Chapter 31 #2
He doesn’t leave immediately, though. That smirk is carved into his face, the pale scar along his cheek catching the overhead light. I track him without moving my head, just my eyes. Predator watching predator. He drifts behind her, his hand sliding up her side casually.
She goes still.
He looks at me over her shoulder, waiting. He’s definitely testing me again for some goddamn reason. I don’t move, because I’ve just had it today.
Adriana steps away from him and comes to sit beside me on the couch, plate balanced on her knees.
Aiden’s eyes narrow slightly. “Do you even fuck her?”
She chokes on her food.
My head turns toward him slowly. “What?”
He leans forward, bracing a hand on the back of the couch behind my shoulder. “I asked you if you fuck her.”
My jaw tightens. “Why do you care?”
“Yes,” Adriana cuts in quickly. “Almost daily since there's nothing else to do here. He’s the best fuck I’ve ever had. Please get out.”
I admit, her lie sounds real.
Aiden straightens, expression shifting. His hand suddenly shoots out and tangles in her hair. “Maybe you can come sleep with me tonight,” he murmurs.
She wrenches herself free, setting the plate beside her so she doesn't drop it. “In your dreams, bitch.”
I let out a quiet snort at that. There she is.
But Aiden doesn’t like that. He grabs her again, this time fisting his hand in the back of her hair and yanking her over the back of the couch. She screams angrily, scratching deep gouges into his arm.
“Fuck, I like that,” he laughs. “Hurt me, baby.”
I’m on my feet before I even register deciding to move. My fist connects with his face so hard I feel the impact all the way up my arm. His head snaps to the side, and he stumbles back, releasing her.
Adriana scrambles away. And then we’re fighting.
The second my fist connects with his face again, something inside me snaps entirely.
Aiden stumbles back, blood already dripping from the corner of his mouth, but he recovers fast. He lunges for me, and we collide hard enough to rattle the coffee table, knocking it sideways as we crash into it.
Wood splinters, and glasses hit the floor.
Adriana is shouting something, but I can’t understand the words.
He swings, and I take the hit to the jaw, tasting iron instantly.
Instead of backing off, I grin. I slam my shoulder into his ribs and drive him into the wall.
A framed picture shatters behind him, glass raining down around us.
He grunts and elbows me in the side, but I barely feel it.
The meth has my nerves wrapped in cotton and fucking gasoline at the same damn time.
He goes for my throat.
I catch his wrist midair and twist, forcing him down, but he uses the momentum to knee me hard in the stomach. Air leaves my lungs in a rush. He shoves me off and scrambles toward the dining table, where he dropped his gun.
I tackle him before he can reach it, slamming him to the ground. My fist comes down once. Twice. Three times. Each hit is heavier than the last, knuckles splitting open against his cheekbone. He bucks beneath me, managing to throw me sideways just enough to roll and reach the gun.
A shot explodes through the room.
For a second, I don’t understand what happened. Then heat blooms through my side. I stagger back, looking down at the dark stain spreading across my shirt. It’s not center mass. Not fatal. And I start laughing. Not because it’s funny, but because I can’t fucking feel it.
Aiden scrambles to his feet, breathing hard, gun shaking slightly in his hand as he points it straight at my face. “Back the fuck up,” he spits.
I don’t. I straighten slowly instead, blood dripping from my fingers onto the floor. My head tilts as I stare down the barrel. “Do it,” I murmur softly.
Adriana is screaming now. I hear my name. Over and over.
Aiden’s finger tightens on the trigger, but something flickers across his expression. Uncertainty or fear...I can’t tell. But he sees that I’m not afraid, and that I actually want him to pull it. His jaw clenches. He lowers the gun just enough to step backward toward the door.
“This isn’t over, you fucking asshole,” he says, voice tight.
Then he’s gone, and the door slams. And I’m left standing there, bleeding and buzzing and furious because it still isn’t enough.
The rage has nowhere to go. It roars inside my chest, clawing for an outlet.
I turn and drive my fist straight into the living room mirror.
Glass explodes, and pain finally sparks through my hand, but it only feeds the fire.
I hit it again. And again. And again. Blood streaks across the fractured reflection, splitting my face into a dozen warped and fucked up versions.
I don’t recognize any of them. Adriana is begging me to stop, but I barely hear her.
The mirror is shattered and bleeding in front of me. Just like me. My hand is shredded, skin split open, glass embedded in my knuckles. Blood drips down my wrist and onto the hardwood. The sting itself is distant, though. Interesting.
I can still feel anger and pain.
Adriana’s frantic voice is somewhere behind me. “Jude, stop. Please, stop.”
I ignore her, crouching slowly and staring at the glittering wreckage at my feet. I reach down and pick up a shard that’s longer than my palm and clear enough that I can see my own monstrous face through it. For a moment, I see the mask instead of my face. It makes me flinch.
I turn it in my fingers, the edge of it catching the light.
My pulse pounds in my ears, my head roaring with dissatisfaction.
I wanted to fucking kill him. He needs to be dead and bleeding out on the floor.
I want to rip him apart with my goddamn teeth and hands.
It’s an animalistic rage that I’ve never felt before.
It has nowhere to go now that Aiden ran.
It wants release.
I lift the shard and press the cool glass lightly to the side of my throat.
Adriana makes a pitiful, scared sound.
I tilt my head, watching in the broken mirror as the edge kisses my skin. A thin line of red beads instantly. The sensation is sharp and clean. It feels real.
I can control this pain.
For the first time in years, this would be my decision. Mine.
“Jude.” Her voice cracks on my name.
I press harder, enjoying the pain for once, because I’m inflicting it myself. Because it’s the only fucking thing I can even feel anymore. Anything is better than this numb hell I’ve been buried under.
Hands slam into me, Adriana throwing herself at my chest so hard we both nearly go down.
The shard slips, slicing across my collarbone instead of my throat.
Blood spills down my skin, but she doesn’t care.
She grabs my wrist with both hands, nails digging into my skin, trying to wrench the glass away from me.
Her own hands are slicing open in desperation.
“Stop it!” she sobs. “Stop it, stop it, stop it—”
“Get off me,” I growl. My voice doesn’t even sound like mine.
She doesn’t let go. She wraps herself around my arm like she’s trying to anchor me to the goddamn ground. Her tears are hitting my chest. I can feel them. “Don’t do this,” she chokes. “Please. Please don’t do this, Jude.”
I wrestle her, slamming her back against the floor and stare down at her, breathing hard. My vision pulses and darkens at the edges. The room feels like it’s tilting. “Why?” I ask, almost curious. “Why the fuck not?”
She looks up at me then, and I can see that she’s terrified. “Because she loves you,” Adriana sobs.
The words scrape against something raw inside me, and my grip tightens on the shard. “Don’t,” I warn.
“You love her,” she says anyway, her voice breaking. “Goddammit, Jude, you love Emma.”
My entire body seizes, the name detonating inside my skull. I see a flash of brown hair and honey brown eyes. Then pain. Electricity. Conditioning. My muscles lock automatically, heart slamming against my ribs as if I’ve been shocked again.
“Shut the fuck up,” I snap, pulling her up and slamming her down again, forcing a yelp out of her.
But she keeps going, because Adriana has never known when to stop. “She would be destroyed if you died like this,” she sobs. “You think she wouldn’t feel it? You think she wouldn’t blame herself? Don’t do that to her. Don’t you fucking dare.”
I’m panting now. I try to picture her face, and my body reacts immediately with nausea and a phantom jolt across my ribs where they’d hit me with a baton or shock me.
I bare my teeth, fighting it. “I can’t,” I rasp. “I can’t think about her. I fucking can’t, Adriana! Stop it. I’m sick of other people hurting me. So please, just shut up.” My voice sounds like I’m begging. "I'll fucking kill you if you don't."
“Then don’t,” Adriana cries. “Don’t picture her. Just—just feel her. Feel what it was like to love her. To want something other than—than this. Please.” Tears are flowing over her cheeks.
My arm trembles violently now. The glass wavers at my throat.
“Rage is the last emotion to go,” she whispers fiercely, gripping my wrist harder. “So use it. Be angry for her. Be angry at what they’ve done to you. They’ve taken your mind, and your body…but don’t you dare let them take your soul, too.”
Something inside me cracks, even if it’s the smallest fissure. Because beneath the rage, buried deep under drugs and shocks and blood and obedience, there’s a memory of warmth.
Of wanting to protect and love someone.
My fingers loosen the slightest bit, and the shard slips from my hand, shattering on the floor. I stagger back onto my ass like I’ve just been shot again, clutching at my own chest as if I can physically hold that tiny spark in place before it dies.
Forget her forget her forget her—
No.
Yes.
Fuck.
Stop…
Adriana collapses against me, shaking, her hands sliding up to cup my face. “Come back,” she whispers. “Please, Jude, come back.”
I stare ahead, hot tears now falling from my eyes. “I don’t know if I can come back from this.”
She doesn’t respond to that. Instead, she embraces me tightly, crying into my chest while lifting my shirt to see where the bullet grazed my ribs. I’m bleeding all over the floor from my side and from where the shard sliced my collarbone. It’s deeper than it felt.
“Shit, Jude—” she’s panicking now, her hands pressing into my wounds.
The edges of my vision are darkening again, but not with rage this time. I’m tired…
“Jude!”