Page 71 of Seven Lost Summers (Broken Oasis #3)

SKYLAR

L

ife

doesn’t

give

a

shit about me. It never has.

Not when I was thrown into one fucked-up foster home after another, passed around by strangers with dead eyes and fake promises. Tossed into rooms reeking of mildew and disappointment. Treated like I was nothing more than a broken fucking thing no one ever wanted to fix.

I stopped unpacking my bags when I was ten. Figured there was no fucking point. What’s the use of pretending you belong when every door you walk through slams shut before you’ve even learned their names?

You learn fast. Hope fades. Words dry up. Survival means vanishing before anyone notices you’re there.

Every place promising it was safe ended up being its own brand of hell. Some were cold and cruel. Some were quiet, and that was worse. Silence scraping against your ribs. Rules shifting with the mood of whatever fucker was in charge.

There’s no safety in this world. Just different ways of being torn apart.

The only family I’ve ever had are these other fucked-up foster kids they dumped me with. All of us cracked down the middle, barely holding it together with secrets and whatever rage we hadn’t burned through yet.

None of us chose this shit. We were only the unlucky ones. Shoved into the same sinking boat, throwing our pain at each other like it might help keep us afloat. All screaming into the dark, hoping someone might hear us before we all go under.

So I started building walls.

Thick ones. Cold, unbreakable fucking things. Brick by bitter brick. I laid them with every lie I was told, every slap I was given, every time someone looked at me and saw nothing worth keeping.

Now they’re so goddamn high, I don’t even know what’s on the other side anymore.

My mouth turned into a fucking weapon. A blade I honed with every betrayal, every stare telling me I wasn’t worth the trouble.

I didn’t speak to be heard. I spoke to wound.

Every word a cut. Every sentence a warning.

Sarcasm sharp enough to scar. Smirks cutting deeper than fists.

I struck first, bled them out with language, and called it survival.

Because softness… it’s blood in the fucking water, and I’ve already drowned in it too many times.

My heart… the fucker died a long time ago. If there’s anything left of it.

It’s buried so goddamn deep beneath shadows, regret, and everything I never said. I wouldn’t even recognize the fucker if it clawed its way out. It doesn’t beat. Doesn’t ache. Only festers, rotting slowly inside a body built to survive without it.

I’m not standing around waiting to be saved. Shit like that’s a fairytale they tell kids to make them sleep through the night. I stopped believing in being rescued the first time someone looked me in the eye and walked away, anyway.

There’s no knight in shining armor. No white horse. No hand reaching into the flames to drag me free. Only the smoke choking me and the burn that never goes away.

Right now, I’m slouched at the kitchen table in this godforsaken shithole the state has the balls to call a home.

A thick, sour scent clings to everything, even my fucking skin.

The linoleum’s fucked, sticky in places, some spots ripped to hell.

Every step reminds you exactly how little anyone gives a shit about the kids dumped here.

The walls are stained the color of piss, paint peeling, yellowed edges curling inward as if even the fucking paint wants to escape. Faded handprints linger, ghosts of whoever came before.

Above me, a light buzzes and flickers, desperate to fucking die but never quite making it. I watch it sputter and think, yeah, I’m the fucking same.

I drop my elbows onto the table’s beat-to-shit surface, skin dragging across splinters and dried-up streaks of glue older than me. I don’t flinch. Pain’s familiar. It’s there when I blink. When I breathe. When I fucking exist. It never fades. Only coils tighter, waiting to blow.

I don’t want to carry it. Don’t want to endure a fucking thing. Not the weight in my chest. Not the heat behind my eyes.

The door groans on its busted hinge, the same tired sound scraping through this place every fucking day, reminding me nothing in this hellhole ever changes.

Another round of discarded kids drifts through the doorway. They move slowly, shuffling across the cracked linoleum, shoulders bent, eyes empty, faces drained of anything human. The ones who stopped asking questions because they knew the answers were always bullshit.

But they all wear the same forgotten face now.

They shuffle past me in a line, one after the other, skin drained pale beneath the harsh flicker of the light overhead. Their eyes are glazed, their steps mechanical, bodies moving on instinct alone.

The door slams shut behind them. The sound cracking through the silence and leaving the air thick with something I can’t name. Something shifts inside me, as if a fault line has split open beneath my ribs.

I feel him before I lift my head. Heat rolling off him, weight dragging at the edges of the room, a dangerous pull coiling low and refusing to let go.

Zane fucking Rivera.

He doesn’t walk in. He fucking arrives, the air shifting the second his shadow fills the doorway. He carries himself with the force of a storm tearing through a sky already surrendered, every step a reminder nothing in his path gets out untouched.

He stands in the doorway with his arms loose at his sides, posture easy but charged.

A stance declaring he owns whatever space he steps into.

The leather jacket tells the story without him saying a word, stinking of backseat fucks, bathroom quickies, and fights he never lost. It’s chaos stitched into leather, bragging for him before he even opens his mouth.

His mouth curves with the ghost of a grin, all arrogance and filth, a grin promising he’ll ruin you and make you beg for it.

Every line of him drips with untouchable confidence, every step a dare, reckless to the bone.

He’s chaos wrapped in swagger, the storm every girl swears she can handle until she’s already too deep to crawl out.

And you know it long before he opens his mouth.

His shoulders roll back as he steps into the room, warping the air and dragging it with him.

Swagger clings to every movement, carved from the fights he walked away from grinning and the rules he never gave a shit about breaking.

It should piss me off. Should make me scoff, roll my eyes, and turn the fuck away.

But it doesn’t.

The heat sinks low in my gut, hot and wrong, too sharp to ignore and too right to resist.

Trouble doesn’t need words. Trouble doesn’t need fists. It moves the way he does, every step a reminder he was built to destroy. And every inch of me fucking feels it.

He doesn’t utter a single word. His presence says enough.

The room shifts, the air turning heavy, silence stretching until it presses hard against my chest. Every inch of space bends around him, drawn tight to the gravity he carries without effort.

And I can’t stop myself.

I stare.

His hair falls in dark, careless strands across his forehead, framing a face cut sharp enough to wound.

High cheekbones. A jaw carved from stone, built to grit through pain without ever breaking.

His mouth is pure temptation, curved in a way that pulls dangerous thoughts to the surface, the kind of curve making sin feel inevitable.

He is beautiful, and he fucking knows it.

Cocky awareness runs through every line of him, every inch of confidence he wears as easily as the leather on his back.

And then there are his eyes.

Storm-gray, cold and unreadable until they lock on me. When they do, the rest of the world disappears. He doesn’t simply look—he strips me bare.

His stare dragging across my skin. There is no trace of innocence to mistake for sweetness.

This isn’t the shallow hunger I’ve seen in boys who only care about what’s under your clothes.

This is something else. Something darker… heavier.

The kind of hunger that doesn’t ask. It fucking takes.

It’s filthy. A violation built from his stare scraping over my skin, cutting down to bone, prying at every place I’ve tried to bury. There is something twisted in it. Something broken.

And the worst part?

I don’t look away. I fucking burn beneath it.

Whatever he’s hiding in his stare cuts me open, sinking too deep, crawling beneath my skin until all I want is to rip it out with my bare hands.

He smirks. One corner of his mouth lifts, dragging with it a dangerous kind of arrogance. It’s cockiness born in blood and bruises.

He leans against the doorframe as if the room belongs to him, arms crossed, body loose but edged with restraint, every line of him radiating a challenge meant only for me.

The silence stretches, thick with his smug dare, a question pulsing in the air neither of us speaks aloud.

Who will break first? Who gives in? Who loses?

I hold his stare, refusing to flinch, even as the heat coils tighter between us.

I lift my chin and let my mouth curve into the coldest fucking smile I can summon. A smile meant to wound, meant to scream I’ve already won even if the inside of me is bleeding raw.

I want him to speak first. To blink. For him to taste the sting of standing in front of someone who won’t fucking break.

His eyes stay locked on mine, unwavering. Confidence rolls off him, the kind sinking its teeth into soft skin and waiting for the bleed.

I meet it with everything I have. Spine straight. Muscles coiled. My heart thuds hard behind my ribs, but I don’t flinch.

He wants to see what I’ll do when I’m pushed.

So I give it to him.

“You lost?” I say, voice low, laced with venom. “Or just wandering through hell to see who’s still breathing in this dump?”

The words hit their mark. He doesn’t even blink. His mouth curves into something that isn’t a smile. Something meant to slice skin and leave a mark.

And fuck, it does.