Tears dotted the page, smearing the ink. I swiped my arm over my face and twisted away, unable to breathe all of a sudden.
Tossing the notebook on my bed, I turned and fled my room, leaving it all behind. I put the note on the kitchen table, in plain sight. Then I grabbed several bottles of alcohol from the alcohol cabinet and stuffed them into my bag. The glass bottles clinked together.
The sound was inviting. I wanted nothing more than to get utterly trashed and then just…walk into traffic or something. I wasn’t sure yet, how I would do it, but I didn’t plan to be alive tomorrow morning.
Fuck this cruel world.
Taking one last look around Jem’s place, I swallowed the emotions knotting tight in my throat, placed my keys on the goodbye letter, and escaped out into the cold.
The bitter February air bit at my tear-stained cheeks as I headed out of town. I wasn’t sure where I was going—just away, out of here, away from the noise and everyone and everything.
My shoes crunched over packed ice and snow. My breaths came in jerky, uneven bursts as I tried to calm my rioting heartbeat, but River’s voice was on repeat in my head, his words like a whip, each one more painful than the last.
As snow fell heavily all around me, I thought about the old water tower I visited sometimes, where I sat and thought about life and wrote my stories in solitude. A fall from that height would surely be deadly. I could just end it all and be done.
No more River. No more babies. No more Sky DuPree.
Tears slipped down my cheeks, my heart clenching. My inner-wolf whimpered and tried to comfort me, but I shoved him away—then changed my mind and yanked his fur over my skin,shifting from man to wolf as swiftly as I could in my drunken state.
Dizzy and ungrounded, I pinned my ears and ran through the woods until the only sound I could hear was thethump-whooshof my pulse and my harsh, panting breaths.
When I reached the slope and the clearing where the wooden water tower sat, I shifted back. I stumbled towards it. It was old and rickety, having long-since been abandoned for a nicer, newer model.
Just like me.
Sobbing openly now, I climbed the rungs of the ladder until my shoes hit the wooden planks up top. I let my bag drop to the floor, the bottles of booze clinking together as it landed with athump.
My heart pounding, fear a thorny vine in my chest wrapping around it, I looked out over the railing to the woods beyond…and the cold, hard ground directly below.
My throat knotted.
Soon.
Soon, I wouldn’t be anyone’s problem anymore…
2
FLETCHER
Current Day
6:43 PM
Snowflakes glowed in my headlights,flashing past the windows in a white blur. I gripped the steering wheel and kept my foot steady on the gas, but my mind focused on Sky. Fear lapped at my heart at the thought of the young Omega, alone and drunk and afraid of dying, but for some reason, feeling like he deserved to.
Do you think death hurts?I could hear the misspelled text, like a whisper in my head. Frightened. Cornered.
My chest tightened.Oh, sweetheart… Please, just wait for me.
I drove through the snow, my tires slipping on the slick pavement. I knew I was going too fast, but fear was the driving force behind my actions. It kept my foot on the pedal; it kept my eyes on the road. Fear propelled me forward. I was afraid that I wouldn’t make it in time. Scared that I’d come upon Sky’s bloody, broken body. Terrified that I’d be too late.
My thoughts were so tangled that I didn’t see the stoplight change from yellow to red until it was too late.
“Shit!” I hissed. Mistake number one was slamming on the brakes. My heart lurched into my throat as my car veered sideways and slid right through the intersection.
HONKKKK!
Oh god! Headlights flashed across my dash and I flinched back, braced for impact—but it never came. Somehow, miraculously, I’d narrowly avoided being plowed into by a truck and was safely on the other side of the road.
