Caelan
My fist stung where the tiny shards of glass penetrated the skin. I couldn’t believe what I had done. I’d lost complete control of my mind and body. I’d been in plenty of fights, especially over the last five years, but I had never laid a hand on a woman like I did with Sutton. She hadn’t shown it, but I knew I’d hurt her. What the fuck was wrong with me?
Trickles of blood dripped from my hand, down to the floor.
I stared at the shiny red rivulets, instantly transported back to that god awful day I couldn’t fucking forget.
The blood had been everywhere.
Even now, I felt like I couldn’t scrub it from my skin. It had seeped inside of me, poisoning my very being, and turning me into a monster. I wasn’t sure if the transition had been immediate after their murders or if it had been gradual. I just knew that I wasn’t the same person anymore. I’d been okay with that. But maybe, not anymore. Going after Sutton like that was a wake up call. Losing my shit wasn’t cool. I couldn’t rationalize it to myself. Things had gone too far, but I didn’t see how I could stop.
I banged both of my fists, one injured and one not, against the porcelain sink. The harder I hit it, the worse the pain was. It filled me up, blocking out all thoughts. As long as the pain remained, I didn’t have to remember what I had done to her.
Sutton was destroying the very foundation I had built my life upon after the murders. She was an earthquake, shaking down my walls and exposing the Caelan that had long ago been buried. I didn’t want that Caelan to come back. He was better left dead. That Cael felt too deeply. He was weak.
Anger bubbled inside me, coming to a boil.
I lost all control.
I ripped the bathroom door open. It smacked against the wall hard enough to crack the tile.
Between Kyle and Sutton I was in a constant state of pissed off, it seemed.
I wanted to tear my apartment apart, rip it to sheds, so that it would resemble the state of my insides—a chaotic, uncontrollable mess.
I was spiraling out of control. I had been for a while.
But Sutton was my undoing.
I had known from the moment I stormed into her apartment, irritated about the noise she was making trying to hang those damn curtains, that there was something different about her.
I had tried to fight it.
God, I was still fucking fighting it.
I had pushed h
er away.
I had told myself to stay away.
None of it was doing any good.
She was a drug to me—one far more powerful than what currently ran through my veins. Those drugs shut me down. Sutton woke me up. The high was that much more intoxicating because of it.
I stared around me, breathing slowly. I needed to calm the fuck down.
I headed up to the roof. It was a safe place for me. I hadn’t been up there since the night Sutton appeared and revealed that she knew about my family.
It was weird having her know.
Even more odd was the fact that she didn’t look at me or treat me any differently than she had before.
To her, I wasn’t broken glass that she had to tiptoe around lest she be cut.
Everyone else avoided me when I let my true nature show, but not her. She was a mysterious creature that I couldn’t begin to fathom. Her reactions to dangerous situations were…non-existent. She didn’t flinch or show any signs of fear.
Sitting on the edge of the roof, staring up at the night sky so full of beautiful clear stars, I decided that Sutton had been hurt too. There was more to her than I had even begun to know.