Chapter 70
Idon’t know whether to punish her or fuck her for making me feel like this. And because I want to do both and neither of those things as a result of this clusterfuck in my mind, I opt to leave her.
She’s sound asleep in our bed as I creep from the room, the knots binding us cinching tighter with every sweaty step I take.
I want to drive back to Bleakcrest and release all these fucking emotions I don’t know how to decipher or deal with.
But, I eliminated every person in that room as the sight of her blood on the white tile replayed in my mind, stoking my anger into an all out fucking rage with no end in sight.
Even now, I’m tense, angry. At her, at life, at the shitty fucking hand I was dealt from the get-go.
I lace my runners tight, then dart out the door, sprinting down the driveway. I don’t know where I’m going, having not exercised in weeks. I just need an outlet for all this damn emotional energy.
When Rose gets me, lifts me up, or just fucking stares at me like I hung the moon, I don’t know what to do.
How do I reciprocate? The cloud she has me floating on makes my heart thunder erratically in its cage.
I’m off-kilter and it’s her fault. Rocks crunch beneath my pounding steps, following the familiar path to the beach without thinking.
What I feel for her would be seen as love by anyone who felt the things I do.
I know that. But when I think of that word, I want to fucking puke.
All I hear is it pouring from my sick sister’s lips as she wields the word like a weapon to take from me.
My mother using love as an excuse for abuse, just wanting us to be the best boys imaginable because she loves us.
If she really loved Bradley and I, we wouldn’t have turned out the way we did. He wouldn’t have run away from home, and I wouldn’t have killed him for winding up in Maximus’s organization, destroying the only thing I ever cared about other than him.
The nightmare that’s plagued my sleep since our escape replays again. The mere thought of him conjuring it up.
Gurgling rings in my ears, smothering out the shifting rocks beneath my runners. The hiss from the remaining cigarette ember as it hits the pool of crimson, having fallen from between Brad’s fingers. His cooling blood coating my chest, causing the shirt to stick uncomfortably.
It’s sweat, not blood, the voice inside my head whispers.
It might be panic induced perspiration this time, but it doesn’t change the sensation of it chilling my heated skin.
Why did I have to kick him so fucking hard?
The punch was more than enough. Never in all our years together did I ever lay a hand on him.
What possessed me to start now? Was it learning all he did to Rose?
Seeing the state she was in? I wasn’t even thinking…
so blinded and overwhelmed by feelings, and completely pissed off the shithead burned me.
I didn’t want to kill him. I followed him to come clean, tell him who I was, then have him hopefully come back with me. I craved to know why he abandoned me, snuck out like a thief in the night, never to be seen or heard from again.
I wanted my fucking brother back.
Instead, I lost him.
Forever doomed to relive the moment the vacancy overcame his eyes as I tried to hold him together.
Feeling a piece of myself slip away with his life, while I pleaded for him to stay, to forgive me.
Hoping he could hear my quiet string of apologies from somewhere on the other side as I held him a final time.
My pace slows, coming upon the gate I need to pass through. The metal grinds, flakes of rust breaking free as I force the latch upward. I should really replace this. Even if it’s not my place to, no one needs to end up with tetanus from the neglected lock.
I push the gate open, hinges squeaking, mind further wandering as I stroll through.
I know Rose saw it, the hollowness within me where Bradley used to reside, cleaved clean out because I don’t deserve to cherish the good memories when I extinguished his light.
All of this is my fault.
Maybe I could have found Brad sooner, saved Rose before everything went down.
I should have killed Maximus the second I was close enough to do so, and all of this would have been avoided.
Rose would have been saved the trauma and scars, maybe even still have Chelsea at her side.
But because of me, everything has been fucked beyond repair.
What kind of man am I to put myself before her?
I know the answer, part of me is just too cowardly to fucking admit it.
I shuffle across the sand toward the lapping water, pausing halfway to unlace my sneakers and kick them off.
Looking to the star flecked sky, I search for answers I already know deep down.
How can I ever say that word to her, and mean it, when it makes every wrong waged against me rise to the surface? Despite what she says, I know she’s waiting for me to say it first. She senses the wrongness in me. Like the angel she fucking is, she won’t force me into something I can’t handle.
I can’t spill those words for her.
I won’t.
Ripping the sweat-saturated, white t-shirt from my body, I drop it to the ground next to the shoes. I push the grey joggers down my thighs, and kick them into the forming pile of clothes.
Slowly, I walk toward the water, searching for a silence that the ocean’s been unable to provide as of late—a peace I’m only ever finding within my flower’s embrace.
She deserves better than me. To be free.
Breaking into a full sprint, I crash into the shallows, diving beneath the surface.
But I’m selfish. I’ll never give her up.