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Riggs swings his body to face me, his fist clenched at his side. Thankfully for my face, Rhys is there to place a hand on his shoulder and make him stand down. Rhys glares at me, his icy silence making my anger burn hotter than ever. My hands shake as I fight the urge to explode on them even further. I’m already skating on thin ice with them and if I want to stay off the streets or out of the community center backroom then I need to bite my tongue.
People start coming in as we silently agree to drop this argument. For now in my case. I won’t let this woman come in and ruin my brothers or steal from Dec. I don’t really give a shit who she was to him in the past, she deserted him and you can’t fucking trust a deserter.
“Hey guys,” Drew, Dec’s manager, drawls with a somber face. “How are you holding up?”
The man makes my skin crawl, his personality always reminding me of a vulture waiting to strike. He doesn’t give a shit and is only here to make himself look good, guaranteed.
Riggs grunts in response, his eyes already distant as he shuts down to deal with his emotions. Rhys shakes his hand, murmuring to him all the boring shit you need to say to make other people comfortable. No one tells the truth about how they’re really feeling, it’s always white lies and sugarcoating. People don’t like to hear the truth, especially when it means they need to show they give a shit.
I scoff when he looks at me after, my face a mask of anger and frustration. Turning on my heel, I walk away from the crowds of people all pretending like they gave a fuck about Declan. None of them have given two thoughts to the lot of us unless it was for something they needed. It’s a room full of fake fuckers and I want no fucking part of it.
Stepping outside, I reach for my pack of smokes before remembering I quit six months ago. If only I had the foresight to realize how desperately I’d need them now. My hand moves down, rubbing around my right knee to relieve the pressure above where my prosthetic sits. I’ve been on it far too much lately and I’m starting to feel it. I’ll need a realignment done soon, I can feel the instability creeping up again. Unfortunately, like man-made things, it needs tune ups.
There’s a bench closer to the parking lot, under an old tree that looks like the perfect spot to get away and rest my leg. I’ll need to make another appearance inside soon, but for now, I’m going to mourn Dec without an audience.
Sitting down feels so fucking good, I let out a groan of satisfaction. Throwing my head back, I look up into the leaves like they’ll have the answers to why the fuck this is all happening. It’s not the fucking tree of life, but I’m begging it for answers nonetheless.
“Why the fuck did you do it, man?” I croak out, tears pricking the back of my eyes. “Things were looking up. You had nothing but light in your future.”
My hands shake as I drop my head in them. These are the questions that will haunt me for as long as I live. Add it to my ever growing list of shit that doesn’t make sense. On my list also includes questions like why was my mom such a shit human being and why did I have to lose my goddamn leg in that car bombing. They’re pointless questions to ask, I’ll never get an answer for them, yet they scream at me any time I get even a little bit emotional. It’s like I can never focus on one trauma I’ve lived through, I need to fret over all of them at the same damn time.
An angry snarl releases from my mouth as the tears start freely flowing down my cheeks. This isn’t fucking fair, this whole damn life I’ve been given, but that doesn’t mean you just throw it all away. Declan screwed us all over the minute he decided to end his life and release more pain into the lives of those that loved him. He was my fucking brother, not by blood but by choice. That bond the four of us shared was deeper than any biological one could go.
Why did he do this?
One more unknown, one more aching wound in my heart. It’s a damn good thing that these kinds of wounds don’t bleed because I’d have died from internal bleeding before I even hit puberty. Some people have scars from the life they’ve lived, I have scabs and gaping wounds, none of them healing enough to scar. I guess what the fuck is one more to me.
Composing myself, I stand to head back into the fuckery this wake is sure to be. My eyes scan the parking lot, doing anything to avoid going back inside, when I catch sight of the stunning, albeit traitorous, face of Alayna. She saw me break, she saw me fight my demons, and now she looks positively broken. Serves her right, maybe now she’ll second guess hurting us even more with whatever evil plan she has.
With a shake of my head and a sneer thrown in her direction, I move back inside. To my living brothers, my dead brother, and all the pain we’re trying to pretend isn’t fucking gutting us all.
Chapter Six
Alayna
I should definitely leave now. There’s no pretending I didn’t just witness Adam, the one who seems to loathe me on the spot, breaking over Declan. The shake of his head and the anger in his glare makes me feel awful for witnessing something so personal. It’s not that I wanted to still be here, it’s just that I’m struggling to distance myself from where I know Declan is.
It’s completely ridiculous, he’s not actually here anymore. Logically, I know this. My emotional side has yet to catch up though. Even if it’s just his lifeless body in there, it’s still the only link I have to who he was now and I find I can’t just drive away.
There’s also the three men that knew him after me, they hold all the answers to who he was after we were torn apart. It kills me to admit, but I only knew teenage Declan, not the man he grew up to be. There’s an incessant need inside of me to learn everything I can about him and those three are my ticket to those answers. There’s nothing I can get from them right now though, not with a funeral home full of people and what’s left of Dec on display.
Tomorrow, after the funeral because I can’t deal with a crowd of mourning people, I’ll get the answers I need.
Starting up my car finally, I pull out of my spot, catching a glimpse of a young man smoking behind a tree about twenty feet in front of me. Something about him seems vaguely familiar, but I can’t place my finger on what it is. Either way, the way he’s staring at my car sends a shudder of revulsion down my spine. My danger alarm in my head is blaring over him.
Shaking my head, I drive out of the parking lot, away from Declan, away from his three odd friends that hold all the information I want, and away from the creepy fuck probably looking to attack vulnerable people in mourning.
The silence of the car is starting to grate on my nerves, my hand automatically flicking my music on, a melancholy song starting over the speakers. I need music to take away the silence that only seems to make the demons in my mind scream louder. I can’t let those demons get a foothold or it’ll take me weeks to fight them back again.
Music is how I release my overwhelming emotions as well as the demons that haunt my subconscious. My music needs change based on my emotions, each one needing to be expressed in a different way. Since finding out about Dec it’s been soft and alternative rock for me. Their voices and instrumentals are the perfect outlet for me. Right now,Gone Too Soonby Daughtry is crooning over my speakers, making my eyes tear up as the music says what I wish I could voice to Declan.
This is the type of cleansing I need, the musical kind. The songs express how I’m feeling in a way that I’ve never been able to do. They put into words and instrumentals the feelings that rush through me. When I move and sing with their masterpiece, it feels like it’s me telling the world how I feel. It was one of the things Declan and I bonded on. We both knew how much music speaks for our souls.
The difference was that Declan could do what these artists are doing. He was so good at creating songs from nothing more than a feeling or daydream. I always loved laying beside him as he strummed out the chords on his beat up guitar in the park. He stuck out his tongue when he was stuck on a spot or he would bite his bottom lip when he finally figured it out.
Watching Declan in those moments, the person he was meant to be shining through, made me fall in love with him. He was my protector while we were in that house, and I loved him for that as well, but those stolen moments where I got to see who he would be without all the pain, it was what sealed it for me. No one was as pure as he was in those moments and purity was rare in my life.
Somehow I make it back to the motel on autopilot, my mind swimming with memories of Declan. Twilight distorts the sky as the sun sets, leaving us with nothing but the pink and purple streaks of final light. Those will fade soon as well with only darkness left to take over. I’ve come so far in fighting my irrational fear of twilight, but with the pain of my past and Declan so fresh in my mind, that shiver of fear snakes through me just like it did all those years ago.
