Her chest heaves with every breath, so very close to mine, only a few inches away. She’s so close that I know she can feel the heat radiating off my body. She doesn’t cower, even though I can tell she wants to. She just presses herself even flatter against the house and stares back at me, her eyes black pits.
I want to own that anger. Bridle that rage. Possess her. Make her truly mine, not just by law, but byeverything, in every fucking way.
“If you’re asking me to apologize, I’m not sorry,” she spits, venom dripping from every lethal word. “I’m not sorry. I’m not sorry that I lied. I’m not sorry that I left. I’m not sorry that I chose to live my life on my own terms. Finally. I’m not sorry for any of it. For. One. Single. Second.”
There’s a strange shuffle, like the wind picked up and is blowing discarded trash on the street behind me, but then I give my head a shake, erase her honeyed scent from my nose and her wild, blazing eyes from my heat addled, desire fogged brain, I realize it’s those damn papers.
I’ve spent years of my life telling myself I’m not a monster. That I’ll never fucking behim, but in that instant, when my eyes flick down to those motherfucking papers clenched like a lifeline in her hand, a shield from me and everything I stand for, everything I’ve tried so hard to be and never, ever to be or repeat, I just lose it.
I snap, letting out an inhuman roar of rage that causes Ami to turn her face and shrink back against the house in fear. She presses her cheek up against the cold siding as if it could shield her from me. Fucking good. I want her to be afraid of me. Of what I can do to her. Of all the ways I could destroy her the same way she’s destroyed the parts of myself that I still haven’t managed to piece back together after she bust the dam and all the shit came flooding out of the careful confines I’d packed it so neatly into over the past decade.
I tear those papers from her hand and storm away, my anger like the black cloud of a thunderstorm. The kind with hail,torrential rains, and winds that come with the fury of an angry god to sweep away all that lies so foolishly in its path.
I stomp off to the backyard, grabbing a can of gas from beside the house on my way back. It’s the reserves for my bike, just a small can, but it’ll fucking do.
I have a lighter in my pocket. Even though I don’t smoke much of anything anymore, I find it handy to keep it there, a harmless souvenir from my past that I stow along with the pocketknife I’ve had for years, my wallet, and my phone.
“What are you doing?” Ami rounds the corner, screaming, as I soak her precious papers in gas. I pour on far too much and I keep going, emptying the can out.
She has enough sense to understand that I’m not messing around and jumps back with a choked scream strangled in her pretty little throat. I don’t watch her as I pull the lighter from my pocket. I don’t step back or use common sense. I don’t give a fuck about my own safety or the fact that I look like a deranged demon out there.
I flick the lighter and all it takes is a single spark and those godforsaken papers ignite with a roar that steals my breath. Literally, because my face is basically in the damn flames. I’m sure that Ami would say it’s an improvement, but unfortunately for her, I jump back, getting the hell out of the way before those flames consume not just her request for a divorce, but me as well.
I watch with sadistic pleasure as the pages curl and dance in the red-orange flames. Within a few seconds, they’re completely consumed, a great ball of angry fire, an inferno that transforms them, renders them to little more than ash.
When I whirl, I find Ami wide eyed, her mouth hanging open. She gapes at me like she can’t really believe I just acted like a totally crazed pyro. She shakes her head from side to side, as if that’s enough to deny me, deny what she’s starting to figure out.
Just in case she hasn’t quite got there yet, and because I’ve always prided myself in being a gentleman, I give her a helping hand.
“I will never sign that shit.Ever. I don’t care that you’ve been gone for a year. It could have been a hundred, a thousand, and it wouldn’t have changed anything. You. Belong. With. Me.”
Chapter 5
Ami
You belong with me.
By the time I pull into my sister’s driveway, I’m a wreck. I hate that my body feels like it’s going to overheat. Like it wasmethose flames are eating up, searing their way up and down my arms, my legs, into my stomach, my lungs, my throat.
I expected fear. Fear and revulsion. Terror. That statement should instill the worst in me. It should be the unholiest of triggers, but what I feel isn’t the right response. It’s not the correct emotion, and I have no fucking idea what to do with that.
Wraith’s bike isn’t in the driveway, thank fucking god. I don’t think I have the strength to face him at the moment.
When I push open the front door and force my heavy feet inside, Leena hovers around instantly, like she’d been waiting for me. I want to wipe away the concern smeared across her face. I feel completely unworthy of it at the moment. I haven’t been the best sister. I don’t really deserve her love or her kindness. Certainly not her worry.
“What happened?” Leena’s eyes get even bigger when they sweep over me.
I shake my head and push past her, escaping to the kitchen where I pour myself a glass of water from a tap that isn’t mine, into a glass that isn’t mine, in a kitchen that isn’t mine. After I down it, fill the glass again and gulp another, I finally turn, slowly, to find Leena standing behind me.
Her lips are pressed into a thin line and sparks dance in her eyes. She’s angry for me already, and I haven’t even told her anything yet.
“Please tell me he didn’t piss on them again,” Leena says slowly, as she crosses her arms over her chest.
“No.” She almost lets out a sigh of relief, but clearly my face says that shit is short lived. “He doused them in gas and lit them on fire.”
“What? Are you kidding me?”
“I wish.” I swipe a trembling hand over my forehead, clearing away the damp strands of hair that are plastered there. “I wish I was kidding. I’m not. He really did. Got out the gas can and everything.”
