Page 21 of Mended Souls
My breaths were broken, but I took them until the panic slowly left my body with each one. I fell back, covering my eyes with my forearm. I hated people seeing me cry. It made me feel weak. “Thank you.”
“Of course.”
“I hate you,” I joked. “Preaching to me in the gym, and now look at me.” I grabbed my hair, pulling it back into a ponytail. “I didn’t know why they were still this bad. They weren’t this terrifying, or this detailed before.”
“Do you want to talk about them?”
I moved my arm and looked into his blue eyes. “I saw Blaize. She…” I squeezed my eyes shut, hating the memory that it caused. “She watched and laughed at my misery, my pain. Even when I begged her to help me.”
“None of it is real. Blaize may be a bitch and reacted horribly to Layla’s death, but she would never allow someone to be hurt like that. That woman will scour the Earth to kill a man who hurts someone she cares about.”
I laughed bitterly. “She has to care about me in order to do something like that. I’m nothing to her.”
“I wouldn’t say that. I’ve known Blaize for a long time. She helped me out of a touchy situation after I went on a bender. Blaize has never acted like this with anyone. I catch glimpses of the way she looks at you, and it’s not in disgust or hatred, it’s with love. She looks at you how she used to look at Olivia.”
“Blaize doesn’t love me. She said it herself. That night we had together was for me, for my pleasure. I’m just an employee…a pest in her perfect fucking life.”
“You don’t believe that, either.”
“I don’t know what to believe anymore.” This was why I wanted no one to know what had happened to me. I didn’t want pity or anyone to change how they saw me. I wanted normalcy back, and I guess it was time to get off the self-pity bus and take control of my life back.
CHAPTER 18
BLAIZE
Ioften wondered what my life would be like if I had been raised by different parents. Who would I have been if I hadn’t been born to a criminal and a gold-digging whore? What if I had never turned to a life of crime and murder at the fruitful age of seventeen? What if I stayed with my grandmother in Portugal? My grandmother hated my mother for the way she acted, but I was an innocent in their fucked-up life. Everything I’d done in my life shaped me to be the person I was now, and right now, I was a fucking idiot.
Annika would kill me, but I didn’t care. I needed to fix this with Kadence. She needed time, but I gave her a month. I didn’t deserve her forgiveness, but neither of us needed to hinder this anymore.
Drew
Kadence is having nightmares, and they include you.
Me
What do I need to do?
I felt daft asking Drew of all people what I needed to do, but if anyone understood this, it was him. This was not my forte. Sex, pleasure, and murder were my areas of expertise, not repairing the damage I caused to someone that I cared about. I had to stop lying to myself and accept the fact that my icy heart was thawing and learning to feel something besides anger and hatred.
Of course, she wouldn’t forgive me. A month had passed since the incident…my mistake which traumatized her.
This was a day I never thought would happen, but there was this nagging feeling in my chest every time I closed my eyes and saw that terrified look etched into Kadence’s features. The sound of her scream echoed through my ears and rattled my aching heart.
I really fucked up.
Drew
You need to talk to her. Annika will kill you, but this needs to be done. She can’t sleep longer than a couple hours without waking up, screaming in a panic attack. Regardless of what everyone thinks, she needs you.
Fuck.
I caused this, and I was going to fix my mistake, one way or another.
I needed to let myself be vulnerable and break down my walls so she could see every part of me, even the hideous parts I cast aside. Emotions were fucking complicated.
I was perfectly content with keeping my emotions bottled up, taking out my anger on traitors and rapists who invaded my territories. It wasn’t the healthy coping mechanism, but it fucking worked untilshecrashed into my life like a fucking hurricane, and every emotion I locked inside started to drown me.
A normal person would have gone to a shrink, but I was far from normal. I was fucked up with so much blood on my hands, I could scare Bundy. If I got help for my issues, they would have sent me to prison. And talking to Hunter? That kid had enough on her plate. She didn’t need to dive into my fucked-up brain and see how I handled my life. She thought I was the badass who saved her, who mapped out her life. When in reality, she was keeping my unstable brain stable enough to function.
