12. Chapter Twelve
Chapter Twelve
London
I ce, I’ve decided, is very dangerous, especially when it gets cracked over your skull and used as a weapon. My hand is throbbing, the excruciating pain only dulled by the intense explosions in my head—my body can only comprehend so much pain at a time. I keep my eyes closed because I’m certain of whose arms I’m in right now. The stub of his hand, where his fingers should be, is wrapped around my waist, poking into my side.
Ezra.
Nigel must be the other set of feet crunching and slugging in the snow behind us. I’ve been awake for a while, but I don’t move or say anything as my body hangs limply, my legs down Ezra’s front and my head over his shoulder. He certainly doesn’t hold me with the comfort or grace Micah does—the rhythm of his body is more abrupt. His smell is different, too. His sweat is more… putrid.
Apparently, Ezra and Nigel don’t speak to each other since they haven’t uttered a word since I woke up.
I try to squeeze my hand into a fist and find, with horror, that I can’t move my fingers. A fresh wave of panic consumes me. My wound is bad, and I doubt these two will care enough to tend to it. I attempt to calm myself, recalling all the better ways Micah has taught me to react in a situation like this: surrender to the circumstances and take charge by influencing the environment and the people around me.
Breathe, London. Dull the pain. Focus, survive, then kill.
Kill.
I remain listless, keeping my eyes partly closed, and hone in on my surroundings. Based on the position of the sun, I’m reasonably confident the cabin is north. This means we are northeast of where Jade is, which is where I need to flee once I escape.
Ezra stalls, and he heaves me up as his hand—or should I say, lack thereof—slips. The silence of the snowy landscape is interrupted by his voice.
“She’s fucking heavy,” he mutters and pulls me up over his shoulder, my wounded hand hitting his side. “And she stinks.” It takes every ounce of my willpower not to cry out.
I want to scoff because I am not heavy—he’s just weak.
However, I can’t argue with the fact that I probably do stink.
The last time Ezra touched me, he had pulled me out of my shelter feet first and let Naomi beat the shit out of me. I’ll never forget that, or what any of them did to me for that matter. Especially how Ezra betrayed Micah and Maison. If I have the chance to kill them both, I won’t hesitate. I will finish what Micah was incapable of doing when he had the chance—when I foolishly stopped him.
The greatest regret of my life.
They caused the loss of my best friend and changed my relationship with Micah before it had even started. I could have had both of them, but they took that from me.
“Quit whining and keep moving. He could be following us.” The sound of Nigel’s voice is worse than his breath, which I can smell as he steps closer to me. It’s as if he has a lingering cavity that never got filled, now worse from being on this island with the lack of dental hygiene. Even back in New Ocean, his breath sickened me. That was in the beginning, when we used to be friends and I hadn’t realized what a vile creature he was. His obsession with Micah started long before I arrived and has since festered into something seemingly more sinister.
“How much longer?” Ezra continues, grunting and carrying me like a brute.
“The airplane is close. Please shut up, or you’ll wake her.” A fresh wave of nausea overwhelms me at Nigel’s voice and the thought of where he’s taking me.
However, the hint of panic in his voice makes me smile. It’s nothing like the mocking laughter that echoed around my head all winter. He’s human, just like me. He can die as easily as I can.
The airplane is an obvious place for Micah to search for me—if he comes for me at all. If he’s still alive, he would have seen the evidence of my fleeing by now. He will meticulously inspect every inch of the cabin, diligently searching for any clue of other people’s presence, but all he will find is my blood and sweat. He will believe I left him because he won’t have any proof otherwise.
Suddenly, Ezra heaves me to the ground, and I find myself face-first in the snow. I can’t help but moan as I land on my hand.
Fuck.
“I’m not taking one more step until you tell me where we’re going, man,” Ezra barks. “It’s getting dark, and I don’t want to be out here at night. And we need London alive. Otherwise, she is fucking useless to us.”
I whip my eyes open and glare at him for treating me like a rag doll. No point in pretending I’m asleep anymore.
Nigel’s already grinning at me like the serpent he is. “Good morning, sunshine. Did you have a good sleep?”
I quirk my lips upward, mimicking his smug smile. Nigel thinks Micah is the one he should worry about, but I’m actually the one he should fear. I’m stronger than he realizes. That’s how I survived this far, how I got out of Micah’s ties, and truly, how I survived Micah at all, as he has clearly begun his descent into insanity.
Just as I have.
“When he finds out you’ve taken me, Micah’s going to kill you, Nigel. Then you can join your sister in hell. ”
To my surprise, Ezra laughs, and Nigel glares at him, only confirming my assumption that the two of them are far from chummy. I turn my eyes to Ezra. “He’s going to kill you, too, Ezra.”
Ezra merely snarls, and Nigel lets out that dark laugh of his. “Oh, London, I’ve missed you so, so much. How was your little honeymoon with Micah? I’m sure you constantly thought about Maison and really mourned him. I did you a favor by killing him, didn’t I? He isn’t in your way anymore. Now you can find true happiness.”
The sound that comes out of me is feral. Hearing Maison’s name from his mouth guts me.
He clicks his tongue. “And no, London. He’s not going to kill me, because he’s not going to find me or come looking for you at all. My guess is that he’s… distracted.”
Distracted? Not dead.
Ezra curls his lip but says nothing, and I get a punch to the gut when the realization of what he means hits me. Micah’s distraction, I bet, is in the form of a five-foot-seven blonde bitch, who is suspiciously missing from this expedition. I can see from the look on Ezra’s face that he’s none too happy about it, either. But he says nothing, and the fact that he’s allowing it means Nigel really is the one in charge.
I sit up on the snowbank and lean back on my good arm. I take a good look at them now. Haggard would be an understatement to describe their appearance. Stringy is more like it. Both have dirty, blond hair that looks more like straw.
Barely human.
Vile, hideous, and evil.
Winter obviously wasn’t as good to them as it was to Micah and me. Each has black patches on their face from obvious frostbite, and it puts a smile on my face. Even if they were to torture me, break all my fingers, or cut off any part of my body and kill me slowly, I would still die happy after seeing the amount of damage on their faces caused by winter. How cold they must have been while I spent my winter making love and falling deeper than I thought was possible in a warm, inviting home .
However, right now, I doubt I’m much better. I pull my hand to my mouth and laugh. But Nigel’s dead eyes make me pause, and the hairs prickle on my skin.
He looks at me, and his eyes reflect the shadows in his soul.
A tremor courses through me as I avert my gaze, unable to stomach him for one more moment.
Ezra speaks first, breaking the deathly silence. “What’s so funny?”
I push myself to my feet and wipe the mud off my ass, keeping my gaze down until the last possible second. I finally peer up at him, avoiding Nigel’s death glare, wondering if Ezra really knows the kind of monster he’s aligned himself with. “You believing you’re going to win over Micah is comical to me.”
“Stop talking, or I’ll gag you,” Ezra spits.
A smile hits my lips at how seasoned I’ve become at being gagged and tortured. His threats don’t scare me, and I shall embrace death if it comes to that.
Ezra reaches to pick me up, but I slap his hands away. “Save your energy since I’m so heavy for you to carry,” I snap at him. “I can walk by myself.” Ezra hesitates and twists toward Nigel as if needing permission. I merely roll my eyes and stomp ahead before he can stop me. It wasn’t that long ago when Ezra was one of our esteemed leaders on this island, and his deference to Nigel now is unsettling. “I won’t run away. I promise.” The words float over my shoulder. As if I have enough strength to run away from them, as if my body isn’t giving out. I can sense the heat in my hand spreading to my wrist. I have a headache, and the chills of a fever are starting to spread over every limb and muscle of my body.
Ezra forges ahead, and I raise my brows at him as we make eye contact, his face unreadable. Nigel strategically positions himself at my back, and Ezra visibly exhales, grateful to be free from the weight of carrying me. I follow Ezra through the wet snow and into the darkening night. We walk for at least an hour, away from the safety of the thick trees. We continue past the death holes with melted patches of snow, rock gleaming underneath it, and toward the one place on this island that truly makes me squirm.
The place where thirty-two of our fallen classmates were put to rest above ground and where their corpses are still frozen in time. The place that started it all.
Every one of those tortured souls still haunts these charred trees—it’s in my bones, in the fibers of the air. Sometimes, I can still hear them scream, and it chills my soul.
Breathing in this place is difficult.
We arrive at the airplane site right as the darkest part of the night descends upon us. Hopefully, this is the first place Micah will look when he finds me missing. Unless he’s dead already. Because that is the only reason I will accept for him not coming back when he said he would.
Distracted or otherwise.
As we approach the break in the trees where the plane’s wings seem to have been swallowed by branches and debris, the eerie whispers of my classmates who didn’t survive start to fill the site. The pungent smell of acid fills the air, a haunting reminder of the nearby corpses that have yet to be cleared away.
The whispers are so clear that I wonder if the others hear it, too. The sound binds my feet to the ground and has me searching the woods to keep the corpses in my line of sight as if to convince myself I’m not imagining it.
Nigel kicks me forward. “What on earth are you staring at? Keep moving. Micah’s not going to save you right now, London. He isn’t hiding in those woods, I assure you.”
I groan as I stumble toward the plane, and Ezra turns around to see what the commotion is about.
Perhaps it’s because my condition is worsening by the second, but I’m only moving right now out of pure desperation and with the hope that I can rest my head on a seat when we get there—if Nigel even allows me that level of comfort. I’m not so sure what their endgame is with me.
Ezra opens the back door first, and Nigel nudges me inside. I immediately crawl to my regular spot and curl up in the seat, leaning my head down, hoping they are just as tired as I am and will leave me alone .
That seems to be the case as Ezra takes a seat nearby, one that wasn’t destroyed in the fire or torn apart by the crash but across from where I sit so he can watch me.
Nigel, however, hovers over me as some of his argyle shirt pokes out from under his hoodie. His eyes look tired and tight, and they flicker as he tilts his head. “How much food do you and Micah have left?”
My eyes narrow into slits. “I’m not telling you that.” Food. Of course, that’s what this is about; they probably don’t have much left. They found me, another food source for them.
A new lifeline.
“Oh, you will tell us, London. Eventually, you will tell me everything I want to know. You might feel like, somehow, you’re in control of this situation, but you’re not. You’re ours now, sweetheart . So if you want to eat, you need to tell us where you’ve been hiding and where your food is.”
I fold my arms, refusing to engage. A simmering pit of fire is steadily forming in my stomach, spreading over my skin. I’m always hungry; I can’t manage the hunger the way Micah can.
It makes me deranged.
Nigel’s barely hanging on by a thread. I can tell by his eyes and the subtle dragging of his feet. He barely survived winter; I’m surprised he even survived himself.
To my extreme relief, he turns and finds a place to settle in for the night. “Don’t think about running away while I’m asleep because I will follow you and kill you,” he says flippantly.
I blow out a breath when he stumbles to the front of the plane to take a cushy seat. Even he’s too tired to torment me right now, and Ezra’s already snoring somewhere beside me.
It’s only a matter of time before Nigel does decide to hurt me, though, and by then, I truly might be fucked.
Two sunsets have now passed since Micah left me, and I’m numb about it.
“You’ll be fine, sweetheart. I’ll only be gone for a few hours. I’ll be back before dusk. Try to sleep.”
Liar.
I close my eyes as Nigel and Ezra drift off into whatever bodily state they consider sleep, but unsurprisingly, it eludes me. I think of chestnut eyes as I attempt to get comfortable and lay my head on the window. I’m just not sure whose eyes they are anymore.
Maybe both of them.
Perhaps they are the same to me now.
I haven’t slept a wink since Micah left me, other than when the ghost of Maison was with me.
And I am not fine.
The darkness outside creeps into my soul, blurring the edges of my heart. Pain and hunger consume my brain, leaving little room for anything else. The chill in the air makes my bones shiver, specifically my teeth as they slam into each other.
“Shut. Up,” Ezra gripes from the middle of the plane, but it’s not like I can do anything to stop it. I press my lips together and try to focus on my breath as it circles in the air in front of me. The last thing I want to do is agitate these two more than I already have.
My mere existence seems to accomplish that just fine.
He can’t see it, but I flip Ezra the bird, and the gesture is immensely satisfying.
I shift and jerk, the side of the seat digging into my back, before I finally lie down as restfully as I can, focusing on the pleasant memories I had in this spot. Tonight, I will dream about Maison, and only Maison. It was his hands holding me when this plane crashed, his hands that have never hurt me. And it’s his memory I will cherish from the horrors that occurred that night. When I first flirted with him and started falling for him… The day this all started.
Maison, Maison, Maison.
The memory instantly warms me while thinking of Micah endlessly hurts. What is he doing right now? Who is he with? Why is he not with me? I think of the mediocre fuck that is Naomi Wilson and what lengths she would go to get Micah back. The thought cripples me more than it should. Nigel knows how to get under my skin, planting that seed of doubt, even if it’s not true. However, I can’t deny the fact that Naomi’s not here.
Nope. Not thinking about Micah.
After a few minutes of snores and grunts from across the damaged plane, the cabin grows quiet. I peer outside the window for the rest of the night, staring at the outline of half-burnt trees, which seem to glow from the reflection of the melting snow and moonlight. A hint of smoke teases the air, and my nostrils twitch.
Why is there smoke?
I spend the next hours counting every pounding heartbeat, every throb in my hand, every second that ticks by, finding gratitude in the stillness of the moment and the fact that I get to live one more night.
Finally, I drift into a restless sleep plagued by nightmares. It’s always the same circular thoughts of severed hands, chopped fingers, blood, and guts. Images of Micah fucking blonde girls, then making me cut off my own hand.
My eyes shoot open, and my heart rate bolts.
Laughter.
A dark chill overcomes me as the shadows swallow me whole. Because the person laughing at me is sleeping a mere ten feet away in the front of the plane, which gives a good sense of my current mental state. Only it’s not him laughing…
It’s me, and the laughter is coming from the darkest parts of me.
My eyes are wide open, but my body is frozen as I listen to the soft snores of the others. And I sit here going crazy, just… laughing as if this were a carnival .
I snap out of it, my eyes focused on a bloodstain on the ground beside me as a hint of morning light trickles inside. The person who caused that pool of blood also laughed at me at school before his body bled out days later in the crash.
“What’s so fucking funny, London?” Ezra grumbles from a few feet away. He is not happy, which makes me laugh even more. It’s the morning now anyway, and I’m not sure what’s so funny. Truly, I don’t.
A heavy boot hits my shin, and a stalky shadow looms over me.
“Fuck, Nigel,” I cry out as pain shoots up to my knee. I curl back from him and then glare. “What did I ever do to you?” Nothing, is the answer.
His deviant smirk indicates he’s plenty rested now, ready to torture me.
He tilts his head. “Are you ready to tell me where you and Micah are staying, or am I going to have to bleed the answers out of you?”
I can’t help but grimace and violently shake my head, his words causing my entire body to tremble. “I don’t know, I really don’t.” It’s true, I think. I’m not certain I would be able to find that place again, even if I wanted to. Micah had made sure of that.
He reaches down and pulls me up by my hair with one hand and grabs my bandaged fingers with the other. I yelp out, pain shooting up my arm. “Want to try again? Or should I pull your fingers off one at a time?”
I suppress the bile that builds in my throat, the pain blurring the lines of my vision, and choke on the acidic smell radiating from him.
It smells like he’s decaying…
“North,” I whimper, fighting the dusty tears in my eyes from the dirt layered on my face. I don’t want to give him the satisfaction of hearing me scream. “It’s close to where you found me. Maybe another twenty minutes… North. It’s a cabin.”
He looks at Ezra, then back at me, and I wince when his eyes draw to my hand again. He merely smiles, flashing his teeth. “You better not be lying. ”
I pull my hand away from him and whatever wretched thought he just had. “I’m not lying,” I say through gritted teeth. “Say hi to Micah for me.” I laugh again because, apparently, it’s the only way I can express my emotions at the moment.
He kicks me again—hard this time—in my side. Those dead eyes of his peer down at me as my head slams into the wall from the force of the blow. “You’re a funny girl, London. My sister was funny, too… It must be what he sees in you.”
The wind knocks out of me, and I manage to swallow, not daring to laugh again, keeping my gaze on the window. “It’s near a stream,” I finally say. “Find the stream and head north.”
I hope it’s enough to appease him, and he’ll leave. At least, if I give him the location, maybe I won’t have to spend the day with him.
He pauses and runs his hand along his chin as if contemplating his course of action, then looks at Ezra, who’s kept to the shadows with zero involvement. “Keep her here until I get back, and I will give you half of what I find. Watch her like a hawk and don’t trust a goddamn word that comes out of her filthy mouth.”
Jesus.
Food. This is all about food. I put the pieces together… They don’t fucking have any.
My eyes whip to Ezra as Nigel slips out through the airplane door, and I fall back into my seat.
Tense.
Nigel makes me incredibly skittish, seeing how far he’s gone now and what this island has done to him , specifically. What I think he’s capable of… I don’t understand how anyone could be near him, especially Ezra, who was Maison’s best friend.
Ezra’s beady eyes haven’t left mine since Nigel kicked me, his angry gaze boring into me and his straw hair hanging in front of his eyes. All sorts of thoughts are swirling around his head, all centered on me.
Ezra, Ezra, Ezra .
He doesn’t scare me like he should—not the same way Nigel does. I stare back at him, unblinking, and only when Nigel’s a comfortable distance and the tension melts from my shoulders do I finally say, “You ate all your food?”
“We were hungry,” Ezra retorts, keeping his heavy stare. No wonder Naomi left, if that is indeed what happened. That food should have lasted longer; they certainly had enough of it.
He breaks the stare first, sitting in the seat across from me, placing his elbows on his knees and running his hands through his hair. “You’re not going to do anything stupid like run away, are you?”
I shake my head and blink. “No.”
He’s stressed, the tension on his face pouring out of him like he’s trying to find his words. Almost as if I make him nervous, which is strange considering I’ve spent countless hours on this island with him and we’ve barely interacted. In fact, I think this is the first conversation we’ve ever had. He always speaks around me, over me, but never directly to me. Even back when we were all trying to survive together, we hardly interacted. It was like I was invisible to him, and he was supposedly Maison’s best friend.
And Micah’s enemy.
I cock a brow. “So, you’re taking orders from Nigel now? He’s fucked up, Ezra. You must see that.”
He scoffs and waves his hand. “Anyone who’s still alive on this island right now is fucked up.” He lays his head back against the seat and closes his eyes. “Now, can you please shut up? I’m not in the mood to talk.”
I press my lips together but ignore his request, acknowledging he looks… defeated. “Where’s Naomi, Ezra? Why isn’t she here?”
He lifts his head only momentarily, but I don’t miss the flash in his eyes at the mention of his girlfriend. He doesn’t answer me, just flexes his jaw, giving off the masculine alpha energy I’ve gotten used to receiving since being here.
I don’t relent, even though sitting in silence sounds enticing, especially since my energy has depleted so much. Not to mention, my tongue is dry, and it’s hard to swallow since they’ve given me no water since capturing me .
“So, are you going to kill me, then?”
Because I plan on killing you if you side with Nigel.
His eyebrows twitch, and he scowls. “Only if you keep talking,” he gripes. Everyone from New Ocean is always so broody and miserable.
I sigh and lean back but keep my eyes on him. It bugs him—the way I look at him, my eyes piercing into him. I can tell by the way he shifts and tugs at his collar, by the sweat beading on his forehead.
My eyes draw down to his four missing fingers and his thumb. I stare at his nubs in complete fascination , remembering Micah was the one who had caused it.
I never inspected Thomas’s wrist and how it ended up looking. For the few days I was at their camp after Maison died, Thomas kept it well-hidden and spent most of that time in bed. I haven’t seen him since.
Ezra wipes the beads of sweat with his thumb as they drip down the bridge of his nose. He’s frightened of me—or of Micah. Probably of Micah. Either that, or guilt is eating at him for the role he had in his best friend’s death and seeing me now is bringing out those emotions.
“Quit staring at me,” he says without lifting his head.
I pause for a moment before responding, “I’m thirsty.”
He huffs, but to my surprise, he rises and heads to the front of the airplane. When he returns, he hands me a bottle of water, keeping his face void of emotion. “Here you go. Now, shut up.”
I grab the bottle with my good hand and guzzle it all down as if I were a camel in the desert. The liquid rushes down my throat. He watches me for a moment as I toss the bottle to the side before he takes his place in a seat one row up so I can’t stare at him anymore.
I shift uncomfortably, now dealing with a very full bladder. I sigh and try to get in a position where my bladder is not burning.
He must sense my discomfort. “What’s your problem now?”
“I have to pee.”
A pause, and then he says, “Jesus Christ, you’re worse than Naomi. ”
I can’t help but laugh at that. I stop to think for a second about what it’s like for those two behind closed doors, what their pillow talk is like. I never cared to observe their relationship outside of Naomi treating him like shit.
I let out a sigh. I am not above begging. “Please, Ezra. Otherwise, I’ll pee in here, and then you will have to smell it and listen to me whine.”
He lets out a loud, dramatic sigh. “Fine, but I have to watch you. If you run off, I’m fucked.”
Why would he be fucked?
I slide over two seats and face him, placing my legs on the floor of the plane. “Fine. Watch.”
I rise to step outside and hear him following a few feet behind me. I ignore him and revel in the sun shining and how much warmer it is now that it’s springtime. The sun is warming the land day by day, melting all the snow and revealing all that lies under it after months of frost. Today is particularly warm, and the sky is clear, the sun shining bright. I try to enjoy the small, pleasant moments I am afforded, so I bask in the warmth of it. I’ve long lost track of the days since Maison died and Micah took me away, but it seems like spring has finally arrived and cemented itself, and the change in the landscape proves it.
I take a few steps and relieve myself. When I peek over at Ezra, I’m happy to see he isn’t looking. His back is to me, giving me the privacy I deserve.
Once I’m done, I pull up my sweats and take a deep breath. No part of me wants to go back on that plane right now. He senses my need to stay out here for a second and sits on the plane’s stairs as I gaze out at the tundra and the wilderness beyond.
For a few minutes, both of us seem to lose ourselves in it, but eventually, he coughs. “Let’s go back inside, London. Time’s up.”
I turn to face him, and for the first time, he isn’t looking at me with complete disdain. In fact, he just looks fucking tired. And hungry…
He jerks his head toward the door, his patience limited.
I need to get inside Ezra’s head. He’s the one person on this island I’ve never really understood, and right now, he could be the key to getting out of this mess. There must be some substance under there; he can’t be as stupid as he looks. Naomi must get a much softer side of him—the same way I get a softer side of Micah… sometimes.
Like I did with Micah, I have to pull it out of him.
I peer into the woods once more, then follow him into the airplane and back to my spot. Once I’m comfortable enough and he’s settled back in his row, I finally dare to ask him the same question I dared to ask Micah once. “Ezra, why do you hate me? What did I ever do to you?”
He doesn’t even pause to think about it. “Because Naomi hates you. It was just easier for me to hate you, too.”
Solid reasoning, I suppose.
So where is Naomi, then?
I pause and swallow hard. “They’re together right now.” Not a question, so the real question is, why is Ezra okay with it?
“Probably,” he answers. “I wouldn’t put it past them.” My stomach stirs at his clear admission. The way he says it, though… It’s as if they can’t stay away from each other, and he knows it.
He must not be in a good headspace about it.
“And you’re okay with them being together?” I say over the seat since I can’t look into his eyes right now.
“Stop trying to get fucking answers out of me, London.”
Jesus.
Is his desire for revenge on Micah truly stronger than his love for Naomi? Is that what this is about? Or is it about food? Only hunger drives anyone anymore.
“Whatever you’re planning to do, it’s not going to work. Micah’s too smart. He will see right through it.”
Silence.
I don’t care what he says; this is my moment, and I have to seize it. I just saw a crack in his facade, and now I need to wedge it open. It could mean life or death for me.
“You could let me go,” I tell him. “Or we could go find them together and end this feud today, no questions asked. I want to be with Micah, and you want to be with Naomi. You and I shouldn’t be together right now.” I sound desperate. “We can offer a truce… I’ll vouch for you, Ezra.”
I mean what I say, even though he certainly played a role in everything that happened. The question is, can I forgive him? And can Ezra forgive Micah for chopping off his fingers? Nigel plays off Ezra’s emotions, which is no doubt what he’s using to control him—to manipulate him.
I need to remind Ezra what his life could be like if he just let go of his hate. He doesn’t respond, but I will take his silence as a sign that he is contemplating what I said.
“I saw that it wasn’t you who killed Maison, Ezra. You did nothing wrong. I don’t blame you for Maison’s death. We were all there; we saw Nigel kill him in cold blood.”
“Don’t fucking talk about Maison,” he blurts out. “You knew him for a month, and you think because you were fucking him that, somehow, his death hurts you more than it hurts me? He was my best friend for fifteen years, London. So shut the fuck up about Maison. You cheated on him the first chance you got, and with his brother, no less. You don’t deserve to breathe the same air as me.”
Tears sting my eyes at the cruelty of his words… at how little Ezra regards me and what I shared with Maison. It was real, and he was my first love. I shouldn’t have to explain that, but I seem to have to continuously defend my feelings for Maison and how his death tore me to pieces.
I’ve had the same conversation with Micah, over and over, until it was just easier to suppress my feelings to the deepest parts of me. Well, I refuse to do it anymore.
Maison deserves better.
I let out an uncontrollable sob. I hate that I let a guy like Ezra get to me.
Wiping the tears from my face, I straighten, my words coming out sharp. “I understand it’s hard for you to comprehend what I went through with the two of them, but I loved Maison with my whole heart. I’m not the one betraying him right now by siding with his killer.” I pause for a moment, my voice catching. “But that is exactly what you and Naomi are doing.”
More silence .
No aggressive retort or snarky comeback. And even if he did, I’m done talking… Ezra wins. We can sit in utter silence for all I care, but I hope the truth of my words rips into him and slices him from the inside out.
My stomach grumbles. The hunger pains have returned after weeks of not having them because Micah kept me fed. I don’t bother asking Ezra for food because I know what his answer will be.
He doesn’t fucking have any.
So I sit as quietly as I can, trying not to let the pain and hurt overwhelm me.
Fuck Ezra Schwartz.