Page 153 of Fragments

Iknow, I know.

You must fucking hate me right now.

I’m probably the last person you want to hear from, and believe me, I get it.

I’m not going to ask you to understand, or to see it from my point of view. My point of view sucks, and it’ll just make you hate me more. I’m also not going to beg for your forgiveness and tell you how sorry I am.

You know me… You know how sorry I am. And you know I’m not lying when I tell you I hate myself for what I did.

If you are looking for an explanation… a reason that might just give you a light dusting of solace amidst the pain and hurt I’ve caused, then what I’ll say is this…

It’s fully possible to become so good at lying that you yourself don’t even know what’s the truth anymore.

Sometimes I think back on the night I killed my parents. I think about how things progressed, what led me from the fight with my father to burning down our home with him and my mother in it. The client I saw that night… the way the truth presented itself to me in blazing embers.

I don’t need the pain. It doesn’t actually sustain me. But I tell myself it does, because without it I’m responsible for all of my heinous actions. Self-sabotage is the name of my game. It has been ever since I was a child, and my nanny had to sit me down and explain to me that she wasn’t my mother.

She was lying to me when she said the words…Your mommy loves you very much. She’s just quite busy sometimes and needs help caring for you, Warren.

I was young, but still. I read between the lines.

Your mother is too busy to love you.

And too busy doing what, by the way? Busy being a whore??

Anyway, the point is that it became clear to me in that moment that if my own parents didn’t love me, what chance was there that anyone else ever would? There was a reason they couldn’t stand being around me… Something that made them despise me, and whatever it was, it would sure as shit make other people hate me too.

And so that was it. The lying, cheating and stealing, the shrinks diagnosing me with everything under the sun, stuffing me with medications that only fed my need to inflict physical pain on myself and emotional pain on others… It became who I am. Itiswho I am.

Because when people treat you like a villain your whole life, eventually you become one.

But enough about me. We know I’m fucked up, and we know it’s never going to change.

This is about you, Lex. It’s always been about you.

Since the moment I saw you, I knew you were that perfect antidote to the poison in my soul, and I knew I would end up burning you down, reducing you to nothing but ash.

It’s what I do to the people I love.

And it’s a real shame too, because being with you felt so good. You’re all I think about, even now. The way your lips taste, the way they shiver when we kiss because you’re nervous, and you have every right to be. The way your heart races and your breathing shallows. The way you used to smile at me, like you wanted so badly to believe that I might not hurt you.

I do hate myself, Lexington. I just need you to know that.

I hate myself for not being what you need, even though I told you I could be. I wish I could say I just want you to be happy, even if it’s without me, but that would be a lie.

I guess all I can say now is that seeing your face every day after what I did to you will be the most horrendous, withering, soul-crushing pain of my life.

You’re welcome. Hopefully, it helps just a little bit.

Scribbling out the last words, I let out a sharp exhale. Inside, my chest stings, like I have a punctured lung.

It’s been hard to breathe recently.

Folding up the piece of paper, I stuff it into my pocket for safekeeping. Then I get ready for the day, brushing my teeth, washing my face, giving Parker his meds. I was able to secure some stuff for him, better than the generic nonsense they’d been giving him, and he seems to be doing better.

It’s good. It’s the one good thing I have right now, except that I constantly have to deal with him berating me and giving me disapproving looks every time Velle sneaks into our cell at night for some head, or I come back all rumpled from a bang-sesh with one of the many guards, all of whom have since blended together in my mind.

He thinks I am idiot, and an asshole, for what I did to Lexington, and I get it. He’s not wrong.