WHEN YOU’RE INJURED, they ask you to rate your pain on a scale from one to ten. One being something as simple as a splinter, ten being a gunshot to the abdomen.
If anger was rated the same way, I would say that I live at a constant five. It’s a persistent ache just under my skin. Some days, like today, it’s more prominent, but for almost six years now, the continuous rage has been my shadow. It clings to me, following me wherever I go.
Coming home to a house full of drunk and high coeds isn’t helping. Especially after I’d told Paxton just this morning that I didn’t want anyone at the house this weekend.
My brother has his own reasons for wanting the house full of people, and that’s the only reason I didn’t send everyone packing the second I walked through the front door. Instead, I weaved through the sweaty bodies, ignoring the people shouting my name and removing the grabby hands of overzealous females from my body, and escaped through the glass sliding door at the back of the house.
The only company I have out here in this quiet solitude are the ever-present thoughts in my head and the cigarette between my fingers. It’s a habit I’ve harbored for years, and at this point, I wonder if quitting is worth the misery. I figure my body is already full of poison and darkness, I might as well breathe it into my lungs too.
My eyes are locked on the glowing orange embers, the only source of light in this dark corner of the yard. As if hypnotized by the small flame, and completely consumed by the unwanted memories swirling around in my brain, I watch it burn. The ash breaks off and falls to the stone beneath the chair I sit in. The wind carries it off, washing away any evidence it had ever fallen. If only it were that easy to wipe the slate clean. I’ve found it takes a little more effort and tedious planning.
The sliding door opens, and the sound of footsteps follows. I don’t have to look up to know who it is. Only two people are dumb enough to disturb me when I’m in this kind of headspace, and Rome had a mandatory family event tonight.
Pax sprawls into the wooden chair across from me, leg casually hanging over the arm of it. He doesn’t say anything, just sits there with the bottle of scotch dangling from his tattooed fingertips. Like always, his fingernails are coated in chipped black nail polish.
Putting the cigarette to my lips, I look at my brother through the cloud of smoke. The darkness that resides in his blue eyes is the same I see in myself when I look in the mirror. I tried so fucking hard to shield him from it all, but I failed him. It took one night for everything to fall apart around us and for the darkness to invade Pax’s soul.
And there’s no one to blame but her.
Pax blinks and his head shakes, just barely, as if he’s finally been pulled back from the haunted place he’d found himself in. Turning his head, he looks at me. “Today was her first day back, but I’m sure you already know that.”
I drop the cigarette onto the ground and stomp it out with my booted foot. “I do.”
It doesn’t matter how far away my butterfly flew; I always knew where she was. She may have thought she was out there free from me but she was always ensnared in my net. I was just waiting for the right moment to draw her back in. Five years of waiting patiently, and it’s finally time.
“She seems to be settling in okay.”
I’ll give her a few days to fall into a false sense of security and comfort. She should savor every moment of peace and rest she can get because when I get my hands on her, both will be sorely lacking from her life.
When I don’t respond to his comment, Pax sits straighter in his chair and sighs. “What are you going to do to her, Raff?”
I’m going to clip her wings and, like the end of my cigarette, I’m going to burn her until there’s nothing left but ash. Bit by bit, she’ll float away into nothingness, and I’ll finally regain what she stole from me.
“Nothing that she hasn’t earned.”
