Page 133 of Always: A Legacy Novel

Brutal.

Unforgiving.

He fucking hated first love.

But he didn’t hate it, too.

He couldn’t hate her at all.

Even when she was breaking his heart.

Promise?

“Always, Catherine.”

Cross did well, or as well as he was able to manage. He lasted one week, and then two. He made his way through final June exams, and barely blinked the whole while.

But he felt dead.

Or maybe he was still dying inside.

He wasn’t sure.

He wasn’t sure how he did any of it at all; getting his ass to school, keeping calm while he wanted to rage, and seeing Catherine every day.

Maybe he was trying to prove to himself that he could do exactly what she asked for. They could be friends, and nothing else. It didn’t have to be a lie if he told it well and believed it.

It still was.

Cross still made it those two weeks, though, despite how the pressure continued to grow all through him. Like swirling clouds, the most dangerous part, the funnel, felt as though it was ready to finally touch down and make a tornado with him as the eye.

It started with a slammed door, and then another. His sister, likely. He really just wanted quiet in his mind, but that was getting to be damn hard. His irritation picked up again, but he ignored it. He knew through experience that brushing off his anger, instead of feeding it or doing something to end it, would only lead to something bad.

The problem was not anyone else’s fault but his own. How could they know, that he had been hiding anger until it turned into rage, and pain until it turned into agony? And now, instead of bleeding it out slowly, it was going to explode.

They didn’t know anything because he didn’t tell. Instead, he stayed hidden in his room because there he didn’t have to talk. Or he chilled in the library; he could play music on the piano or guitar until his fingers bled, and drowned out someone else’s attempt at conversation at the same time.

His parents and sister probably thought he was fine. So he was a little quiet, and he stayed hidden away a lot. He already did that, anyway. He was busy with the end of year, and that could excuse his lack of leaving like he normally would, too. Even Wolf had laid off the mentoring because he wanted Cross to study.

Nothing out of the ordinary.

Cross’s anger and irritation grew until it spilled over. “Stop slamming those goddamn doors, Camilla! You’re going to take one off its fucking hinges, Christ. Do it again, and I’ll rip the stupid thing off for you.”

“Cross!”

His step-father’s bellow from the downstairs floor filtered up from the stairwell. He heard a similar warning float from the upper level down to him, too. They all sounded the same at the moment; he didn’t want to hear any of it.

“What did you just say to me?” Camilla asked, coming out of her room from down the hall.

She was mouthier and louder and bitchier now that she was thirteen, almost fourteen. She didn’t take very much shit from him, or anybody else.

“I said, stop slamming your damn doors,” Cross repeated. “Get it this time?”

“Fuck you,” his sister said over her shoulder.

It was so flippant, so uncaring, and laughable.

Goddamn hilarious.