I was tired of pretending to Cameryn that I was okay,avoidingher because of the choice Tyler had made all those years ago.I had to become okay with being irrelevant, unimportant, not a priority. However, as I look at Tyler now, bent over at the waist, palms pressing flush on the car bonnetin front of me,something in my gut tells me he had made an impossible choice, one with reason. And while I want to ask him why he did this to me, why he cut me off, why he fucking destroyed me, I know that right now isn’t the time.
I just told them everything.
Every detail tore out of me, even down to the way my fingernails split across the concrete when I was dragged around like a piece of meat.
I just re-lived my nightmare.
And it fucking killed me.
The only detail I left out was who saved me. I told them I didn’t know…that I was unconscious.
I don’t know what my reconnection with Tyler and Cameryn will now mean for me and Harlen, and the possibility of potentially seeing him again because they run in the same circle. However, if I know Tyler the way I think I do, he will not leave me again. He will make me a priority whether I want to be, or not.
Seeing Harlen again almost feels inevitable. Just a festering, evil omen ready for round two, and it’s a game I would easily lose.
Tyler’s body is rigid when a weighted exhale falls from his lips and the air around us thickens. His shoulders hike to his ears when his head moves in slow motion upward. Midnight eyes latch onto mine. They’re glossed over, though his face is dry. He licks his lips, then his jaw tenses as he slices his gaze away from mine and spins around.
Tyler’s fist connects with an old, peeling trunk beside the car. Cameryn and I don’t move, holding our breaths.
“Motherfuckers!” he growls, his now beat-up fist pushing blood back through the top of his dark hair as he grabs onto his head and stumbles slightly. He begins to walk away, a round ofprofanities echoing behind him as he disappears into the battle of his internal torture.
I knew this would tear him apart. I knew my truth would destroy him; it’s why I chose to harbor it all.
I’m still watching after Tyler even though I can no longer see him when the flick of a Zippo and the crackling of an inhale sounds beside me. Bringing my attention to my hand, Cameryn slips the cigarette between my fingers at my side while exhaling a cloud of smoke.
Shakily, I bring the cigarette to my lips, my hand trembling as I push it between my chattering teeth. Cameryn’s hand slips between mine, helping me, and tears roll down my face as I whimper through a jolted cry.
Cameryn’s warmth envelops me when she pulls me into her and squeezes me tighter than she ever has, and when I feel the pressure of her lips against my cheek, I fall apart again.
Rivulets of my pain leave a searing path down my face as she continues to press kiss after kiss to my soaking cheeks and temple. Her chin eventually finds a place at the top of my head, her arms winding around me as I fall into her chest in a weightless heap.
I cry so hard that it feels like I have snapped a rib, and the vengeful shards find a way to pierce right through what is left of my corroded heart.
It’s agonizing.
A painful promise.
Her breath is warm as it twirls over my scalp. “You’re so brave.”
I shiver, goosebumps littering their way down my spine.
Three words.
The very same ones I spoke to her all those years ago when we sat in the graveyard together behind Shadow Heads School of Performing Arts and she had bared her horrific demons to me.The ones that had found a home deep in her marrow, the ones she trusted me with when she barely knew me. I remember how I felt when she told me what had happened to her, the labored pain she was forced to carry…for life. I had wondered what it was like to harbor a weight like that, and now I know.
I know exactly how it feels to be left for dead.
And how much fucking fight it took to get back up.
A hand spiders over my opposite shoulder, and when I glance to my left, I catch Tyler standing at the edge of the car.
Tyler has always had a way of holding himself together. Only when it came to the people he loved, or considered his family, being hurt and done wrong by, he was out for blood.
It wasn’t thirst, it was the need to maim and destroy, and when I stare into his inky eyes, the very ones that are now two holes full of flooded tears and broken capillaries, I crawl out of Cameryn’s arms and move hastily toward him. When I get close enough, he fists the back of my neck and pulls me right into his. I burrow myself into the warmth of his chest when he lifts me off the metal, and I wrap myself around him as he holds me against him.
His heart pounds so heavily against my ear, strangled breaths clenching his lungs as I listen to him cry silently with me.
“Blaine, I’m so sor–”
