“I’m sorry about?—”
I hold my hand up, silencing his bullshit apology. “I don’t want to hear it. We have a history and that’s it. When this is finished, we won’t speak again. We will never share bonfires on the beach or hang out. Our friendship ended over a year ago.”
Pain shines in his eyes. “You’ve changed.”
“A lot has changedme.”
“Once we get back, I won’t be there, Tor. You will be on your own.”
“Fine by me.”
“He’ll come for you. He hasn’t stopped looking for you.”
A shiver works its way down my spine but I keep the fear from showing on my face. I may be terrified of what he is capable of, but I’m also thirsty for vengeance. My heart may be confused and torn in half over Xaden Devlin but my mind isn’t.
“Good. I want him to find me,” I sneer. What Kellan doesn’t know is that I already have a plan of my own formed. This war started over mine and Xaden’s fathers wanting to take over Hollow Hills. I plan to make a deal with the Denver Kings and beat Xaden and my father at their own game.
CHAPTER ONE
TOREN
To teach is to learn. To learn is to excel. To excel is to thrive. To thrive is to live.
Grief isn’t just an emotion—it’s an unraveling, a space where something once lived and thrived but is now gone. It carves through you, leaving a hollow ache where love once lived.
In the beginning the grief feels unbearable, it feels like an open wound that will never close. The horrifying silence where laughter once lived. Over time, the raw edges of that emotion begin to mend. The pain will soften, but the imprint of their loss will never lessen. It’s a quiet reminder of what once was.
You never truly move on, you just learn to cope, the love you once shared doesn’t disappear, it transforms. It lingers in the echoes of laughter, in the warm embrace of old memories, in the silent moments where you still reach for what is no longer there.
Grief isn’t a burden that should be hidden. It’s not a weakness, it’s the most honest proof that love existed. That something beautiful once touched your life. Grieving the loss of a ghost is both hard and mind-altering. I never knew Emery Devlin while she was alive, I allowed my subconscious to conjure her ghost after seeing her the night of the crash.
She was my strength when I was weak. She saw the best there was in me and lifted me up, offered me solace in a place where none was to be had. Emery was my savior and my rock. Without her I wouldn’t have survived a year in Walter House—the prison I was forced to live in by my own father.
That place holds no warmth, the thought of having to stay there again with the ghost of her laughter taunting me as I walked through the halls, and the memories of the time we shared there plaguing me, haunting me every single day for two months.
I was forced to see myself in a new light after the memories finally returned and what I had become disgusted me. I allowed myself to be used as a pawn in a game I didn’t even know existed. I had no idea what the rules were, only that my family didn’t want me but the devil did.
My fury is like a poison that flows through my veins, it pumps through me with every beat of my heart. It’s a current that continuously flows without restraint, always there and forever present. Just waiting in the shadows for the right time to be unleashed so it can wreak havoc on those who fucking wronged me.
Lies were spun like a web, woven so intricately that you couldn’t tell it was all fiction until the last moment. I was blind to it all, forced into a cocoon they made for me. I saw the world through rose colored glasses, thought the best of everyone and saw the good in everything.
Rookie error.
I now know where I stand and it’s on my own. The only person I can rely on and trust is myself. I learned a hard lesson,believe half of what you hear and all of what you see—he taught me that. I’m hardened from the scars of my past and won’t trust easily or ever again. Every person I have loved has betrayed me. I was treated like I was dispensable.
I was a fool and stupid. I had no idea the nightmares that lurked in the background, the monsters I lived with and shared DNA with. Xaden Devlin owns his darkness and sinful nature, but not my brother or father. They hide behind their wealth and mask their evil nature with expensive clothes and designer cars.
My past haunts me every damn day. When I close my eyes, I see her face and feel the whisper of her touch against my skin. Her gray eyes shine so brightly in my dreams, her angelic face is like a still shot forever frozen in time, never able to age. Her eyes are always what draws me in, except they aren’t just her eyes or her face I see, it’shis.
He is the god of darkness. The shadows are his to command, shielding him from the light because they know he was born from the depths of hell. He parades around like he is an enigma, a god amongst men. His wrath is like a storm, ever present and coiled inside him just waiting for its time to unleash havoc on those whom he loathes and wants to ruin.
I watched him murder his own father in front of me. The threats he made about taking my life and how he wanted to torture me didn’t seem so redundant in that moment. I saw the truth in his eyes. He craves the kill, the bloodlust that courses through his veins. He is a puppet to his carnal urges. Unlike most people, who fight against the darkness and devil inside themselves, he embraces it, embodies it and allows it to control him.
I knew that night after witnessing what I did that Xaden would kill me. He would rob me of life and any chance I had of experiencing a future as payback for his sister dying. I knew he lost his best friends that night because he told me, but I had no idea there was a fourth person who lost their life that horrible night until my memories came back.
The pendant I wore around my neck was all I had to keep me centered and now that I don’t have it, I feel lost. I keep repeatingthat stupid phrase, not because I miss my brother or anything like that, but because I need the normality to keep me grounded.
To teach is to learn. To learn is to excel. To excel is to thrive. To thrive is to live.
