AllFreeNovel
Share Us
And now we were doomed.
Drowning.
It would only be a matter of time before Uncle John turned full Joker on us and devoured our whole lives with his crooked teeth and a plastic smile. I hated that man so much. I hated the anger I held on to when I had nothing left to hold. Anger that belonged to him. Anger I let him pull out of me when I was weak.
And now my mother was paying the price for my stupidity. All because I couldn't manage to pull some stupid paintings out of my ass in a matter of fourteen measly days. The artist in me was dying but the daughter in me was already dead.
The nurses manage to stabilize her and I notice that amongst the chaos a jar of daisies is shattered on the floor.
Along with my heart.
A nurse in a white uniform gently grabs my elbow and leads me to a chair, shouting about how I needed to give my mother space right now, but the words barely register as I’m plopped down into the plastic chair.
I watch silently as the nurses tend to my mother's hand, wrapping the bloody mess in gauze before reattaching the IV on her other hand. Too in shock to move. Her hand starts to bleed through her bandages and I feel my face paling at the sight. She was hurt because of me. It was my job to protect us while she was in here and I had failed.
Swallowing the lump in my throat I didn’t bother to look away as they got my mother's weak heartbeat up to a normal pace, choosing to torture myself with every moment of my mother's patched-together recovery. She was already hanging on by a thread as it was and here I was taking a pair of scissors to her doll's strings, cutting them until she fell down completely.
I don't remember putting my head in my hands, but I must have because one of the nurses was trying to pry my fingers from my forehead, asking me questions about my mom's incident.
It was my fault. It was all my fault. I wanted to say as her calm brown eyes met my chaotic blue ones.
“What happened, sweetie?” The nurse repeats her question for the second time, her gaze concerned. I needed to get out of here. It was too much. The bright lights, the putrid white walls. Why was everything so damn white in here? It was burning my eyeballs.
“I- I don't know,” I mumbled to the nurse. I could tell by her frown that she didn't believe me but I didn't care. I needed to leave before these walls suffocated me and I passed out into darkness just like I had all those months ago when she needed me. I couldn't fail her again and I wouldn't let her see me like this either.
Shoving the nurse aside I rush out of the room, my combat boots scuffing the perfect floors. I needed to escape, I needed to go to a place where I could breathe.
And it was that thought that had me running outside like my lungs weren’t on fire. Jumping into the first taxi I could find, I told the driver,
“Take me to the MET please.”
Chapter 15
Kaleb
I was caked in blood.
Again.
Had been for the past forty-five minutes actually. And still, it wasn't enough. It would never be enough. Not until he was a puddle of black blood on the floor with nothing left to remember him by but a discarded dark stain on the concrete floor. A dirty stain that I’d most likely cover up with a rug courtesy of the Target clearance aisle.
He had hurt her. And unfortunately for the twenty four hour gym poster boy here that was an unforgivable mistake.
So when my knuckles crack against his skull I don't even flinch. His head whipping back in a bloody mess of my causing. The monster in me’s leash got lost in the garbage disposal and now there was nothing holding me back from tearing apart the lowlife scum before me.
Lion tattoo turned out to be the perfect hint Rose could have given me.
The perfect tidbit of information for my vultures to grab a hold of and devour.
Turns out there weren't very many people in my circles that had that kind of ink, but there was one guy someone had the balls to blab about, and that was all it took to get my mental wheels spinning.
The tip had come from the broken promise of a weak spineless boy. If he had been one of mine his neck would have been snapped in a tragic construction accident. His family set up with a workers comp and a nice little death insurance policy. Nobody turned on me and lived to tell the tale.
Not in these streets.
Not in the streets that were mine.
But in this case, the boy's big mouth had played out in my favor and for that, I was grateful for every secret he’d spilt, so long as they weren't mine.
