I rounded the corner to the classroom door.
Thwack.
My toe caught something solid. One second I was upright, the next I was tumbling onto a pair of scuffed Converse.
“Whoops. My bad,” Caiden drawled, voice dripping with disdain.
I scrambled upright, fists clenching at my sides. He looked down at me with those coal-black eyes. Cold and empty caverns where light dared not tread. “Sorry? Are you even capable of remorse?” I spat, studying the cruel smirk curving his lips.
“Not really,” he shrugged. “Doesn’t look like you mind.”
My jaw clenched so tight it ached, but I forced myself to breathe slowly. A handful of students had paused to watch; I refused to give them the triumph of my reaction.
Caiden had mastered the art of feigned innocence. He’d done it before, in fifth grade. He’d shoved me off the playground steps, leaving me with a bruised arm and no apology.
The teachers believed his smooth lies, where he deemed me as clumsy, and I hated him for it.
“Why do you have to be such a bastard?” I yelled as he pivoted to leave. Tears stung my eyes, and my voice cracked on the word “bastard,” raw and broken.
A flare of anger painted my vision in dark crimson. He paused, his back rigid, then spun around and stalked toward me.
I felt his breath, warm and tainted, brush my face. “You’ll never understand my pain, Amelia,” he hissed, eyes blazing with something like fury. “So don’t pretend to.”
My heart thundered. “You’re not the only one who hurts,” I shot back, voice steady with the weight of all the mornings I’d spent praying for strength. He didn’t answer.
He simply turned and melted into the tide of students pouring into the halls.
“I loathe you,” I whispered after him, but the words dissolved into the swirl of pre-class chatter.
When pain and hatred churn between two people, there are only two roads: you face the inferno together and try to rise above, or you run until it consumes you.
Between Caiden and me, the embers of resentment sputtered into flame.
Let the war rage, Caiden. Let it burn until one or both of us falls.
Home was meant to be my refuge, a safe harbor, yet the thin walls and simmering tempers transformed it into a pressure cooker ready to explode at any moment.
My mother drifted through rooms like a ghost, cloaked in a haze of exhaustion. Her eyes were distant, sunken behind dark, weary circles that told tales of sleepless nights.
Lillian was either hiding in her bedroom, or slouched on the couch, headphones clamped tightly over her ears to drown out reality.
Above our roof, black storm clouds seemed permanently anchored, heavy and ominous, threatening to unleash chaos at any moment.
They were at it again, and I was not surprised; it had become afamiliar refrain in my life. "I’m over eighteen, so stop trying to tell me what to do," Lillian's voice crackled with irritation.
Peering around the corner, I saw them locked in a battle of glares in the living room, expressions like daggers.
"I don’t give a fuck if you're eighteen. You still live in my house, so you will obey me," my mother's voice was a whip crack, cutting through the tension.
"That is such bullshit logic, mom! Get over yourself. You’re barely even here most of the time to claim this as your house," Lillian countered, her words dripping with contempt.
"If you do not like it, then you can just get the hell out. It was your decision to drop out of college and move back in," my mother shot back, her voice a mix of frustration and resignation.
Silence settled like a heavy fog, and I was about to turn away when a sound, unmistakable in its violence, echoed through the room.
I spun around, heart pounding, to see my mother holding her own face, her expression a mix of shock and disbelief.
Lillian’s hand hovered in the air, trembling.
