Chapter 14
Lennon
What the hell was I doing? I couldn’t believe I had opened up to him during the last hour.
I could feel myself loosening up, I could feel myself relax—and I fucking hated it.
I hated that he made me feel like that with such ease.
I didn’t want to feel okay around him. He was going to swoop in and fuck up all my plans.
While running down the sidewalk, I looked back and realized I had lost him.
Wow, I was surprised he had given up so easily.
Not that I wanted him to try, but I didn’t know what I wanted.
Why did I feel this confusion taking over me?
I slowed my steps to a casual walk, taking in the world around me.
It could all be just so beautiful if it weren’t tainted with deceit and unbearable evil.
Walking back to my apartment, I felt lost. It had been so infuriatingly easy, just marking down make believe things on a list with some stranger.
It felt easy to lie like that—until I looked down and saw my name written in front of his.
I knew he didn’t know my last name, but just the way he had written mine down, right before his.
It caused a hurricane inside of me. He would never know that a small part of me longed for the kind of love it would take to marry someone.
I had never experienced it. I had never experienced any kind of love that was worth writing home about. Everyone made it seem just so…beautiful. A part of me wondered if they were faking it—every one of them, fakes. It would make sense, though. So much about love came with pain.
People cheated and lied to the people they so-called loved.
People abused the ones they apparently loved.
People were cruel and turned spouses into victims. I wasn’t about to become another fucking statistic.
I had felt some type of love a long time ago, and I’d never feel it again.
There was no way in this lifetime that I’d fall into a love that masks as a facade for cruelty.
Shaking my head, I was frustrated that I had allowed my inner demons to reflect over some measly error that Asher put onto the page. He didn’t know that there was some deep-seated part of me that would have once loved to be married. He didn’t know why I was the way I was.
I had to get tougher. That part was simple.
I couldn’t allow myself to show him that side of me ever again.
I had eleven weeks remaining, so I had to hold it in—keep it under wraps and ensure that part of me remained locked down.
This assignment needed to go a whole lot smoother moving forward if I was going to last here.
This assignment.
The bucket list.
He had written things down with such ease while I racked my brain, trying to think of things normal people would write down if they were in my shoes.
Sure, I chose things as if it were me wanting to do things in another life, but not this life.
Not this one anymore. My time was up, and I had lived enough of it already.
I was nearing the end, and for once, I felt a sense of calm.
I felt okay knowing it was so close that I could taste it. Not only okay, but relieved.
His bucket list items were so typical. So typical of a rich kid.
Of course he hadn’t had a pet growing up.
I mean, neither did I, but that’s because my mother sucked the life out of everything after the accident.
She had died right along with him, because whatever was left was a shell—a casing that only housed evil.
Someone who no longer fucking mattered. She stopped mattering.
I wasn’t sure if she ever really did, to be honest.
Hands in my pocket, the breeze tousled my already matted hair as I trudged on.
I felt cold, and I wasn’t certain whether that was due to the weather or just how I felt altogether.
My shoulder reared into someone else’s, and it unsteadied me.
Their large, burly stance hardly budged.
Something about them forced me to keep my stare forward, not wanting to engage.
I needed this day to be over. I needed it to end.
Jase came to mind. Slowing my steps, I thought about the hydromorphs in my apartment. I could mix it to help add a little extra oomph to the high. Up ahead, I spotted a liquor store.
Biting the inside of my lip, my eyes wandered over the people passing me by. Would they know that I was thinking about getting fucked up? Could they sense the sick desire inside of me to be asleep until I could go the way I needed to?
I decided to keep my pace going toward the store.
I would pop in quickly, buy a bottle of vodka or whatever, and get the hell out of there.
I wasn’t a big drinker, but this could help me get by in the upcoming weeks.
I wouldn’t go crazy—just a shot here and there to help give the pills that little bit of extra kick I needed.
The dreams were getting too vivid, too real, anyway.
My hand gripped the metal door handle, and I pulled it back toward me.
The suction it created with the frame made it difficult, the tension in my bicep reminding me how weak I really was.
Once I flitted through the door, I made eye contact with the first bottle on the shelf.
Not wasting any time, I beelined toward it, not even bothering to read the label, then made a sharp turn for the cashier.
After paying for the small bottle of vodka, I exited the store as if I were being suffocated by being inside.
My anxiety had really been creeping up on me at inopportune times lately, and I just wanted to be home.
I stuffed the bottle in my purse and began my trek back home.
I softly closed my eyes, attempting to steady my breath.
No one knew I was trying to slowly kill myself while remaining alive for eleven more weeks.
No one knew I was a mess—a walking train wreck.
No one knew I used to care, and love, and feel.
No one knew who I really was anymore. Slowly, I realized I could be added to that list. Did I even know who I was anymore?
A tear fell down my cheek, and I stopped myself from moving forward. Am I crying? No. No. No. I don’t cry. I don’t feel anymore. I don’t allow myself the privilege of shedding tears.
So what the fuck was I shedding tears for?
I didn’t cry for myself. I didn’t cry for my shitty past. I didn’t cry for my crack-whore mother or my dead dad. I certainly didn’t cry over anxiety in a fucking store where I, an adult of legal age, could go and buy fucking alcohol.
Slumping my shoulders, I proceeded onward toward the apartment that felt like a shell of a container meant for me.
It was overpriced, draining the insurance policy my dad had left behind for me, and it meant absolutely nothing.
I could have lived in a fucking cardboard box and felt the same emotional attachment as I did now.
I was returning to a life I didn’t want without anyone to share it with, but I didn’t have the strength in me to share it with anyone, either.
I couldn’t bear to be let down. I couldn’t bear to be hurt. I didn’t have it in me anymore. That was why I wanted to die—no, needed to die.
Another tear fell, and I wiped it away with frustration so strong that I startled a businessman walking past me, talking through his earbuds.
I felt my world closing in. I didn’t fucking cry.
Wiping my eyes as more tears fell, I stopped in my tracks, my shoulders vibrating with emotions I had long stuffed down into the depths of my soul.
The tears fell rampant, a dam breached with no way to seal it back up.
My vision blurred, breathing laboured. My trembling hands ran over my face and then through my hair.
I was suffocating. This was what suffocating felt like.
I was going to die, crying in the fucking streets. I felt my way toward a building and leaned my back up against it, just enough to stabilize myself before allowing my weight to fall down onto the ground. The bricks scraped against my skin, but I was numb. Everything was numb. It all became dark.
And that’s when it dawned on me—I was having my first panic attack.