They’d won.
She’s ruined me.
Destroyed me.
I glared at the car, willing Nila to look up. But she didn’t. Her silhouette, staring resolutely ahead, was obscured by tinted windows.
She’d obeyed me and left the dining room.
She didn’t look back.
Now, I would’ve given anything for her to look back. To change her mind.
A terrible churning began inside.
Everything that I’d swallowed and kept deep, deep down flew to the surface. It grew and grew stronger, harder, faster.
My fingers dug like swords into the soft wood.
Even though I wanted to kill the police with my bare hands, I managed to stay in my wing as the engines of the three cars rumbled into gear. They pulled away from the house. The noise of their tyres on gravel didn’t reach my window, but I had no trouble conjuring the sound.
It sounded like glass being crushed beneath grinding stone. It sounded exactly like what was happening inside me: every organ shattering into hell.
I held it together just long enough for the convoy to disappear over the ridge, slithering like a poisonous snake, taking what was mine.
Come back.
Never come back.
I should’ve known this would happen.
I was always destined to this fate.
It was inevitable.
In a way, I was grateful to Vaughn. He’d rescued her when I didn’t have the fucking balls. He’d taken back his sister because he loved her enough to fight for her. She was better off with him, away from me and my fucked-up family.
The last of the convoy disappeared.
With a bone-deep sigh, I gave up. I let the glass inside me splinter and detonate. I permitted myself to do what I could never do. I let down my walls. My many, many walls.
I lost myself.
Bending in half, I rested my forehead on my knuckles as I suffered the worst unravelling I’d ever lived through.
See, Nila.
This is what I meant when I asked you to see me.
She thought she lived in an intense world? It was nothing compared to what I endured. Nothing compared to the condition I’d been cursed to bear.
Grief, terror, and guilt howled and roared with utmost ferocity.
I became hollow, empty—carved out by emotions. It was all too much. All I wanted to do was…fade. Fade away from biting words and gnawing consequences.
“Jethro.”
Shit.