Tortured Souls (Rebels of Sandland 2)

As I walked towards the edge of the garden where the trees were, the ground underneath my feet went from soft dewy grass to hard stones and dirt. I didn’t care. The pain beneath my feet was nothing compared to the pain in my body and my mind.

“I saw you. Where are you?” I shouted, pushing the leaves of the fir trees to the side. I dropped to my knees, scrambling around on the floor to find something, anything that’d give me a clue to where he was.

“Harper, what on earth is going on?”

I heard my parents behind me, but I stayed where I was, dragging my fingers through the dirt and trying to focus through my tears.

“He was here,” I said without turning around.

“Who was here, love?” Dad crouched down to where I was, trying to pull my hands away from the soil, but I shook my head. I wouldn’t be deterred that easily.

“He was here. I saw him. He watches me.”

“Oh, God. She’s lost it, Andy,” I heard my mum say. “We need to call the doctor.”

“No doctors, Tanya. We’ll deal with this ourselves,” my dad snapped back. “Come back inside, Harper. There’s no one here. If it makes you feel better, I’ll go over every inch of this garden, but there’s no one here now. You’re only hurting yourself out here. Please, just come inside.”

My dad put his arms around me and scooped me up like I was still a child. I had mud under my fingernails, and I couldn’t stop shaking. But I knew what I’d seen. I wasn’t going insane.

He was watching me.

He wanted to break me.

Trouble was, I was already broken.

I hated them for what they’d done to me. I had no one I could call on. No one was on my side. Like a piece of trash, they’d thrown me away. It was easier for them to forget I ever existed. Why would anyone want a fuck-up like me in their lives?

But I watched them.

I watched how they went about their lives with fucking smiles on their faces. Not a care in the world.

Emily was living with Ryan’s family, and the pair of them made me sick. Their little displays of affection whenever they went out made my stomach turn. It didn’t matter to them that they’d royally screwed me over to get what they wanted. I’d put everything on the line for them, and how had they repaid me? By making me look like a fucking fool, shitting all over my feelings and turning their back on me.

Had I really told my best mate’s girlfriend that I loved her?

Because at the moment, I could barely stand to look at either one of them.

I wasn’t done with them yet, though. I wanted to make them pay. My best friend and the girl I thought I loved needed to know what they?

?d done. Their happiness came at a price I wasn’t willing to pay.

As for Zak and Finn, they were happy enough to wipe out my existence as well. Go about their business and start the parties up again. I’d have expected more from them, especially Finn. I’d always gone out of my way to help him, nurture him, build him up in a way no one had ever done for me when I was at rock bottom. I suppose Jensen fucking Lockwood had been right. I was born in shit and I’d die in shit. I certainly had the shittiest friends of the lot. And now, every night, when I laid down in my piss-stained sleeping bag in the squat, I pictured each one of them in my mind and gave myself comfort thinking of all the fucked up ways I was going to have my revenge.

My time would come.

I wasn’t going to fade into obscurity to suit their agenda.

I had a plan.

Multiple plans, in fact.

The Lockwoods wouldn’t escape my wrath either. They probably thought they’d beaten the pride out of me years ago, but they hadn’t. I was only getting started when it came to their fucked-up crew. But the one thing that ate away at me the most was Brodie and Harper Yates.

I lost everything because of them. My childhood, my friends, my stake in the parties, and my fighting. I was a living ghost, surviving in the shadows. I couldn’t go home, couldn’t make anything right whilst she was there, haunting my dreams and taunting me every hour of every day.

I wanted to make her suffer.

I wanted her to lose everything like I had.