Page 26 of Ignited In The Present (The Ties That Bind Us Book 2)

My thoughts swirl like a chaotic whirlwind, fragmented memories and disjointed emotions colliding and merging in a jumbled mosaic. I feel like I’m piecing together the fragments of a shattered mirror, trying to make sense of the fractured reflections staring back at me. Glimmers of recognition, faint threads of familiarity and pain anchor me as I battle to find my way back home from the all consuming darkness.

Is this it? Is this the end that I’ve been chasing for so long that has been denied to me time and time again? No matter what I’ve endured, what I’ve subjected myself to, I’ve always come back from the brink like I’ve got some higher purpose. That fate has a plan for me and I’m not allowed to deviate from its path until I’ve completed everything it’s set out for me.

I’m no one’s salvation. I’m no one’s light or reason for living. I’m dirty, tainted, broken. I’m nothing. No one—I’m a monster.

Just like them.

Just like him.

I’m a monster like the ones I’ve run from for years, born from the devil himself—my father. My abuser. I’m made from his DNA, crafted in his image, shaped by his very existence. His blood runs in my veins and it’s suffocating. Filling my throat and lungs. Poisoning me in the place oxygen should be. His words and actions have twisted my mind, I no longer recognise the reflection staring back at me from the mirror of my soul. I’m irreparable, broken beyond comprehension. I’m lost. Am I dead now? I’d like to be. This pain is just too much.

Neil broke my body, shattered my mind until there was nothing left but bleeding wounds that will never heal, no matter how many times I patch them. He fucked me until my insides were outside and I didn’t know what love meant, yet I still crave it with every beat of my heart. He made me crave pain. Fear the light of day as much as the dark because no one is safe when the monsters who torment you look like people who smile sweetly and help old ladies cross the road.

I don’t know how to trust, or how to love—I don’t even truly know what those words mean. What I do know is obsession because it lives inside of me like a living breathing entity. A demon hiding in my skin. It’s a cancer that has taken over me, riddled all of my cells until I’m just a husk driven by need. A craving so deep that it’ll never be quenched. It bewitched me with its darkness, infiltrated my mind through the cracks left in the wake of its destruction.

“I love you, angel.” Midnight blue eyes, emotions I don’t fully comprehend in their depths stare at me, through me right to my rotten core. Even though it’s twisted and foul, corrupted beyond redemption, the weight of their gaze is unwavering. Resolute. Calling me back like a siren’s song to my soul, one that gives me the strength to hold on. To keep fighting until I can reshape the world for him.

He is the reason I’ve clung on by tooth and nail all these years and even if it costs me everything, I will wipe the monsters circling from the earth to save him. I know what I have to do. I have to become the worst version of myself. Allow the voice that whispers when the monsters are silent and embrace the darkness Neil has infected me with over the years. I have to use its strength to kill the devil himself.

I want it to hurt. I’ll draw it out one scream at a time, drop by fucking drop. I’ll make him suffer in all the ways he’s made me. I’ll bleed him from the inside out until he’s begging to die and even then I won’t let him go. I’ll bring him back. Time and time again. I want to see his glazed eyes so disconnected, his reality so warped that I can slice his putrid dick off and he doesn’t react as his toxic essence stains the ground.

I’ll smile down at him as the light leaves his eyes. I’ll rejoice in the feel of his last breath passing through his lungs and feel the chains around my neck dissolve when his lungs compress for the last time. I can’t wait to warm my cold hands against the flames of hell that will burn his world to the ground and I’ll dance among the ashes of his soul while his life is rubble at my feet.

I’ll do it all with a smile on my face.

I’ll do it all for him—Rhys—my little devil.

He’ll see my bad side, the evil that lives inside me—the truth I’ve tried to hide from him… The question is will he stay when there’s nowhere for me to hide.

“Are you coming back to me?” His words are a gentle melody that resonates deep within me, tendrils of his love reach out for me in the darkness—refusing to let me go. His touch, warm and reassuring, envelops my hand, his lips tender against my skin, each caress igniting an electrical storm that bolsters the fire within me, helping me push through and get back to him. Open eyes, please just fucking open.

Tears fall on my face, their salty trails staining my skin with his pain as his lips brush against mine in a feather soft caress. I’m coming… I promise. I’ll never let you go.

I struggle relentlessly, pouring every ounce of strength I possess to pry my eyes open, to command my mouth to speak, or to coax my fingers into motion. It feels like fighting an uphill battle with an elastic band cinched tightly around my waist, anchoring me to an immovable post. Each push forward propels me nearer to the light, only to be yanked back with my fingertips brush the light into the clutches of darkness, as if the void itself refuses to relinquish its hold on me.

Nooooo, I’m coming. I’m coming back to you, little devil.

Every sensation is amplified as I pull myself from the depths of unconsciousness, the faint whisper of air against my skin feels like a brand. The pressure of building static in my ears detonates making flashes of white hot pain sear through my brain. My eyes are sealed shut, holding me prisoner, as I scream inside my head. I throw myself against the invisible walls that cage me, beating my fists against them until my skin has split and blood is pouring from the open wounds. The need to see Rhys is propelling me forwards, bolstering my strength to fight the hold that refuses to set me free.

“Angel? Fuck is that… are you…” His voice starts to fade as a wave of nausea rolls through me from the blinding light oozing like acid through the tiny slit in my eyelids before it all goes black.

The distorted beeping of machines starts to increase as fire surges through my veins burning me to ash allowing me to break free of the noose around my neck and rise from the ashes. Lights dance behind my eyes like dazzling fractals suspended as adrenaline surges through me lighting up my body as every nerve comes alive.

My eyes snap open, and my heart lurches as I’m confronted with a sight that burns into my consciousness. The searing pain sends tremors through my vision, like the tumultuous waves of a storm of destruction and renewal, locked in a dance of chaos and order

“Kayden?” It starts as a wisp of sound growing like thunder rolling in. “Kayden?” With each repetition, it grows louder and more urgent. “KAYDEN?”

My tongue wets my dry, cracked lips does little to help my shattered voice, “Rhys?” He appears through the clearing smog, backlit like an angel with a halo, a watery smile playing on his face. I draw in a breath that feels like shards of glass shredding my throat as I swallow down the cry of a wounded animal when the world starts to darken and blur around me. Soft lips touching mine refusing to let go give me the strength to fight against my body.

“I’m here, angel. Drink this, it will help.” The tip of a straw touches my mouth, I wrap my lips around it gulping down the warm liquid. “Steady, not too much,” He chides. “Don’t want to take too much and make yourself sick—that’s one thing I can’t handle.” The joyful lilt to his voice is fucking everything. It makes my heart sing and the remnants of my soul soar.

“C-can you…” The lack of strength in my arms makes the back of my eyes burn as I haul them open and blink until my vision clears properly for the first time since I started fighting to wake up. To come back to him. “Help me sit up.”

“Of course.” Concern burns in the depths of his eyes, a smile lifting the corners of his lips. Rhys grabs the control for the bed and pushes a couple of buttons that slowly raise me to a sitting position. The world ripples around me like I’m still on a bad trip but the feel of his warm palms against mine, of our entwined fingers is enough for my mind to believe beyond irrefutable truth that this is real. This is reality and the man who owns my heart like a slave is here by my bedside.

“How long?” The words are soft, like they were pulled from me rather than given freely. I want to know what happened after Thom… A violent shudder ricochets through me like a pinball bouncing off my bones and has me gritting my jaw against the searing agony.

Tilting his head to the side, a fresh look of concern coiling across his face, Rhys’s hands shoot out towards me as if he could put out the flame assaulting me and come to rest on my shoulders. I watch enraptured as his chest rises and falls as he tries to bring order to the thoughts flickering through his eyes. “It’s…” He licks his lips, rolling the bottom one between his teeth. “It’s been a few days.” I arch an eyebrow waiting for him to continue because I can tell that’s the cliffnote version.

“The truth, little devil.”

Rolling his eyes he shoots me a quick smirk. “You were in an induced coma for forty-eight hours.” My heart stutters in my chest, they did what? What the fuck happened to me when I had no autonomy over my body. The fear of being alone abandoned lodges in my throat. “I’ve sat here for nearly two and a half days waiting for you to wake up, angel.”

His hand lands on my neck, thumb gently stroking along my pulse point as if he needs to feel it to reassure himself that I’m here and alive, evidently the sound of my voice isn’t enough. “Did you sleep?” His head whips up, eyes widening at my question.

“I-I,” he shakes his head. “I cat-napped but sleep? No. How could I sleep when your life was hanging by a thread.” The anger in his voice seems to build, gaining momentum with each word that punches past his lips. “I found you!” My heart stops mid beat and the world fades away until I’m suspended in the darkness. “I found you and thought you were dead.” His words land like breath-stealing sucker punches to my chest. “It felt like the world was ending when I couldn’t find a pulse.” He sobs, eyes turning glassy, his shattered heart glimmering in a swelling ocean of pain. “I’ve never had to do that on a real person before and the first time I did it had to be…”

‘You’ he doesn’t need to say it, it’s written all over his face. “I-I...” my voice fails me, curling up and hiding away with the terrified boy I used to be.

“I know. I know.” Warm hands cup my face, soft palms against my stubbled jaw. Thumbs work at clearing a path for the relentless flow of tears down my face. “It wasn’t you.” My teeth sink into my bottom lip, needing the pain of splitting skin to ground me. “You didn’t do that to yourself. Thom did.” The earnest look on his face, his open if haunted expression means he knows and believes it beyond a shadow of a doubt.

“How?” I whisper, my voice strangled with emotion. No one has ever believed that something bad that happened to me wasn’t my fault. They take in the cocky shit I present myself as and see nothing beyond that shallow facade. But Rhys, he does… maybe he always has?

“Thom.” I clench my jaw as I feel the fires of hell burn in my eyes. That motherfuck told him. He fucking gloated about what he did to me. I’ll add that sick piece of shit to my kill list, he can be my practice run.

My breath whooshes out of me, leaving my lungs screaming. “He told you.” It’s not a question, it’s an irrefutable statement of fact but still Rhys nods. My eyes flick towards the door. “Has he…?”

“No.” Rhys answers my unspoken question—he’s not been here. “I’ve not left your side other than to go for a piss. He swallows hard, his Adam’s apple bobbing violently in his throat. “I…we…” I tilt my head to the side trying to see what he’s struggling to say but the anguish in the set of his eyes has me stumped. “We need to talk.”

“Oh.”

“Yes, oh, angel. You promised me the truth—your truth—but you’ve avoided it at every turn. Now I know I’m not playing fair but you need to tell me. I’ve sat here for over fifty hours fearing my last memories of you would be of you unconscious. Of you laying on the forest floor with a needle sticking out of your arm, your skin bone white with lips turning blue. I can’t…I just...” his head falls into his hands, as sobs wrack their way through his body. “I need… t-to know, angel… please.” Rhys looks up at me with hollow eyes that show a universe of dying stars slowly fading out of existence. And I’m the cause, the fucking blood sucking parasite that is draining the life from him.

Love doesn’t begin and end the way it does in books or fairy tales. It’s forged in darkness, shaped and refined over time until it’s strong enough to withstand the harsh glare of reality without crumbling into ash.

Love is a constant battle. It’s a war without an end but not without sacrifice. Most of the scars on people’s hearts aren’t inflicted by their enemies but by the people who claimed to love them. If I tell Rhys the whole truth, laying bare every broken fucked up piece of myself, I’m giving him the power to destroy what remains of my shattered black heart. I’m trusting him with my vulnerability and praying he won’t wield it as a weapon against me.

To do this, to give him what he wants is to invite a whole new world of pain into one that I’m barely surviving as it is. One that makes me wish for death more than anything else. If I don’t give him what he so desperately wants I run the risk of losing him and all that we could be. Alternatively, if I give him every pain filled facet of the truth I risk breaking him in a way that he can never recover from. That we can never come back from. Talk about being stuck on a knife’s edge. No matter which way I go, I will be falling on that blade and sacrificing myself.

I roll my neck trying to ease the tension building in my muscles but it does little to alleviate the mounting pain. My heart thunders in my chest to the beat of my own funeral parade. I slip my trembling fingers from his grasp as the tremors work their way down my arms and work my hands under my thighs. They become so violent my whole body starts to shake as fear shoots down my spine and adrenaline unfurls in my blood like liquid ice. My skin seems to shrink-wrap itself around me, everything becomes too tight as waves of emotion batter me as I dredge up the pain buried deep inside my heart, allowing the viscous memories to rip through my psyche.

This is about to change everything. I could single handedly be our damnation, ruining what could have been the beginning of our forever. “Are you sure?” My words are barely audible as they leave my lips but if the way Rhys flinches is anything to go by they landed like a razor tipped whip against his skin.

“I will never be ready, no matter how much I say I am. But you’ve lived this, you’ve suffered and endured it every day of your life. The fucking least I can do Kayden, is hear it. Every word. Every detail. No matter how much it hurts to hear.” He swallows roughly trying to blink away the building moisture in his eyes but fails to keep his tears at bay as a single glistening tear carves a path down his cheek. “It’ll never compare to what you’ve experienced. I can only hope you forgive me for not being enough. For not being there for you in the way I should h-have…” His voice trails consumed by emotions he can’t yet truly appreciate or understand but by the end of this he will.

“Okay.” Rhys goes to reach for me, like he is going to grab my hand to anchor himself but stops short leaving his hand hovering in mid air for a few seconds before it falls to his lap. There’s a growing ocean between us that’s only going to get wider, deeper and darker as I lay it all out for him.

“This isn’t going to be easy to hear.” I sniff rubbing away the tears already decorating my skin on my shoulder and take a fortifying breath, stealing my resolve. It’s now or never.

“Start from the beginning.”

I give Rhys a nod and steal one last look into the dark depths of his beautiful eyes that stare back at me with such love and compassion and wonder if it’ll still be there at the end. Wrenching my gaze from his I train my eyes on the blank, off white wall opposite me. “It all started the first night we moved into Barton Grange.” Rhys sucks in a sharp breath, oh baby you haven’t heard anything yet. “On the drive there mum was telling me about this wonderful room I’d have that was next to yours. She said she’d told Neil how it was to be decorated in soft greens because I loved nature and that she’d picked out all this new furniture for me to have. I’d never had anything new, my old bedroom had a second hand bed she’d found on a local marketplace group and a chest of drawers that had been left at the end of someone’s driveway?—”

“But you were never in the room next to me.” Rhys murmurs then clears his throat. “Your room wasn’t even in the same part of the house as mine.” A quiet whimper passes his lips as I see him surreptitiously wipe away a tear clinging to his chin.

“No, it wasn’t,” I confirm. “Neil had never intended us to be brothers or for me to be his son. He told me we were too different and that wasn’t the reason I was living there.” I feel Rhys stiffen next to me as my words filter through his mind trying to marry the man he knew with that devil that has abused me for the last ten years. “It started with little things the first couple of weeks. He’d come and visit me in my room at night after one too many drinks. He’d say it was our special time and that he just wanted to hold me but his touches lasted too long. His hands going to places no one else’s should but they stayed over my clothes but roamed and squeezed. It quickly progressed to my pjs and underwear going missing.” Rhys gags but otherwise stays silent.

“The night of my mum’s first night shift at the hospital I was never the same again?—”

“No. No, he would never…” The vehemence in his voice cuts me to the core, as my fragile hope turns to dust, a gaping wound in my chest. Fuck this was going to be brutal on him. On us.

“He called me his sweet boy, still does to taunt me when he needs a power trip—makes me lick his shoes clean too but that’s another story for later on.” I clear my throat as fear tightens around my oesophagus and paralyses the muscle down my spine. “When I went to bed that night all my clothes were gone, so I buried myself under my duvet and cried myself to sleep. I didn’t like it, not having clothes. I didn’t feel safe, something in me, somewhere knew something bad was going to happen. It took hours for me to go to sleep but I did eventually. Not that it lasted long. I woke up freezing cold, my duvet was gone—taken without my consent just like my clothes.” Rhys shakes his head chanting no, no, silently. “I was scared I wanted to scream as my bed dipped but I knew no one would hear me—no one ever saw me in that house.”

“I did,” he rasps.

“The smell of tobacco, vodka and fucking Lynx Africa seared a path up my nostrils and I instantly knew who was there.” Rhys whimpers, tears streaming down his face as he sinks his teeth into his fist, rocking slightly backwards and forwards as he starts to see who his father really is.

The memory claims me pulling me from the room as I recount it for him in minute detail because it’s better to be smacked in the face with the truth than kissed with a lie. I was done running, I was done hiding. He’d either still love me or he wouldn’t—tainted, broken or otherwise.

He moves, pulling me from the lingering warmth of my sheets, and leans me over my bed.

“Grab hold and keep still.” I scrabble around blindly, trying to find my duvet, sinking my fingers in as if it can anchor me and save me—no! No one is coming to save me.

“Look at you, wiggling that tight hole in front of me. You’re a fucking little slut, aren’t you?” His hands leave my back.

I want to breathe a sigh of relief, knowing he’s gone, but I’d be stupid to think he’d leave before he’s taken what he wants. As I exhale my second breath, his belt clinks and his jeans hit the floor—the heavy fabric scuffs the exposed wood as he kicks them off. I sense him approach me, like a burning inferno at my back.

“I’ve changed my mind,” he says almost thoughtfully. Calmly. Fear shreds my insides. It’s in his serenity that his vile sickness is truly free. “Reach back and pull your cheeks open. I want to see what I’m about to ruin.”

I don’t move; my fingers are locked as if they’re frozen solid, clinging on to the fabric for dear life. No more than a second has passed before a smouldering burn blisters across my back, causing me to cry out in pain. The sound rebounds off the walls in my small room.

“I said spread those fucking cheeks open for me, you little wretch, or I’ll strike you again. And this time, I’ll make it bleed, just like your hole will.”

“Okay, okay,” I croak out on a ragged breath. Miraculously, my fingers unlock and snake down my sides, unbidden and following his dark command. I only have time to draw in one deep inhale before…

It takes everything in me to hold back my screams as white-hot pain sears right through me. I feel like I’m being split in half from the inside out. His heavy weight holds me down, pushing my face into the mattress, blocking my airways and preventing me from breathing as I feel him batter my body. His innate power moves me as if I were a rag doll in the jaws of a thrashing beast. The sour taste of blood drenches my taste buds almost as quickly as it fills the air around me, overpowering his vile stench.

“That’s it, my sweet boy. Take everything I give you. If I can record your cries tonight, I’ll run you a shower afterwards as a reward.”

Rhys retchesas I continue to go into detail about Neil’s night time visits to my room. How he beat and raped me continually. How he gloated about drugging Rhys so he would never know. How he engineered my mum’s shifts to make sure she was out of the house when Neil wasn’t away on business trips. I feel a cold sort of detachment as I recount when things started to change, that it wasn’t just drunken nightly visits but how they morphed into daytime nightmares, where nowhere in the house was safe. I told Rhys how he’d punch my temple then force me to my knees and fuck my throat until I was swallowing blood along with Neil’s cum. I told him how Neil loved to humiliate me, degrade me and make me clean his shit covered shoes with my tongue until I was choking on my own vomit.

I told Rhys how once when Neil had business associates over—when my mum was at work and Rhys was staying with friends—how they blindfolded me and tied me over Neil’s desk in his office and took turns on me like I was just a hole provided for their entertainment. I told him how I’d heard the staff enter the room and converse with the men he had with him and that they did nothing for me as I lay bound and bent backwards over his desk. Tears streamed down my face as they fucked me till I bled from my mouth as much as my asshole. Then once they’d all filled me with their cum so it was pouring down my thighs and mixing with my blood in an unending stream. That they untied me and bound my hands behind my back and forced me to my knees onto broken glass they smashed especially for the occasion. How when a scream tore out of my throat they filled it with their piss making me gag and choke on it before forcing my mouth closed and making me swallow it.

At some point Rhys crawls onto the bed at my feet and hugs my legs to his body as he wraps himself around me like a koala. He’s crying silent tears that soak through the thin sheets as he begs me to stop. Begs me for forgiveness for never truly seeing what was happening right in front of his eyes. He begs me to forgive him for failing me and tells me he wishes Neil was dead for everything he’s done to me.

I smile then, it’s cold and emotionless but it warms the marrow in my bones because I know it is only a matter of time until he is dead. His breaths are numbered, his freedom coming to an end.

I then go on to tell Rhys about Doctor Wolfe and how she works with Neil. Selecting the most broken boys from him to derive his sick pleasure from and while he breaks their bodies she shatters their minds until there is nothing left in them—no hope, no life, nothing. And when Neil has had his fill and the child is surplus to his requirements, I tell him how she manipulates them to take their own life. The memory of one of my last visits with Regina takes centre stage in my mind. It’s the day I realised she was a cold blooded killer.

“Unfortunately, recently, there have been a number of individuals I’ve been unable to help in time before they took matters into their own hands and…” She releases a heavy, resigned breath as if these circumstances really were beyond her control and had inflicted a deep emotional wound on her that was still raw. But then, she raises her eyes to meet mine and the words that pass through her lips freeze the blood in my veins, turning my whole body to ice.

“Sometimes the only way to help those beyond all reason is to guide them to a peaceful ending. It’s the most humane thing to do. I mean, when an animal is suffering, we don’t prolong its agony. Make it fester in its own torment. No, what do we do?” Black eyes look back at me. The thin white ring that had lingered there is now completely absorbed, replaced with those of a stone-cold killer. It’s not the colour that affects me but the simmering lust that emanates from every pore of her being as she continues. “We kill them.” Her hands twitch as if she wants to clap them with glee. It’s one thing knowing someone has the power to kill you, poison you, but it’s another seeing them fantasise about it in front of you. “I would end them.” She inhales, and a full-body shudder works its way through her. “I would end it. It’s cruel otherwise. Don’t you think, Kayden?” She cocks her head to the side, in that eerie way psychopaths seem to do as they study you, and observes me as if I’m under a microscope.

“What? No, with an animal, a loved pet, it’s the humane thing to do because they don’t fully understand why they are in pain in the first place.”

“What makes humans any different, hmm? We’re all animals, at the end of the day.” She blinks at me, as if imploring me to understand her despicable bloodlust. “You’d enjoy it. The power, the chance to take control. It’s a rush like nothing else.”

“No, I would… no, never.” I’m at a loss for words, my heart a dead weight in my chest. I try to swallow but it’s like razor blades are lodged in my throat and if I do swallow, I’ll only be facilitating her wishes, feeding her desires.

“You would. You like pain,” she purrs.

“What the fuck are you on about? I have to go. Our time is up.”

“No, you stay till I say you can leave.”

I try to move but it’s as if I’m held in place by invisible bindings. No matter how hard I try, nothing in my body works. I can’t blink, can’t move, can’t breathe.

“Yessss, this is good. Ugh, sometimes this job is just so draining. Having to conform, be what they want me to be, you know? Obviously, you do. I know more about you than you’ll ever realise.” She chackles. “Oh, yes, I’ve known about Neil’s inclinations for years. We have a wonderful partnership, he and I. I facilitate his needs and he sees to mine, supply and demand. It’s all very simple, really. I have access to what he wants. And then, when their usefulness is outlived, I’m allowed to indulge in my particular proclivities. It’s a win-win all around.”

The bed shakesunder Rhys’s weight as he clambers up my legs, each new memory I dredge up from the darkest recesses of my mind shattering a little more. “Please angel, tell me that’s all there is. I… I don’t think I can take it anymore.” Red rimmed eyes peer up at me through tear clogged lashes, begging for this to all be over. Pleading with me to end his torment. His cheeks are stained with a multitude of salt tracks but a fresh wave of tears never stops spilling from his eyes.

Fuck, how I want to tell him that’s everything, that the pain will stop and we can work on piecing ourselves back together as we lay wrecked, bleeding and broken on the floor. But now that I’ve opened the gates of hell; all the demons are unleashed, and rampaging freely. There is just one final truth that we must face head on. Together, side by side we stand as brothers-in-arms ready for the final battle. And it’s the most harrowing one of all…maybe blood was always thicker than water. I’m on a precipice, toes over the cliff edge facing the unending voice about to find out. This is the one that could be the final nail in the coffin of our story. Maybe my existence was always meant to be a tragedy rather than a love story.

My throat is raw from disuse, each breath a searing blaze tearing through my lungs. Swallowing is agony, like I’m ingesting shards of metal that tear into my already abused flesh and puncture my lungs. My tongue is coated in thick viscous blood, the cracks in my lips oozing as they are ravaged with every word I say—a fresh fissure ripping into my heart and soul. Struggling to remain anchored in reality, I teeter on the brink as each memory threatens to shatter my fragile psyche. The line between what’s real and what’s not frays with every revelation, until only a single thread remains, slowly unravelling.

“There is…” Fuck! I can’t. I can’t do this. I can’t bring myself to do it, knowing that Rhys will never look at me the same way again—with love and heartache swirling in his eyes, a vortex of pain threatening to consume me. It’s a devastation I’d willingly endure because I’m fucking selfish and can’t lose him. I wouldn’t survive it. Losing would mean that Neil finally won, leaving me with nothing left to fight for.

If the unthinkable does happen and Rhys walks away from me then my last breaths will be spent dragging the devil back to hell by any means necessary. It won’t be clean and look like an accident, no it will be a murder suicide. It’ll be bloody, it’ll be a testament to everything Neil has taken from me, I’ll make sure he pays from beyond the grave for his crimes.

“Angel.” Damp lips brush against my cheeks, tasting my tears as his hands cup my face, angling my head so our eyes lock. I can see my pain echoed in the stormy depths of his dark eyes. “I’m. Not. Going. Anywhere.” He traces my lips with the tip of his tongue, I open for him on a gasp as he drinks down my agony, my fear. Rhys holds me still as he plunders my mouth seeking reassurance in the connection we share. Electricity dances across my skin where he touches me. I shiver at the intensity as wave after wave of goosebumps roll across my skin, the sensation of his touch heightened by my fracturing emotional state. This could be our last kiss.

I melt into him, allowing him to hold me up, feeling too raw, as my tongue meets his stroke for stroke. I’m flayed open and bleeding out fast, my hands grip his shoulders wrapping around the material of his hoodie. As if I could pull him into me and merge our cells so we can never be parted even as judgement day for our toxic love dawns.

I tear my mouth away from him before I lose myself in the home he offers. “R-Rhys…I…we…can’t.” I swallow down the words refusing to be ripped from my heart. Hurt flashes across his face quickly before he schools his features and he sits back on his knees waiting for me to continue. “There’s one last thing I have to tell you… it’s part of the reason I ran…b-b-before.’’ I choke out, my fingers flex, needing the comfort of cold, hard steel between my fingers so I can inflect a more damning wound when he walks away from me forever.

“I told you,” he growls. “Nothing will change the way I look at you.”

I scoff, “Just remember you said that when I tell you what happened that day.” And as my mind is pulled back to the last time I saw Dustan, the room I’m in starts to fade away. I’m screaming in my head, arms flying out reaching for Rhys but they just fly through him like he’s an apparition and I’m left alone in the darkness as it works its way down my throat suffocating me.

Anticipation thickens in the air, and the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. Picking up the nondescript box, I pull my knife out of my pocket. Movement draws my eyes up to Dustan as he licks his lips, hunger pouring from him like a toxic fog poisoning everything around him. Cutting through the copious amounts of tape, I’m finally able to open the box. And find a number of different printed cards with results, decoding the information that was to be found on the result cards would tell me anything from my ethnicity results, DNA matches, and historical familial matches and locations.

“What am I meant to be looking for?”

“Flick through the DNA matches.” His voice is still water, dark and deep, predatory. “You’ll know when you see it.” He bites his lip to stop from saying more. It’s hard to miss the blue vein pounding in his neck.

With no choice, I skip the ethnicity card—great for college projects but clearly not what this fucking psycho is torturing me with—and select the one with DNA matches. It’s ironic how the cards are edged in rainbow-bright colours for something that could make or break a person’s life.

CARD 1 RESULTS

DNA MATCH: Kira Huxley

RELATION: Mother

CARD 2 RESULTS

DNA MATCH: Neil Dixon

RELATION: Father

CARD 3 RESULTS

DNA MATCH: Rhys Dixon

RELATION: Half Sibling

My eyes refuse to believe what is printed in stark black and white in front of me, my mind searching for the truth behind the illusion. Nausea writhes and twists inside me, like a coiling serpent with razor-sharp fangs ready to strike at any moment. The acrid taste of bile burns its way through my throat, leaving nothing but an ashy residue in its wake.

“What the fuck is this,” I roar, throwing the cards across the room. It’s as if someone has reached into my chest and violently ripped out my heart, leaving me to watch helplessly as they trampled all over it, laughing at my agony.

“Now, as a reward, you can open the black box.” And there he is, the fucking devil’s master, the manipulator, the soul eater.

My hands move of their own accord, reaching forwards, snatching the box off the table, and pulling off the lid without a second thought as to what might be inside. Gasping in shock, I pin my gaze on him. “What the fuck is this?” I growl as my words reverberate through the air and my body screams for the sweet release of oblivion. The skin on my arms and legs feels like it’s being invaded by a million ants, crawling and biting their way across me. I roll my neck and shoulders frantically, trying to alleviate the tension that’s spreading through me like a malicious spiderweb, threatening to suffocate me with its tight embrace.

“That?” he questions. “Is simply the solution.”

“A solution to what? I don’t?—“

“I forgot the sedatives and pain killers I’ve been mixing up for you have probably fucked your head up a bit more—oh, silly me.” He laughs, lost in a manic episode. “How could I have forgotten that little point?” His head tips to the other side, making him resemble an old animatronic toy. “Take it. Use it… Do the one thing you have wanted to do for years but haven’t because of Rhys.”

“No,” I bite out with a strength and finality I don’t truly feel. “I don’t want to. I love him… and…” I swallow down the glass, slicing me open from the inside. “He loves me too. I know it.”

“Ah, but will he still love you when he finds out you’re his half-brother? Hmmm…?” His penetrating black eyes stare back at me, not an ounce of human emotion to be found in them. “I never had Rhys down as a brother fucker, did you? People might have been able to look past the doctor who hooked up with his stepbrother, maybe revel in the taboo notion of it, live out a fantasy or two in the waiting room but just imagine how disgusted they would be to learn he got fucked by his half-brother like a pathetic little bitch.”

The anguished cryof a wounded creature pierces the air, slashing through my senses, cutting to the marrow of my bones. A crushing weight descends upon me, pressing me into the bed as if my chest has been torn asunder, exposing my still-beating heart to the world.

A strangled sound catches in my throat as I struggle to make sense of the chaos, but even with my eyes open, all I see is darkness. “This can’t be real. This can’t be happening.” His words shred through me like razors, reducing me to a shattered husk, my essence draining away until I’m little more than a pool of blood-soaked remnants, waiting for the final embrace of death.

Time stretches thin as each breath becomes a struggle. Rhys’s desperate pleas echo through the void, but their meaning is lost in the suffocating weight of despair. I plummet, spiralling into the abyss, descending into the shadows of oblivion.

With nothing left to fight for, who needs to breathe?

* * *

“Angel,come back to me. Oh god. Oh god. Not again. Not again. I can’t lose you.” Sharp rhythmic slaps land on my cheek. “Come back to me! You don’t get to leave me now! Not until I’ve helped you truly live.” His anguished voice gets clearer with every burning strike of my cheek. The searing pain washed away my soft lips and mumbled words so soft I couldn’t hear them but I could feel them. They’re a prayer, a vow. A promise. “Come back to me. Please. Please. P-please.”

“Scht-sto-stop,” I mumble, exhaustion weighing me down as my eyes lazily flutter open.

“Thank fuck. I thought I lost you.” Rhys’ words are at odds with the closed off look on his face. Once he’s content that I’m back in the room and functioning as well as I ever have, he pushes off the bed and returns to his seat next to me. Arms crossed, hands tucked up tight to his armpits.

“So that’s how it’s going to be, eh?” I snort. “You said you wanted the whole truth, well there it fucking is.” I spit my words and they hit him like with the precision of a sniper rifle, straight through his chest, clean entry wound but his heart and back torn the fuck up—just like me.

“No…I-I…” I observe Rhys closely as he curls into himself, pulling his legs up to his chest he buries his face in his jeans. His shoulders move with the weight of the agony tearing through him. It’s fucking hell on earth listening to him break down, I can see the physical toll it’s taking on his body.

“Rhys?” I ask softly. He doesn’t look up, just shakes his head, his fingers white knuckling his jeans.

“N-n-noo…” His words break off in a hiccuping sob that steals his breath.

“Rhys,” I start again licking my oozing lips. “Can you look at me please?” my chest pinches fearing his final dismissal but he surprises me as he looks up at me from where his head rests on his knees.

“Yeah,” he breathes, his tone defeated.

“I will never force you to choose me. If you think a better option exists, go. You have the choice. The power lies with you, little devil.” He flinches like he’s been struck by lightning and I fear my heart has beat for the last time. “I’m not here to hold you back.” I take a deep inhale using the time to shut that box, locking everything away and throwing it into the darkest reaches of my mind. “I will never make anyone choose me. I deserve to be chosen. I deserve to be loved for all that I am, all that I can be.”

“Y-you.”

“If you want to stay… do it because your heart, your mind—fuck—your soul choose me. That your mind told you, you belong here with me and your heart agreed.” I glare at him through water logged eyes, my vulnerability exposed as I sit here with my heart in my hands offering it to him. “Don’t do it out of guilt or obligation but for love. Love. Do it because you can’t face another day without me by your side and in your bed. That you need me like you need air to breathe. Like I need you more than my next breath.”

“But let me make one thing very clear, Rhys. I will never give up on you. Never. As long as there is air in my lungs, as long as my heart still beats. I’ll be waiting for you.”