Page 52 of I Was Born Ruined (Death by Daybreak MC 1)
“Take me to the vet,” I repeat, wondering if Crown will. He might. If Cat hasn't explicitly told him not to. He stares at me for a long time, the green of his eyes as rich as the needles on the evergreen trees around us. They feel like they're leaning over us, like they're closing in on me.
“Okay,” he says finally, pulling away and shaking himself like he's throwing off a cloak of useless emotion. Whatever Crown might feel for me, it's just as shallow as what happened between Grainger and me the other night. It's nothing deep; it's not meaningful.
And yet … I'm still fucking ruined.One and a Half Years Ago …The soft, blue petals of sadness bloom into the fiery red of anger with just a few tears. It's astonishing how quickly it happens, and all without the soul even noticing. It's like, one day you wake up and you don't just want to lie there anymore. One day, you open your eyes and you're full of energy with no outlet, energy that makes you want to hurt something. Or someone.
Mostly, it makes you want to hurt yourself.
I dress in thigh-highs and a plaid skirt, a top that's just barely a bra, and enough makeup to join a circus. And then I go out looking for trouble.
“Where do you think you're going looking like a fucking whore?” Gaz asks, standing outside the front door, smoking a cigarette. He looks me up and down like he doesn't know who I am anymore. The ironic part of all that is that Gaz has never known me. He never knew Queenie or Posey. He was always treated differently for having a penis. I've hated him for it since I turned ten and he stopped wanting to wrestle or roughhouse with me.
“Eat a dick,” I snap, turning around and walking backwards, so I can flip him off. Gaz glares at me, but he doesn't move to stop me. We're not at that point yet, where he's using his anger and hatred for me to exert control. Not yet. We'll get there; Cat will get there. But everyone is still grieving, frozen in time, stuck in melancholy like Pompeii was forever frozen in ash.
But I’m tired of being stuck, so I leave and head for the old foreclosed Victorian where all the good parties are. Being drunk or stoned or fucked has got to be better than being sad. Nothing is worse than being sad.
My bodyguard of the day is Colton Young aka Sin, and he doesn't give me much of a head start. At first, when he was assigned to watch over me, he tried to stay back and pretend he wasn't there, like he was giving me some semblance of privacy. Or just avoiding me, maybe.
“Where are you going?” he asks, and I shrug, smoking a cigarette and thinking how at sixteen I'm so goddamn cool. The wind lifts my skirt, but I don't care because I've put on panties that I want everyone to see.
“To party,” I say with a shrug. I can feel that white-hot anger surging through me. I know why it's there and where it's come from, but I don't know what to do with it. I just miss my sisters. I just want my sisters back. My life thus far, it hasn't been pretty, but even with all the shit my parents put us through, we had each other.
Now … I'm all alone.
And it pisses me off.
“At the Artefact?” Sin asks, and I pause, glancing over at him idling on his bike next to the curb. His hair is shaved short, but only because the guys in the club have been mercilessly teasing him for the purple Mohawk. I miss it, but I'm not about to tell him that.
“How do you know about the Artefact?” I ask suspiciously, and Sin laughs.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” he snorts, kicking the brake into place and leaning back, crossing those finely muscled arms over his chest. He’s tattooed in glorious Americana, a Route 66 sign in the crook of one arm, the Statue of Liberty on the other. I can't look away from the swells of his biceps, the wicked curve of his smirk, and those eyes, charcoal flecked silver that burns with hidden embers, long doused but still piping hot. “I'm not that old. I used to party there, too.” Sin shakes his head and looks away, in the direction of the old house. The brass plate near the crooked front door reads Jensen Manor and Inn, an Artefact of Historic Downtown Ashbury. But artifact is spelled all weird, like it's British or something. I don't even know. “Besides, you think the club doesn't know where all the seedy hot spots are?” He looks me up and down, like Gaz did, but his assessment is decidedly more pleasant. Less hatred, more appreciation. He thinks I’m hot, huh? I wonder with a smirk, doing my very best not to think about our kiss in the cemetery. That wasn’t flirtation, that was something darker; that was desperation. “You want to party, huh?”
