Page 10 of Make Me Bleed

It was all about Luke and what he did to me and how it changed me into someone I didn’t want to be… someone Icouldn’tbe.

Until it became all about him.

And then, he shattered everything I thought I knew and became my fucking life.

Abel Silver wrapped every ugly part of himself around me and made his home within my chest, buried as deep as he couldget. And then, he ripped himself out and left a gaping hole where he used to be and left me.

The scars we shared made me bleed.

And now, this is who I am.

An empty vessel of his pain and destruction.

By the time class is finally over, my skin is itching to get the fuck out and away from it all—and it’s only the first class of the day.

I rush out of the room and through the halls as quickly as I can until I’m out in the crisp autumn air, a cigarette to my lips before the door is even closed behind me.

“Those things will kill you,” Gabe says from behind me, and I can’t bite back my groan.

“Jesus Christ, you’re fucking everywhere. All the time,” I complain.

“Mhm,” he hums noncommittedly.

“I don’t need a damn babysitter.”

“Your drinking problem suggests otherwise,” he retorts.

My footsteps falter, and I nearly trip over my next step. “I don’t have a problem,” I mumble, pulling a long drag off my smoke.

Gabe’s quiet for a long moment. So long, my skin starts to crawl. “That’s a joke, right? You’re joking?”

“No, Gabriel. I’m not,” I snap out, jaw clenched tight as I crush the filter between my teeth, tasting bitterness as it seeps into my tongue.

Gabe starts laughing. It’s boisterous and chaotic. I rear back slightly at the volume and hysteria that seems to leak from his pores as it continues on for what seems like longer than it should.

“Wow, that was funny,” he says easily, wiping tears from the corners of his eyes.

“I’m glad you find me so humorous,” I mutter, feeling confused and irritated as I flick my cigarette butt across the courtyard.

“It’s pathetic, really,” he drawls, and I freeze, feet stalling in the middle of the damp grass.

“Excuse me?”

“Oh, come off it, Peris,” he says tiredly. “You’re a fucking alcoholic, and you’re killing yourself.”

His words draw me up short. Words of defense sit on my tongue, ready to spill venom, but they don’t come. There’s nothing but internal contempt and self-hatred filling my lungs and burning its way through my veins.

Finally, I settle on the same defense I always spit when nothing better comes. “You don’t know?—”

He throws up his hand, cutting me off. “Yeah. I don’t knowshit.I got that.” And then, I watch him walk away from me, and he should stay away. Like, really. He should, but he fucking won’t.

He’ll be back later because even though I treat him as shitty as everyone else, he still comes back again and again, enduring my abuse for reasons I can’t really begin to understand. And even though I can’t stand it, I still let him because I can’t fucking be alone.

It’s pathetic.

I’m pathetic.

And lost.