Those that were out were watching me with sorrowful expressions on their faces. A few of them even waved. I wished they wouldn’t look at me like that. If they knew what I had done, they never would have looked at me again.
They would have feared me.
They wouldn’t have accepted that I had done it out of self-preservation. That something had come over me when those men raped me, and while I couldn’t control it, I didn’t regret a moment of it.
Maybe they would hate mee and move away.
Maybe I would be alone for the rest of my life because of what I had done. My penance for fighting back.
“Pity isn’t poison,” she told me softly. “They don’t feel sorry for you, they feel sorry for what happened to you. You have to keep that in mind, no matter how hard it is.”
Pity isn’t poison, but it sure tasted like it.
I am Olivia Kingsmen, I am a writer, I am unbreakable, I am Claimed.
But was I unbreakable?“That crack they found in your soul and widened.”Azrael seemed to believe that the crack they widened had unleashed something. The same something that lived inside of him, and I didn’t see him as anything other than unbreakable. So that would mean that I had to be too. If our souls were so alike.
Everett hated Azrael.
I swallowed, the thought filling my mind as we walked into the house, Lucy running through it, sniffing, pushing open every door, checking everything. I stopped in the foyer and took it in. Everything looked so…normal. I hated it. I wanted everything to look as different as I felt. I wanted it tobedifferent. I needed it to be different.
Everett hated Azrael.
I turned for my kitchen, light flooding into the rooms, and headed straight for my cupboards.
I pulled out a glass and a wine bottle and poured myself a full glass.
“Maybe you should have…” But her words trailed off.
I took a few painful gulps, the taste flooding over my tongue, the warmth spreading through my body, my mind slowly quieting. I filled the glass up again, picked up the bottle, and headed for the living room.
I heard Evelyn release a breath of disappointment. “I’ll get dinner started,” she told me.
Emily had opened up all the curtains, slowing when she saw me walk in with a bottle in my hand. “Maybe you should have some water first.”
Water wouldn’t drown out the truth.
I quickly took in the room before my eyes fell to a bouquet of roses sitting on the coffee table.
My head was buzzing, the world already spinning a little. They weren’t red like I had wanted; they weren’t even real. She had made a whole bouquet of paper roses just for me, and they were beautiful.
25
Everett
October 13th, 2022
Istayed in the kitchen until she had fallen asleep, not long after she had finished her dinner.
She had finished the bottle. So unaware of the fact that I had been right behind her since the moment they left the warehouse. She hadn’t heard my bike. She didn’t hear me try and calm Lucy down when she got out of the car. She hadn’t heard me tell her not to drink when she gulped down that first glass.
She was completely unaware of my presence.
Evelyn joined me at the table when she was done cleaning the plates. “What’s wrong with her?” Evelyn asked, taking a seat beside me.
“I don’t know.” She was laying with her head leaning over the back of the couch, her mouth open. Evelyn didn’t put hersleeping pills in her food tonight. There were too many variables to trust that it would be safe, but the way she looked? Anyone would assume she hadn’t been so careful.
Emily placed a blanket over her and joined us, her eyes sad. “I think she realized something on the way here that made her reach for that bottle,” she told us, gripping the back of one of the chairs.
