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But I’m too far gone.

Despite the frantic hands attempting to hold me down beneath the binds, my legs swing over the bed and I stand, straining against the weight threatening to take me back down.

“Jesus, Zade!”

My chest heaves and my vision becomes spotty, allowing me only snippets of my blurred surroundings. Four frightened nurses and Jay crowding me, eyes wide and faces pale as I stand before them with a nearly two-hundred-pound bed strapped to my back.

I am…

I am no longer a man—only a beast succumbing to primal instinct. I am annihilation.

“Sir, please calm down!” one of the nurses pleads shrilly, her green eyes nearly black with fear. I pant, my chest tight from lack of oxygen and the strap straining against my chest.

I can’t, I can’t. She’s gone because of me.

How am I supposed to fucking live with that?

I shake my head, my energy depleting steadily. Words evade me and I stumble, struggling to right myself.

“Unstrap him,” Jay demands sharply, already aiming for the one secured around my chest. He waits until one of the nurses unclips them from my hands before he releases the buckle. The bed falls to the ground with a deafening boom.

Security guards come barreling into the room, skidding across the cluttered tile when they see the absolute carnage.

Jay gets in my face and shouts, "Quit acting like a fucking lunatic and get it together! Trashing a hospital isn't going to save her."

My vision clears, and the wreckage becomes apparent.

Shit.

That potent fury is still present, spewing from my pores, but I manage to keep it in check. Enough that it just steams.

“What the hell…” a security guard says, his young face painted with utter disbelief.

“He’s okay,” a nurse huffs out. She’s an older woman with short blonde hair and large wire-rimmed glasses that take up half her face.

She approaches me like one would a crocodile with its mouth wide open, her hand steady as she grabs my arm and lifts it.

A tiny trail of blood leaks down my arm from where the IV was ripped out, stemming from a tear in my skin no longer than half an inch.

“That… that is a nasty wound, sir. You better sit down so I can fix you up before you

keel over and die where you stand,” she orders, her voice stern as she points me towards the skewed bed.

It’s just a scratch, and we both know that, but I sit anyway. I watch her as she grabs a bandage from a cupboard and begins to blot the blood.

A few of the guards question Jay and one of the nurses while the other two rush from the room, red and shaking. I can’t manage to feel an ounce of guilt.

Not when there’s a black hole in my chest where Addie once took up residence.

“Want to talk about it?” she asks quietly, dabbing up the blood with a piece of gauze.

“No,” I mutter.

“Well,” she titters, sticking a small Band-Aid on my arm next. It has dinosaurs on it, and all I can do is stare. If I didn’t feel so empty, I’d laugh at how pathetic it looks.

“You can either tell me or tell the police. And I know you’re a big, burly man—you’ve gone out of your way to prove that part—and police officers probably don’t scare you, but I’d rather you spend the rest of your time in this hospital not handcuffed to a bed.”

I pause. “I’ll just stand up again and walk out with it.”