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After free-falling into oblivion, my senses finally return to me.
“Get the hell out, Kat. You’re as fake as your stupid fucking brother,” I yell.
On the same day I’m released, less than a month later, I take a taxi to Wainscott Hollow and pack my bags. I often wondered if the only way out of this haunted estate was via the grim reaper, so maybe I should thank my lucky stars I’m walking away for more than one reason. Maybe the fucking spider saved my life. I’ll have it bronzed and keep it on my fucking shelf like a talisman.
I toss everything into two suitcases indiscriminately. I find my mother’s locket, and I leave it conspicuously on the dresser. Kat was my heart’s one true love and I don’t know if I’ll ever find that again. Maybe if I leave this heart here, she’ll find hers again.
I crash the luggage shut and drag it noisily down the stairs. Henry stands by the library day drinking, halfway in the bag. He acknowledges me with a curt nod of the chin, and I give him a salute, followed by the middle finger.
“Rest in hell, Wainscott Hollow,” I mutter under my breath. “Cheers to your underlord.”
As I toss the suitcases in the trunk of the cab, I look up to Kat’s window and see a figure behind the white curtain. I wait for a heartbeat to see if she’ll run down or at least wave goodbye to me from her perch. But Kat stares emotionlessly through the lace like she’s trapped in her own personal hell.
I throw her a salute, and slam the door of the cab.
“Take me to the South Bronx. Let’s get the fucking hell out of here.”
Chapter 8
Heath (Five Years Later)
Wainscott Hollow, my heart’s prison. A sane person would never step foot on these shores again had it been the reason for all their sorrows. But no matter how much I want to forget these godforsaken shores, my mind won’t allow me to because it’s the place that houses all my memories of her.
My eyes fall shut as I let the night air and wild winds bring me back to the girl with sandy bare feet and dark hair laughing under the sun as she danced through the tide pools. As much as I want to escape Katelyn Shaw, I cannot because she’s embedded in who I am, and one can never escape what truly makes them who they are.
I didn’t want to come back until I had everything she needed. She called me a nobody, a loser, someone who couldn’t provide her with the luxury she was accustomed to. So I left and built my own empire, was ruthless in my endeavors, all to accumulate a fortune that would surpass her fathers. I did what I had to, stained my hands with blood to earn money I don’t want or care about. My only goal is Kat. For her, there is nothing I wouldn’t do, no horror I wouldn’t bear.
The last words she spoke to me haunt me now, as they did five years ago.
I don’t love you. I never did.
I spent years trying to forget her, abandoning my memory of her in whatever I could find, but nothing worked. But to unburden one’s self from their darkest and most depraved desires is impossible. She may legally be my sister but try telling that to the beast inside me.
So here I am, holding the fragmented pieces of my broken and blackened heart, shattered by the only woman I’ve ever loved. A woman who was never meant to be mine. The only woman on this earth who’s ever been able to hurt me.
I haven’t yet told Henry I own every parcel of land, every structure, down to every little waterway the naked eye can see from his balcony at Wainscott Hollow. Absolute retribution is what I’d thought this moment would bring. To revel in the shock in his eyes when he heard the poor boy from the Bronx, the so-called hood trash he hates, is now lord and proprietor of all he’s ever held dear. But standing here on the shores of the manor where I spent my happiest days with my wild, untamed girl who liked to catch tadpoles and run free in the dunes, I’m profoundly empty. Maybe because that very girl’s last words to me were how she didn’t want me, that I was worthless, that the powerful bond I believed we shared was meaningless to her.
When I turn to head back to the manor, I spot two figures in the sand. The man hovered over the woman, his movements frantic and consumed with rage. The woman writhes under him as if desperate to be freed. And then I hear it as if carried to me on the wind. The voice that lingers in my mind as if she’s just spoken to me.
