I hated it.
I hated it so much.
It was worse than the pain and the memories.
Worse than knowing I’d gotten Echo killed or that those fuckers had turned me into a monster. Carving me up and melting away the man that I was until all that was left behind was hate, revenge, and the monster underneath.
I had to get out of here.
I had to killthembefore the hate killedme.
The door creaked open and Belle came back in. She headed to the machine next to my bed and checked all the numbers and lines on it, making sense of the insanity that was on them. I had no idea what any of it meant, but she seemed to, and that was good enough for me.
I hadn’t realized that I was staring at her, my teeth grinding as she studied the numbers on the graph, until she looked away from it and turned to me. Her eyebrows puckered in and she sucked in her bottom lip thoughtfully before releasing it. She looked pretty today; the freshly fucked look was good on her.
“I’m guessing that wasn’t good news then,” she said, cocking her head to one side and ignoring what had happened between us the night before.
It was one of the things I liked so much about her; she didn’t dwell. I hated dwellers, replaying arguments and shit over and over in their heads. Thinking we needed a confrontation to clear the air. Nah, fuck that. We just needed to move on. What’s done is done and all that bullshit.
Well, unless I needed to kill a motherfucker, that is.
“You could say that,” I replied with a heaviness to my tone that I couldn’t control. Not angry for once, but frustrated and tired of it all. No one seemed to get it. How could they? They didn’t live with this pain—and not just the physical pain I was constantly in, because that in some ways was good; it kept my anger fueled. But the mental pain of knowing Echo was dead because of me was what was gutting me so deeply.
“Things will get better,” she insisted, her tone soothing and sympathetic. “I get that everything is awful for you right now, but I promise you, Beast, it won’t always be like this.”
“Won’t it?” I snapped.
She was unfazed by my abruptness, letting it wash over her. “No, it won’t. You’ll start to get better and—”
“I’m a monster, Belle, just fucking look at me!” I gestured to my body. “This won’t get better!”
“You’re not,” she replied, and I wasn’t sure if she was the one that was blind because she even sounded like she believed it.
“What’s wrong with you? Just admit it—look at me!”
She put her hands on her hips and pouted. “I am looking at you. And I don’t see what you see.”
I huffed out my annoyance. What was wrong with this woman?
“You want to know what I see, Beast?” she asked.
“No,” I grunted.
“I see long hair that needs a good washing.” She smiled, reaching out to touch the long hair around my shoulders. “I think it would look better tied up though.” I thought of the scars at the bottom of my neck with a shiver. “Show of that rugged neck of yours.”
I swallowed, the feel of her gentle touch on my damaged skin sending shivers down my spine.
“I see a strong, masculine man with more muscles in his left arm than I have in my whole body.” She ran her fingers over my burned arm and I watched her intently. “I see beautiful, intricate tattoos over his chest,” she said, running a fingertip over one of the most destroyed tattoos. “It’s like tribal or something.” She shrugged and then looked into my face.
My heart hammered in my chest, my pulse racing through my veins at her every word.
“I see a handsome man with a beautiful, soulful eye and a lot of pain that he’s hiding inside.” Her fingers ran down the side of my face. “I see you, Beast. There’s no point in hiding behind your anger with me. You can shout and say awful things to hide the way you’re feeling”—she sighed—“but I’m going to look after you despite all of that. Maybe even because of it. And you’re going to get better and you’re going to realize that everything is going to be okay.”
The hollow feeling in my chest turned hard, like a bullet had pierced me, as she looked into my face. There was no sympathy, no pity; there was nothing there but genuine concern in her hazel eyes.
The bandage covering my left eye was still in place, but it suddenly felt stifling to me, pressing against my skin like it was becoming a part of my body. I didn’t need to wear it anymore; I chose to because I wasn’t ready to let the world see exactly how fucked up I really was. I’d seen it once and once had been enough. But now…fuck, right now I wanted that bandage off. I wanted Belle to see me for who I was so that she could get out of her head any daydreams of being nice to me.
I was a monster and I wanted her to see the beast within.
