someone he almost killed, you’re quite fucking loyal.”
“Because, unlike you, I know the man he is. I believe in the man he is,” he snapped, shoving me further into the room.
“It was never a quick fuck for him. And do you want to know how I know that? Because he told me he was falling in love with you! Thorne, a man who has never opened his heart for anyone. Never been in a relationship. Never taken anyone into his space because it was far too intimate. The real Thorne fucking Graves. But you wasted no time, right? Slipping into your father’s bullshit ideology, allowing him to wield you as his weapon, his destruction. ”
“He didn’t love me.” My gaze flicked to his bed. “He left me here, alone. What… what else was I supposed to do but fall to my father’s bullshit ideology?”
“You were supposed to believe in him, and God, I swore I saw it in you. The capability to hold him in his truth and understand why he is the way he is. But since you can’t seem to do so, let me spell it out for you.
” His jaw feathered as he shook his head, every word that left him far more broken than the last. “We ridiculed him for leaving you behind, spoke so poorly to him that he elected to try and go on that mission alone. He knew, Oren. He knew you’d never forgive him for what he’d done, but he acted out of the desire to keep you alive, the inability to lose you.
While I don’t agree with his actions, and thoroughly believe you should’ve been able to decide for yourself, what he did proves the type of man he is.
He acts from a place of care before ever considering the logic behind his decisions, and that was the man I saw out there when that detonation went off, the man who saved Simon’s life. For you!”
I swallowed, the box shaking as two pieces of my heart collided. One half—the soft, tender, loving half—I thought I snuffed. The other—disobedient, sassy, funny—I thought had been removed by others.
“I can’t… I don’t have the capacity to feel, Matthew. I don’t have the capacity for anything anymore, because I shouldn’t have tried to fight it.”
“Then don’t.” His throat bobbed with the two words, each syllable like a knife driving into my mutilated soul.
“But just know that when you’re standing over us, leading the squad, that none of us will look at you the same.
If you’re that willing to give away everything you had, everyone who loved you, then you’re just as big a coward as your father. ”
“Fine,” I said as I rammed my shoulder into his, giving me the leverage I needed to escape the room. I needed out. Needed out before I fucking lost it.
My footsteps to my new quarters weren’t fast enough. My new room was an upgrade worthy of his right hand—a force meant to squash anyone who opposed him.
The keys shook in my hands as I managed to shove them into the lock, turning it enough to slam it open. I kicked it closed with the heel of my boot, utter darkness enveloping me.
I didn’t use lights, not anymore. Lights would force me to look at myself or see the artwork scattered around the room. I’d tried. I’d tried to distract myself after my father’s teachings, but there was only so much my brain could hold onto before I needed an outlet.
An outlet in the form of charcoal—a form of art I hadn’t picked up in years. There was one image that haunted me, one image I had to get out of my head and onto paper.
Lucas.
I pulled at my hair, the growing length not providing any form of comfort like it used to. Instead, it reminded me of my hands grabbing his as I tortured him.
A clock ticked, and I jumped, the sound a gunshot in my head.
I fumbled through the dark room until I found the source. I tossed it, the sound of it shattering reminding me how much I’d shattered myself.
And then the box.
His goddamn box slipped, cracking against the floor with a sickening thud like Lucas had, but that wasn’t the only thing.
It was Thorne.
His body beneath mine as I pummeled into him for the sake of my father’s watchful eyes. For the sake of making me feel better, but it didn’t work.
“Fuck. Fuck.”
He didn’t love me. He hated me.
Matthew… Matthew was lying, but that voice, that goddamn loud voice, echoed in my head.
You’re a fucking liar and you know it.
I kicked the box, sending it somewhere in the apartment, but it didn’t ease any of the pain in my chest. My breathing was erratic, my lungs refusing to catch despite how many breaths I was taking.
Because if I was wrong? If I was wrong, I deserved to fucking die. There was no salvation great enough to save what I’d done.
And the thing I didn’t want to admit to myself?
I was wrong.
I knew the moment Thorne surrendered because… because he wouldn’t have if he didn’t care so deeply.
A sob tore through me, my hand reaching out to catch the edge of the couch, but I missed, collapsing to the ground like the piece of shit I was.
My fist slammed into the floor, tears plopping to the ground like a river that didn’t stop. “You’re a fucking coward.”
When my knuckles didn’t provide the pain I wanted, I rammed my head into the ground, a guttural cry escaping me.
Again.
What the fuck had I done?
Again.
What was wrong with me?
And again.
Bringing my head upward to bash it once more, I didn’t have the strength to try again as I collapsed to the ground. Curling into a ball, I sobbed.
I didn’t deserve to live. I didn’t deserve to die.
I deserved torture for the rest of my pathetic, goddamn life, but even that would never make up for the shit I’d done.
And Matthew? The way he’d looked at me?
I deserved his disgust. I deserved the truth he spewed at me. Honestly? He had every right to kill me.
And Simon? Liam?
They deserved a better friend than me.
As that goddamn clock still continued to tick, the sound of my fists punching Thorne clanged with each beat. It was a tempo of my horrors and mistakes that were never redeemable, and with it, I decided that the only way to redeem myself was to die.
Through my panic, the drum of knuckles sounded on the door. It was a steady rhythm, one that hinted at someone with a refined nature, someone who undoubtedly reported to me now that I was a commander.
I tucked my chin to my chest, my arm draping over my head. “G-Go away!” Pathetic.
Then the voice, the voice I wasn’t prepared to hear, slipped through the crack—Thorne. “Open the fucking door, Valens. Or I’ll kick it down.”
I covered my ears, a foolish sob leaving me. How cruel for my mind to play tricks?