Chapter 2
Dash
Beep…beep…beep.
What the fuck is that annoying sound? I sure as shit didn ’ t set an alarm.
Beep…beep…beep.
I reach out to swat whatever object is making that incessant sound, but the movement makes me groan instead.
“ He ’ s waking up.”
“ Good, it hurts him. Stupid dipshit.”
Feet shuffle. “ Hey,” someone pokes my eyeball.
What the hell!
“ Open your eyes.”
“ I will if you stop poking them,” I grumble at Titan.
Shit! My throat aches. “ Was I force-fed sand?”
“ No,” Titan mockingly laughs, “ More like an intubation tube. The doctor said you ’ d be sore. He also said to give you some ice chips if you wake up and try to talk.”
“ So get me ice,” I bark, then I finally open my eyes.
I wish I hadn ’ t.
One sense awakens others. Shit, everything, and I mean everything, even my dick hurts. How is that possible?
“ Suck it up.” Damian snorts. “ You need to suffer like we did when we got the call.”
I glare at Damian. Unlike Titan, he isn ’ t standing by my bedside; he ’ s lounging in a cheap man ’ s reclining chair in the corner while he pops my ice chips into his mouth and then loudly crushes them between his teeth.
Prick!
Titan leans forward with a slight frown, "Do you remember what happened?"
I avert my gaze and try to sink further into the bed.
Titan grabs the railing of my hospital bed, hovering over me with eyes as wide and cruel as a loudspeaker with no volume limit.
“ Yeah, brother,” Damian’s lips curl back, and my shame blazes like wildfire through my veins.
I was born an only child. Thank fuck! I ’ d never wish my life on another soul. Last night I told myself I was alone. I tried not to think of Titan and Damian.
Let me explain. Am I rich? Yeah, but I ’ m not new money. I ’ m old. Ancient. As in dark societies, old.
Do I know which stupid society my old man is a part of? No. Don ’ t care. I just reckon he belongs to a few since he ’ s got more pull than the President of the United States and strikes more fear into people than an asteroid heading right toward Earth.
The King men are like prodigal sons if Alexander the Great and Genghis Khan had fucked and birthed out handsome-looking men. Ruthless but handsome.
That ’ s not me being an idiot. That ’ s me stating facts.
Last night I was just…done. I tried to end it without having the courage to do it myself.
“ Earth to fucking moron!” Titan ’ s blue eyes darken as he flicks my head. “ Do you remember what happened?”
Time to play and hope they forgive me. I furrow my eyebrows. “ Who the hell are you?”
Titan ’ s jaw clamps down. Damian misses catching my next ice chip with his mouth.
I laugh, but it turns into a congested cough. I feel like a roach that was doused with a bottle of bug spray, but hey, baby, I ’ m a roach, and I can ’ t die. Not even nuclear war could kill a King.
“ Do I remember? Yeah. The problem is, why am I waking up?” I sigh as I lean back against the sheet that is thinner than paper. I might have stumbled upon an underground fighting ring and then wanted to feel nothing because I felt too much. So I provoked one too many street thugs. By the time my bodyguards found me, I was hoping to wake up and see Mom again.
I love Titan and Damian, but they ’ re not the person I wanted to see.I needed to see someone smile at me. I wanted to feel loved again.
Titan and Damian love me; I know that, but it ’ s just different. There is a hole inside me that I can’t fill, so I just jumped into it. Unfortunately, I woke up.
Boom! Damian stands suddenly, smashing the cheap chair into the hospital room wall. Then, moving like only Damian can, he ’ s in front of me, in a flash, his hand around my swollen throat.
It ’ s already a struggle to intake air but his fingers press, nails digging into my flesh, cutting slowly.
Oh shit! I did it. Provoked his demon and wounded his heart.
I didn ’ t mean to. I was just being selfish and wanted…a break. I wanted a reprieve from the pain, from the loss, the hole that will never be filled by either my mother or father. Dad ’ s been MIA since Mom ’ s funeral. He never returned home. Since our house comes with a staff and a full security team, he didn ’ t need to worry about me. His son. Someone else did. That someone else used to be my mom, but now it ’ s Martha. She means well, but she sure as shit isn ’ t mom.
“ Damian,” Titan reaches for Damian’s shaking shoulders. I can see the fear on Titan ’ s face because if he had to rip Damian ’ s hand off me, he might not succeed until after I ’ m dead.
Damian is the quietest of us, but he ’ s the most deadly. He ’ s not a shark lurking in deep waters, waiting to attack you from beneath. He ’ s more like an Olympic god, silently waiting in the gray zones of a dark thundercloud, ready to unleash his fury and wipe out everything in his path.
“ Cut him some slack.” Titan orders, his voice low and urgent.
“ Literally,” I croak. I fail to reach up because my hand ’ s full of IVs; one rips out, and another snags on the bedsheet that ’ s made of rice paper.
“ Damian.”
“ Do it. I dare you. Take your life,” Damian says to me. His eyes? They don ’ t go dark; they turn into slits that resemble the welcome gates of hell.
“ I ’ ll come for you. Hunt you down and make you wish you decided to inhale and exhale instead of quitting,” A tighter squeeze, cutting off my air. Then he releases me.
Air! Mixed with, yuck, that antiseptic scent. I blink away the burn in my eyes as he storms from the room.
Titan watches him leave, then hangs his head. “ Is that what you wanted? To leave us?”
“ No.” Yes.
“ You can ’ t do that to him. To us,” Titan mutters; grief, regret and concern flash in his blue eyes.
I know. That exit plan was stupid and inconsiderate, especially to Damian. You see, his mom committed suicide. Damian was just a kid when he walked in on her with the knife still dug into her wrist, forming the long vertical slashes. She was in the bathtub at the time and hurried to slip her hand under the water. That is after she asked Damian to pull the knife out of her wrist.
What kind of mother asks her kid to take the knife out? To help her commit the crime?
Damian, being an innocent child, rushed to her side but, being a kid, he listened to his mom when she told him not to leave, to remove that fucking knife, and then to wait with her.
So he did.
He had no idea she was slowly dying or that the bath water had gone from vibrant red to a duller, deeper tone. He believed his mom when she said she was taking a nap and when she woke, she was going to be free. He believed her when she told him his future was his own to make and not to let others mold it for him.
All the King men are fucked in the head, but Damian…well, he ’ s bent and broken in different ways than Titan and I are.
The worst is that his dad blames him for his mom ’ s death. Not for her depression but for not running and alerting him that the bathwater was turning red and no longer clear. That his mom was killing herself right in front of her boy ’ s eyes.
Then here I am making a joke, okay, so a somewhat real joke, that I wanted to end my life.
“ I fucked up. I was tired.”
“ So you go to fucking sleep in your bed! You don ’ t risk your life!” Titan slams his fist into my mattress.
I look away at the dull cream walls.
“ It was a cry for help. I know you; if you wanted to end it, you would have.” Titan ’ s voice fades, snuffed out like a candle. But his words linger in the air like the faint scent of smoke, slowly fading as it dissolves into the surrounding oxygen.
“ The day you end things is not freedom. It ’ s a failure; it ’ s letting every monster devour you, letting every nightmare consume you. You ’ re a fucking King! You fight till the end; you don ’ t lay down and accept it.”
“I get it.” I gruff out. “It was a mistake. I get it!”
“ You ’ re a fucking idiot.”
“ I know.”
The bed railing shakes under his imposing weight. “ Why didn ’ t you just call me?”
I shrug, then pick at the IV in my hand.
“ You don ’ t have to be ashamed to confide in us. I wasn ’ t. You and Damian picked me up when I fell into a blind pit, you forced me to stand.”
I force down another burning gulp, “ I ’ m…I ’ m happy I woke up.” I think I am. “ I ’ m a mess. I ’ m full of regrets, of hopes lost, and a thousand nightmares I want to make come true.”
Suddenly, a fire replaces my pain.
“ You lost sight. It happens. When you are blind, you need to rely on your other senses. One day, our lives will be different. Hold onto that.”
I watch his shoulders curl in, like he’s trying to take the first impact for me. “ Your dad is on his way home.”
A rush of blood fills my eyes before it pauses and then roars to the surface.
Titan looks at his feet. “ I heard my dad talking. They ’ re taking you from us. You ’ re going to a boarding school.”
“ Shit.”