“Then tell me. Or don’t tell me.” She shakes her head and pulls the white sheet over her legs. “Either way, there’s not a single fucking thing you’ve ever done that could make me hate you more than I hate you right now. You’re a monster, a demon worse than the man who spawned me. Worse than the men you share your blood with.”
I shake my head, breathing hard through my nose. “No, stop. Stop talking.”
“Keep your head shoved up your ass, Osman. If you think I’m blind, you don’t know a damn thing. So, I’m saying it again. This?” She waves at herself, and suddenly all I can see is the Band-Aid at the juncture of her elbow. “This is all your fault.”
“What did they do to you?” I grab her arm and rip the tape off, ignoring her fight. Sure enough, a bloody, deep purple dot is right on top of her vein. “What the fuck did they inject you with?”
She snatches her arm back and rises to her knees on the bed in a pathetic attempt to equalize our height. “Your parents were right to pick your brother over you. I’d wake up every day and make thesame decision.”
My hand snaps out to wrap around her neck, and she’s on her back against the bed before she can even blink. My body trembles as I remember all the times Kiervan wore a smug grin when he took his place above me. How my parents would ask me to stay in my room on Christmas mornings so I wouldn’t see all the things he’d get. Or when people are told an Osman is coming, and the smile would fall from their face when I walk in.
Blaze’s hate has no regard for status. She argued with Kiervan at school just as fiercely as with any other kid. She never chose him over me. Never asked for his presence instead of mine.
Then she goes and moans his fucking name.
And she saysthat.
I won’t fight for someone who puts me in last place, just like everyone else does.
She wraps her fingers around my wrist, pushing it down against her throat.
I can’t feel her pulse like this, only the movement of her Adam’s apple and the vibrations of her vocal cords as she says, “Do it. Finish off what you started.Kill me.”
Blaze’s sterling-blue eyes watching me are colder than her old house during the winter months. The same fucking house I’d visit in the night just to make sure her parents hadn’t taken another layer from her.
All that, and she still prefers Kiervan?
“There’s no version of this where I won’t spend my entire life making you feel even an ounce of what I feel, so you better kill me now, Kohen,” she rasps against my hand, never once breaking eye contact. “Or are you too stupid to?”
I jump off her and run my fingers through my hair.
Fuck.
Fuck!
“I’m in this place because of you.You! Why don’t you get that? Why don’t youeverget that? I’ve told you over and over again that it’s all beenyou.For you. Because of you. Alwaysyou. I failed all my classes last year just so I wouldn’t get separated from you.”
Her jaw drops dramatically with fake shock. It looks so wrong with the gauntness of her eyes. “Wow. So you’d fuck your own life up just to make mine hell?” Blaze scowls. “You’re worse than I thought.”
“Wrong again.” I step forward to touch her again, but she jerks her head away before I can. “I did it because you’re mine in every sense of the word, Blaze. You always were, and you always will be.”
The sound of her scoffing sends my blood rushing through my body faster than I can handle. “Call Dr. Van der Merwe in again; the shit he did to me would be nothing in comparison.” A sinister smile creeps across her lips that doesn’t match her tired eyes. “Or maybe ask your brother to tell me the same thing, and I’ll suck his dick so good he’ll be addicted to me.” She laughs to herself. “Or maybe I’ll fuck your dad instead.”
She doesn’t get away fast enough to stop me from gripping the back of her neck. They aren’t getting anywhere near her, and I’ve spent over half my life making sure of it. “They’d kill you.”
Slowly,soslowly, she says with deadly quiet, “I’d rather be dead than be yours.”
Everything stops.
My heart, my lungs, my blood. It all stops as I stare at her, the words repeating in my head over and over again.
My hand releases her before the rest of me does. I hold her stareas I back out of the room, not breaking it until I slam the door behind me, then red bursts in front of my vision. She’d rather be dead than be with me. She’d rather fuck my own father than me.
Fuck her.
I’m slipping through the halls of the girls’ dormitory and into Blaze’s room without any plan or regard for what I’ll do once I arrive. I want to burn this entire school to the ground just to see a decent fucking fire. I’m starved for the slightest flicker of a flame, but there’s another soul-deep need that must be sated. Reaching into my backpack, I ignore all the snacks and drop the pair of school shoes I stole for her onto the ground next to the pile of boots and slippers.
I’ve done nothing for her?Nothing? Then what the fuck did I risk getting caught for? Why did I sort through Sarah’s room looking for shoes Blaze can wear so she can stop wearing the tattered pair she’s had for years.
