Beauty in the Ashes

“What’s wrong?” I asked in a soft voice, like one might use with a wild animal.

Caelan stopped with his back to me, he looked out the window and his narrow shoulders rose and fell heavily. Now that the crashing and banging had stopped his heavy breaths were all that I heard.

“What happened? You can tell me,” I pleaded, desperate to get him to say something to me other than to turn down my music or keep quiet.

He turned angrily at my words. His nostrils flared and his eyes were filled with fury. Something about him reminded me of a fallen angel. He was harsh and dangerous, but I knew something had to have pushed him over the edge. I wanted to find out what it was, but trust took time, and I hadn’t earned his yet.

“I can tell you? You?” He laughed under his breath but there was no humor in the sound. “You don’t fucking know me, so don’t pretend you do!”

I would not cower down to him. Taking two measured steps forward, I stopped. “No, I don’t know you, and you don’t know me. If you gave me a chance, you might see that you could trust me.”

“Trust is non-existent. It’s a lie. The people I thought I could trust,” he pounded on his chest with a fist, “where are they? They’re gone, unable to handle my ‘destructive’ path. They wanted to fix me, but I don’t need fixing, Sutton. Is that what you want to do? Do you want to fix me?”

Somehow, he’d ended up right in front of me. He was so close that our chests touched and you couldn’t have fit a piece of paper between us.

“No.”

“What?” He shook his head, seemingly taken aback by the word I’d dared to utter.

“No,” I repeated. “I don’t want to fix you,” I swallowed thickly, grasping his forearms in my hands because I suddenly felt dizzy, “I want to know you.”

He chuckled with a small smile. “Know me? I’m not the kind of guy any nice girl should want to get to know.” His eyes narrowed and his lips thinned. “I’m angry, I’m bitter, I’m broken, I’m lost. I don’t know who I am anymore. I don’t recognize the man I see in the mirror.” He clenched his teeth and looked away momentarily. I was shocked at his words, that he’d managed to open up that little bit. “I drink until I can’t remember, I get high to dull the pain, I hit things to feel something. That, Sutton, is not a good person. I know it, but I can’t stop. I don’t want to.”

“I’m not asking you to,” I breathed, my words barely above a whisper. “I want to be your friend. I want you to trust me. I’m not some fragile little butterfly that you need to worry about breaking the wings off of. Talk to me, please.”

He looked up at the ceiling, closing his eyes. There was so much pain etched into the lines of his face. I had never in all my twenty-two years of life seen someone so tormented. Something broke him. Something big. I knew it was none of my business, but I wanted to know. I wanted to gain his trust. I wanted him. I didn’t know why. It made no sense to me, but something drew me to him. Maybe this was some latent teenage desire to bag a bad boy—but it didn’t feel that way.

I believed that sometimes people were brought together for a reason, because they both needed something the other could offer.

“I need you to leave,” Caelan finally said, his eyes were distant and his voice was resolved. I could tell that he was angry at himself for what he’d said to me. I may have been living across the hall from him for over a month now, but we were still strangers, and Caelan struck me as the kind of guy that didn’t even open up to those closest to him—if there was anyone close to him, I thought back to the guy I saw in the car.

Finally, I nodded, knowing better than to say anything else.

I was almost out the door when he spoke up once more. “Keep the music down.”

“In your dreams,” I muttered, smiling at the fact that for once I’d gotten the last word.

???

Caelan

As soon as the door had clicked shut I went back to destroying things. Nothing was left untouched—not even my paintings that I cherished above all else.

I wanted to kill Kyle for what he had done—trying to shove me into rehab. I didn’t need to go to rehab. Rehab was for addicts, and I was not an addict. I could stop whenever I wanted, but that was the thing, I didn’t want to stop. The moment that I stopped would be the moment that I felt and I wasn’t going to let that happen.

He’d picked me up days ago and I’d been staying at his house.

Then this morning, instead of bringing me home, the fucker tried to get me ‘help’.

My reaction had been less than pretty. He’d ended up with a bloody lip and black eye, and the man who’d tried in vain to pry me from the vehicle possibly had a concussion from where I kicked his skull.

When Kyle saw that leaving me there would only end up with my arrest, he let it drop…as in, he didn’t dump my sorry as there. Instead he lectured me like I was a child the whole time he drove me home.

The fact that Kyle was lecturing me was laughable. In high school, I had often been the one keeping him in line. Now that he was finished with college, had a job, and was building his life, he expected the same from me.

It wasn’t happening.

I was destined to spend my life suffering in solitude. No sane human being could or would put up with my baggage and bullshit.