My decision was made long before I reached the door.
I say it because I need to for my own peace of mind. Not because he wasn’t aware. “This was a mistake,allof this.”
Something flickers in his gaze, but I shove it down. Empathy no longer my problem.Especially not for the Iceman.
…Or any of them. Screw everyone.
I was tired of secrets. I deserved answers… and I knew the first place I was going to look to get them. The blinders were gone, and all bets were off.
I was done with the past, but it didn’t seem to be done with me. Answers would come, I just had to go find them.
Finding me, on the other hand, good luck hellhounds.
fifty-five
Cole
Myheadpounds,theshuffling around my room pulsates my throbbing temple. Whoever it was didn’t care that they were giving me a migraine.
My liver may be full, but my heart wasn’t. Hadn’t been since the moment she walked out of my room.
Rory’s face, the emptiness I saw, killed me. What had I done?
I don’t bother opening my eyes. My pulse had slowed to almost a severe rate but I was still breathing, so what was the point.
Nothing.That’s the correct answer.
Not after you witness destroying someone from the inside out. Her whole life based on a lie I helped create. I ruined her and now I was doing the same to myself. One bottle at a time.
My hair was yanked. A curse following as my head raises before being dropped back down with carelessness. I groan into my pillow, accepting it.
The nausea adding to my misery. I had no meaning. I’d already been broken up with.
“Where is she?”
That was Finn. His voice a hard thing to miss when it was all but screaming at you.
“God, this place smells like a bar,” Eli adds.
I open my eyes and instantly regret it. Light blinding me as it draws in from the curtains someone had pulled open. The brightness making my head swell like a helium balloon. Slowly inflating as the pressure mounts, building.
“Where’s my sister?”
Hell, if I know.I wanted to say but my tongue felt too thick and heavy.
My whole life I’d made it my mission to shut these types of things out. Feelings, emotions, all of them a waste. After my mother died it became like flipping a switch. But this, what happened prior—shit, how long has it been?
The sun was out so it had to at least be morning, right?
Who cared? In the end, it didn’t help. None of it.
The switch never flipped back. This bone-deep ache I was feeling never shutting down. Turning off. I couldn’t even pinpoint an exact starting or stop point. I hurt all over, everywhere.
I felt it all. The pain excruciating.
I had ruined her. What she didn’t know was every last piece of me was breaking right along with her.
“He asked you a question, fucker,” Eli fumes, slapping me across the cheek when my eyes start to glaze over.