I didn’t bother with charm. Just looked her up and down, let my gaze stay dark.
She smiled, feral. “You looking for trouble?”
I grinned back, couldn’t help it. “Always.”
She pressed her thigh against mine. “Good.”
It was that easy. It was always that easy. People wanted to disappear, just for a night. She wanted to use me. Fine by me.
I didn’t learn her name. Don’t know if I even gave her mine.
We ended up in the bathroom. Her back pressed to the wall, my hands bruising her hips. She moaned, loud and desperate. I gripped her waist tighter, fingers digging in. The way she writhed under me should have made me feel something. It didn’t. She was just a hole to fill, a body to get lost in.
The girl clawed at my ass, begging. “Harder,” she gasped.
I gave it to her. Used her, slammed in like violence was all I had to give. She took it, loved it, legs wrapped around me like she wanted to be broken.
But underneath it, the memories curdled and boiled. Blake’s face when the knife slit skin. The blood. The copper. Amelia’s voice, begging for something I never learned how to give.
The girl came, loud and shaky, nails raking my neck. I didn’t even slow down.
I kept fucking her, desperate, until I felt it break loose in my spine. Heat and hunger and the sickness that always led back to Amelia.
I buried my face in her shoulder as I came.
I hated her. I needed her. I wanted to drag her from my mind and fuck her for real, watch her fall apart for me, because she was always the one, always the only one that mattered.
The girl sagged against me, panting. “That was…fuck. Wow.”
I didn’t answer. Pulled out, zipped up, washed my hands in scalding water until my skin burned.
I left her. Went back to my table and poured another drink. Let the taste of sex and memory and guilt rot me from the inside out.
But nothing numbed it. Not the girl. Not the booze. Not the violence echoing in my bones.
All I could see was Amelia. Amelia in the cage, Amelia on her knees, Amelia’s voice torn, crying my name.
Fuck. She was in my blood. A poison I couldn’t sweat out.
I sat there for hours, staring into the bottom of my glass. Watched the world go on around me. Music, laughter, bodies smashing together.
But I was alone. I’d never been lonelier. She was gone, and I was still starving. And I’d do it all again, just to feel the scrape of her soul against mine one more time.
No escape. No cure. Just the ache, twisting deeper, meaner, sweeter, every single night.
Amelia, Amelia, Amelia.
And I wanted her so bad it fucking ruined me.
4
AMELIA
My eyes wereheavy and haunted recently. I made it a habit to read the journal every night. Filling my head with Blake’s darkness. I should be doing something to deal with this trauma, but I was at a loss for what to do.
Caiden was the only person who endured it with me, but talking to him was impossible. Some days he could be kind, other days he snapped at me easily, brushing me off carelessly.
The kiss we shared felt incredibly surreal, like a hazy dream from a distant past, causing me to wonder if it had perhaps all been a hallucination.
