At fourteen, I created a whole new personality. I was bigger, thanks to a growth spurt and lifting weights in Jake’s garden. I was more skilled in fighting. I was more skilled in the art of not fighting too. Watching the older guys taught me that a lot of battles were won by simply looking like you were ready to smack someone up.
‘You need to back off, Henry,’ I clench out.
Any other time, and I’d beat him faceless.
I stand up and tell Amy it’s time for us to go. No way in hell am I gonna let this prick blurt out something that’ll fuck up my plans to fix her.
When we go to leave, Henry takes Amy’s arm, his grip tight as he tries to steer her away.
‘Come on, babe, just one dance. Fuck, I’ve always wanted to party with the Mayor’s hot-as-fuck daughter.’
Time doesn’t slow down. Everything’s in fast-forward.
And I explode.
Faster than a shooting bullet, I grab the side of Henry’s shoulder with my fist and crush my forearm against his throat. I smash his back against the wall behind.
I am going to slowly kill him.
I hear Amy beg, ‘Please don’t do this,’ but the monster inside me is smothered in the dark. I can’t fucking control myself.
I lower my head like a bull and crush Henry’s windpipe like it’s putty in my hand.
‘I will kill you if you ever touch her again. I’ll fucking rip out your fucking guts. I’ll fucking kill you, you little bitch.’
I draw back a fist with my free hand, ready to crack in Henry’s head. But then I hear Amy’s voice like an angel through the fires of Hell.
‘Please don’t do this, Shepherd. Please, you’re scaring me.’
I turn to her, my forearm still crushing Henry to an inch of his life. Amy’s eyes are pooling with tears, brimming with fear.
It’s the wrong everything.
The gut-wrenching feeling that hits me smears the world into a pounding blur. The pain keeps time with my heart, distorting my mind, one beat at a time.
Amy is looking at me, eyes wide with horror.
It’s too late to turn back the clock, end bad decisions. Whatever lies I spin to the outside world, I am naked under her eye.
Ugly.
Wrong.
Liar.
Monster.
I release Henry. His mate stands behind him, trying to pull his drunk friend away. Henry threatens something I couldn’t give two shits about, then scurries away. The next time he snakes his way into my club, I’ll break his goddamn legs.
Amy and I leave The Wicked Witch.
We drive in total silence.
My heart feels like it’s full of stones and dirt. Toxic dust.
Amy can’t look at me.
I can’t stop looking at her.
We reach Swan Lake. Amy gets out of the car. I open my mouth to say something, to take in some air. But all I can feel are those rocks inside my damned heart.
I watch her until I see her safely inside the building.
I’ll always remember that first night in prison. Lights out, I was too wired to sleep so I lay down on my bunk and listened to the sounds coming from the other cells. Laughter, shouting, whooping, people banging on the bars. Sounds of excitement, manic happiness, frustration and anger. It was like listening to the calls of animals in the darkness of a jungle night. Predators and prey. I knew which I was going to have to be if I wanted to survive.
I was just fifteen. Locked up twenty-three hours a day.
No sunshine.
Unwanted.
Trash.
The scared little kid I used to be . . . he was back. I lived to survive death on a daily basis from other inmates, using violence to stay off a beating, a stabbing.
I place a hand on the left side of my V-line, exactly where my scar lies. Violence was my life. But now, now I’m realising I want something else.
I bash the steering wheel with my fist three times, and scream manically.
I’ve broken the only promise I made that wasn’t a fucking lie.
I’ve just broken Amy’s heart for the second time.
No wonder I scar my body with tattoos — memoirs cemented into my skin of all the shit I’ve seen, felt.
Just like my scars. Just like my name. A constant fucking reminder of pain. How can I ever hope to give back Amy her happiness — happiness I killed in her — when I hold on to pain so tightly my whole goddamned visage reeks of it?
Fuck but this is all a mistake. A huge mistake. Not just this mission to find my father, or coming back to Greystone, but Amy, too — a huge fucking mistake.
I get out of the car and go up to my room, pent up and angry and not sure what I’m gonna do. I want to pound my fists into something as my thoughts spiral quickly out of control. I understand then that Amy is a never. Love be damned — love isn’t enough for us.
My throat feels tight and I swallow hard at that realisation. If love is wanting someone to be happy then it doesn’t matter how much I love Amy because I know I can never make her happy.
I broke her teenage spirit and Amy’s probably never been truly happy since then. What makes me so vain, so conceited, so fucking presumptuous to think I can provide her with that?
I’m a freak. I know that. I even fucking enjoy it. I enjoy the looks of fear I provoke in other men. I enjoy the way I can overpower any man. I enjoy my superiority — so what if I’m mad in the head? I’m better than them!
But I am the cost.
The
