Page 122 of Unapologetic Obsession

For the first time tonight, I took him in. Dark shadows hung beneath his eyes like he hadn’t slept in days. His immaculate hair was disheveled. The polished veneer was starkly missing.

If I didn’t know any better, I would think that I had taken a part of him away by making myself inaccessible. Something twisted in my chest at his vulnerability.

I furiously stomped over my weak emotions. The warehouse. The hardwood floor against my back. My throat raw from pleading with him. I forced myself to remember those brutal images. He said he didn’t give a shit about what I wanted and proved it with his actions. He was the master of manipulation, and I was falling for it again.

I wanted him to be equally angry, so I didn’t have to be considerate of the small ounce of real feelings he had expressed. “I don’t have time for this.”

I was about to turn away, but an unfamiliar crack in his generally icy tone stopped me. “You forgot everything that happened back then.”

“What?”

His eyes dropped to my abdomen, and I realized he was referring to my scars.

“Is this a fetish thing?” I asked, heat rising in my cheeks. “Why are you so obsessed with my scars?”

“They brought you back to me.” There was no mask, sarcasm, or even a hint of arrogance in his claim.

I stared at him, trying to read the lines around his mouth and the despondency in his eyes. What was with him tonight?

“Do you really not remember anything that happened back then?” he asked, his voice miles from the glacial detachment I’d come to expect.

“What are youtalking about?” Did he miss mesomuch that he had gone into a stupor of confusion?

“That day, you didn’t tell me your name. But I knew it was you the moment I saw your scars.” He stared at my belly. “Why can’t you remember me, Little One?”

His words collided with my memory and bounced off. My knees nearly buckled at the force of it, and I clung to the balcony railing to steady myself. Cold clarity flooded my veins as pieces locked into place with terrible precision.

The realization hit me with the force of a thousand gunshots—it was never Damon on that rooftop. It was Caden.

My arms pumped, my legs cramped, but I didn’t let it slow me down as I climbed the stairs. Just one more flight of stairs. I was in immense pain and knew what I had to do the moment I threw the door open to the rooftop.

My hoodie rattled in the crosscurrent of the unforgiving wind, ballooning out from my body. Without thinking, Ipressed my palms to the freezing metal rail and climbed over. My feet found the concrete lip at the edge as I leaned over to stare at the river underneath. The drop was terrifying. But what was worse was the pain shooting up from my belly.

My fingers instinctively tightened around the railing as I hovered at the edge. Fat tears dropped onto my cheeks. I didn’t want to do this, but at least the pain would be over the moment I jumped.

A sound behind me broke my tunnel vision. I tensed, ready for a nurse’s shout or the heavy footfall of a security guard. But the voice that came was flat, amused, and utterly unimpressed.

“Are you going to do it?” the bored voice asked.

I glanced over my shoulder. Blue eyes, deeper than the river below, studied me curiously. He was fourteen or fifteen, but you would think he was older by his towering height. He was even taller than my father, with shoulders too broad for someone his age. I had seen him around before. He was one of the older kids from our circle, though I had never spoken to him.

He had a cigarette in his hand. He took a drag, not at all in a hurry to talk me out of this or concerned about my fatality. I didn’t know how to react to his casual indifference.

When he stepped forward, I flinched. “Stay where you are, or I’ll do it.”

“No, you won’t.”

“What do you mean I won’t?”

Nodding at the water, he flicked his cigarette into it. I watched as it tumbled down, disappearing into the blue. I gulped. He had done it purposefully to show me what awaited me if I followed through. “You would have done it already if you were serious about it.”

This guy was seriously annoying. “That’s because you’re distracting me.”

He looked at the sky. “Are you still talking? Jump already. Just don’t half-ass it.”

“How can I half-ass a suicide?” I asked, irritated.

It wasn’t lost on me that I had barely spoken a word to anyone since the ‘incident,’ but something about his stoic nature frustrated me enough to speak.