I didn’t make it easy for people to tell me they loved me or that they even cared about me. Because I knew how much those words hurt once someone took them back. How much it shredded my soul when they betrayed their own promises. I’d run away often, sometimes just to see if my mum would care. She didn’t.
When I turned seventeen, I started to turn things around for myself, started to put my anger into productive things like woodshop class. I even had a scholarship in the States to get my teaching degree.
I wish I’d never worked on that birdhouse. I should’ve let that bitch kill me. Grief was fleeting after I left my mum on the floor of my bedroom with a nail in her head. I didn’t feel bad, and I knew she was right all along.
Something was terribly wrong with me.
It was awfully easy to hide her fate. No one cared for that evil woman, she had no one to report her missing besides me. I already had everything aligned for my departure before she tried to kill me, so it was easy to wait the few days before leaving.
Funny how your darkness seeps into the world around you. Unable to hide it for long before it spills into the things too near. Three years was enough time to bleed into my new surroundings.
A man found me in the mud, beaten and bloody after a fight with some barflies after they stole my shoes. I’d fallen into anasty spell of partaking in alcohol. It went too well with my medications. Gave me the right kind of buzz.
He sat next to me and didn’t say a word. I wiped the blood from my face and cursed at the pain that flared across my entire body. God, I fucking hated pain. I was so tired of hurting, on the inside and out.
We sat in an awkward silence long enough that it irritated me. “What do you want? I don’t have any money,” I grumbled as I forced myself to my feet, only to wince in agony and fall back to the ground.
The man observed me carefully. His eyes were the dullest I’d ever known, much like mine. “You have nothing to live for, do you? I know a drowned man when I see one,” he whispered, and it sounded like a taunt.
Rage coursed through my blood, and I gripped the collar of his shirt. “There’s nothing keeping me from killing a nosy asshole like you either. Fuck off.” I threw him back and choked on a cry as pain shot up my forearm. Blood oozed from the gash near my wrist.
I was so tired of being in misery.
I wanted it to end.
The man’s brows lifted, an empty smile spreading over his lips. “Technically, I can’t bring you in unless you’ve done something heinous.” He reached into his coat and pulled out a silenced pistol. It was slick black, almost impossible to see in the dark. DF was engraved on the handle. My brows pinched together, and I met his gaze. “Are you going to let those drunks get away with what they did to you?” His voice was silk, almost like he wasn’t insinuating for me to kill them, which he definitely was.
My eyes dipped back down to the pistol, hands trembling on my knees.
“Bring me in where?” I asked, distrust evident in my glare.
His expression relaxed. “I can’t tell you unless I decide to take you in. I’ll leave it up to you.”
I narrowed my eyes at him, taking the gun and reveling in the weight it held. “What’s your name?”
He laughed as he shoved his hands into his pockets. “Vance Belerik, but I go by Erik. You won’t find my name anywhere but in an obituary and on some gravestone.” Intrigue fluttered through me, but I gripped the pistol tighter. “Well? What are you going to do?”
It wasn’t even a question for me.
I could’ve told him about my mum and the nail I smashed into her face. I could’ve peeled back my shirt and showed him the horrid scar on my chest that I’d neglected. But I’d never had a weapon like this to hurt someone before. Never had the encouragement to make others pay for their crimes. Erik followed me as we walked back into the bar. It was almost empty, save for the four dickheads who beat the shit out of me and the bar owner who backed them.
I killed them all. It was easier than I thought it’d be. The terror in their eyes soothed something deep inside. The monster.
And I felt more alive than I ever had.
My eyes slowly open. I’m met with darkness and the kind of cold that is bone deep, sweat clinging to my skin and threatening to freeze. The scent of cigarette smoke fills my lungs. I turn my head to the side and find Lieutenant Erik perched on a rock, casually inhaling a long drag. It’s his fault I picked up the habit myself.
“What’s got you in flight mode?” he mutters as he exhales. When my eyes narrow at him, trying to figure out how he found me, he lifts a shoulder. “Adams rang me and let me know that you’re having a crisis.”That doesn’t explain why you’rehere,in the middle of nowhere.
I let my eyes linger on the treetops and try to feel the pain like I once did so vividly in my memory. It’s odd to miss pain. The lack of it makes you wonder if you’re even truly alive. If it all isn’t just some cloudy dream.
Erik tosses a fresh-lit cigarette onto my chest. I mindlessly pick it up and breathe it in.
“She said she cared about me,” I say quietly. Those words make my stomach twist. The mental image of my mum abandoning me for years just to bring me home and try to kill me will haunt me forever.
Humans are incapable of selfless love. There’s always a transaction in mind, something they want from you. This I know.Everyone in the Dark Forces knows it, so why won’t Emery conform?I grit my teeth.
Erik doesn’t look at me; he simply continues to smoke. Maybe that’s why I feel so comfortable around him. He never seems interested in what I do or how I feel. It’s easier to confess things to those kinds of people.
