Page 82 of Overkill

Not that I felt any of it.

I had no idea how to fix this. I didn’t know if I could fix this.

I should have told her.

I was a fucking idiot. An idiot!

I had thought fucking up my life five years ago was bad, but this was infinitely worse. Unimaginably worse. The kind of worse I wasn’t sure I’d survive. But maybe I wouldn’t want to survive it.

I was careless. Outright stupid.

I thought I could use my role to protect her. To help her. Save her.

I held it in. I kept my intentions close to my chest, and the moment I told anyone, the moment I was ready to jump in…I’d lost everything.

Like sand through my fingertips, the more I tried to hold on, the more it slipped away.

“Melody,” I mumbled to myself as my hands fell to my sides, too heavy to even keep up. “Nothing is fine.”

Chapter 28

A Price Was Paid

Melody

I was crashing. I was on a rollercoaster ride I didn’t want to be on, and no one would let me off. There was only so much a human body could contain. Only so much a person could face before we broke. Before we fell apart.

And I was there. Ready to burst like an overfilled balloon.

My shoes were soaked, my jeans were like fucking weights slapping against my skin as I walked, and the stupid cold…the stupid jacket that I’d left behind. His stupid fucking jacket.

And the stupid fucking clothes still at my house.

I’ll go home and rip every single one of them to shreds! Damn it!

No, I wouldn’t. I’d just give them back.

Pass them to someone else to return to him.

I gasped for breath as pain crashed into me again, the memory of him pressing against my chest.

Those last, insidious words.“No one loves you more than I do. No one will want you more than me…”

I hated that he was right. That it had been true. No one had or will.

No one could love a broken thing. No one cared about things already discarded.

A car zoomed by, and I dipped into the road’s muddy shoulder as the dirty splash from their wheels hit me.

It wasn’t like I could get any wetter, though.

I hugged my arms closer to my body, continuing the long trek home.

I had tried! I had tried so hard. I’d tried to date when I was at Columbia, then later at Yale. Tried to find a connection, but none had ever formed. I was too much. Too much baggage, too many sharp edges, too many timid moments when I should have been brave. Terrified when I should have felt free.

My body reacted badly to everything. Reacted wrong to everything. Everything always swirled and spun like the water in a rushing flood.

The storm raged overhead, and the river that paralleled the road roared as it headed into town. The water at my feet rose inch by inch, my socks squishing in my shoes. I shivered even as pain and hate made my skin fever-hot.