Total pages in book: 36
Estimated words: 33526 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 168(@200wpm)___ 134(@250wpm)___ 112(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 33526 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 168(@200wpm)___ 134(@250wpm)___ 112(@300wpm)
“Don’t wallow in your sorrow so long that you allow those deluded by their power to have a hold over you.”
Ella stares blankly at me as if my words are a cluster bomb of confusion. I lean forward, allowing my fingers to brush her soft hair and holding my tongue to let my words settle.
Her eyes shut. “You don’t need to pour salt on my wounds.”
“Stand up. Yell at him. Tell him you won’t break simply because he told you to. Take the pain, humiliation, and grief and swallow it, burn it, pulverize it until it’s a small ember that fuels your right to persevere.”
“Who’s side are you on?”
I smile as her nose scrunches and her eyes slant in suspicion. Pride blooms within me, something that doesn’t happen often these days. Even when broken, a lioness dwells inside her, tearing down the facade she’s been forced to create. Ella is a survivor, and as much as Alaric is willing to walk away from her, I’m not. “Alaric’s side, River’s side. Your side. But most of all, I’m on my side.”
The corners of Ella’s lips lift with the sweetest smile, confirming that despite her fragile appearance, she has what it takes to burn in the flames with us and come out on the other side.
I’ve never been allowed to have anything good in my life, nothing pure. It’s led to the notion that innocence is both repellent and fascinating. Guess that’s what happens when you’re a kid forced to look at the chocolate cake without ever being able to savor the decadent taste.
I resigned myself to a life of corruption, pain, and heartache. Never to know softness or a kind word, especially from women. Until that day with Ella.
“Asher,” a soft voice called from the other side of the door.
I turned up the music. Nirvana. I wanted to drown her out, drown it all out. It was easy with Alaric and River. They knew my reasons. They accepted that the ends needed to justify the means.
But the way Ella had looked at me, like I was a monster, had set me back. With one look, she’d taken me back to the scared kid pushed around in the locker room, covering my head, desperate to limit the blows, while steel-toed boots kicked the shit out of me.
Another knock.
She was like a fuckin’ gnat, a permanent annoyance. I’d tried to stay the fuck away from her, but she sprinkled sugar and fairy dust every fucking where she went. I could be a dick to her, but that would be like kicking an injured animal for shits and giggles. I was many things, including an asshole, but I wasn’t sadistic. That was more River’s deal. If he were in my situation, he would’ve slit her throat and considered the consequences on the flip side.
I didn’t think I was doing anything wrong, at least not in my world. But what was acceptable in my world would drive a regular person to the brink of madness and beyond. They had no right to judge me because they wouldn’t last a minute in the lifetime of misery I’d survived. The memories lingered in my mind day in and day out. Their suffocating grip on my heart told me that if I didn’t harden it, I’d crumble in despair, destitute and insignificant.
I shut my eyes tightly as I sat in the dark, reeling at Ella’s perseverance and her demand for answers I was unsure I could give. I wanted to lash out at her perfect existence. I told myself she would never understand because she’d seen nothing but the bounty and glory that life could provide for her. But the look in her eyes lingered like a beacon, flooding the darkness behind my eyelids. Her soft eyes were a spotlight of pity, sorrow, and horror. But they also held something else: the anguish of grief. She mourned me, a man she barely knew. She was mourning me as if I had died.
“Well, I’m not dead, bitch!” I yelled into the abyss.
My venomous roars were propelled into every corner of the room, drowned out by the thumping music. I roared the words because I wanted her to hear me, maybe even fear me. I wanted her to run from me. I wanted her body to rock with tremors at the mere thought of looking at me. But the reason I covered my screams with music was because, deep down, I couldn’t bear the idea of her hating me. I didn’t want her to gaze at me and witness the same image I saw every time I stared in the mirror. A monster.
The soft knock was now a vicious roar of fists banging against wood. A violent demand to be let in.
I remembered those knocks from many years ago. The same turbulent bangs Alaric had inflicted whenever they’d forced me into that room. His small fists had banged as he’d screamed and pleaded, his little boy tears mixed with the rage of a child with nothing to lose. So he’d fought with the last remnants of hope and the tightening noose of desperation. I’d never forget the anguish in his voice when he’d demanded his mother take him over me. A prisoner swap, a pathetic attempt at hostage negotiations which went unheard and ignored by Celeste. She’d had no desire to leave anyone alive in the rubble. That would be a failure of her corrupt pathological need for power and greed.