Finn was tougher than we gave her credit, though, and stayed the course. She’s also found it in her heart to forgive me despite my cruelty and even that of my brother, who’s currently locked away in a mental hospital after stalking and attempting to kill her.
I should have seen past the fear back then to the soul that shone beneath. Her arrival may have kicked off the inevitable end, but her story would be as interwoven and painful as mine, and if I had been a better person, the bitter taste of regret foul on my tongue would be that much easier to bear.
She’s also forgiven Colt, and they’re together. Despite his extreme cruelty, their love blazes between them like a red haze over the landscape for all to see - or at least for me to see.
I suppose their relationship is a message of hope, but I’m too fucking jaded to see it. There is no happily ever after for me, just this never-ending sense of nothingness I can’t let loose.
In Finn’s soft smile, I recognize a fellow survivor, we may have had different battles and overcome our own evils, but we both know with our shared look of loss what it does to your psyche.
Finn was lucky, though. Her injuries, for the most part, healed over time, while mine line my body like war wounds, and unfortunately, my instinct is to shy away from the specter of people seeing them, my shame, their knowledge, something I can’t battle but only accept as another piece of me torn away.
However, even with this, the warrior in me revels in knowing they mark me as a survivor, for there’s a savage lurking below the surface who will do whatever it takes to survive.
Colt turns with a friendly grin, and I marvel at the change to his countenance. Once upon a time, he was a broody cruel asshole who thrived on violence and mayhem, but Finn’s presence has tamed him, and the happy he exudes looks good on him.
Dropping my stuff in the sand at my feet, I look around uncomfortably, knowing I refuse to back down and give up, but it doesn’t mean facing everyone isn’t fraught with tension.
“Hey,” I murmur, ignoring my husky, barely-there voice, one of the many scars I cannot hide. I sound like a chain smoker with a pack-a-day habit, but whatever, maybe I can get into the phone sex operator business? Bright side, eh?
“Hey, I’m so glad you could make it. I love your hair,” she says, touching her own as she admires mine.
Biting back the bitter response on the tip of my tongue, for I had no choice with the new style, after all, it was cut painfully from my head with a dull knife while my ex-boyfriend held me down with his body and raged at me like a lunatic, I rasp, “Thanks.”
Colt steps forward and pulls me into a hug, and it’s perfectly awkward for a minute until I relax into his embrace, emotion pricking at my lids. Physical touch without threat is anathema to me, and I’m simultaneously repulsed and grateful for Colt’s attempt at intimacy.
“Hey douche, let loose the ho and help me set up the volleyball net,” a gravelly voice calls behind us.
Closing my eyes against the inevitable, I screw my mouth into the proximity of a casual smile and thank god I don’t have to worry about my eyes ensconced safely behind my glasses.
Here goes nothing.
Turning away from Colt, I faced the boy turned man who was the object of my obsession since before I knew what being a girl in lust with a boy meant. And in my more pathetic moments, I thought he was my soulmate, pulled toward him by an inexplicable need that could only mean that and more, but I was wrong, so very wrong.
In the end, he was only the guy who took my virginity and left me breathless in a strange room with a fucking picture of the ocean on the wall. Hayden Franks is my kryptonite, and I know this, I’ve guarded against it since forever and left the feeling behind when I was trapped, but now, after everything that’s gone down, inexplicably, my heart picks right up where it left off, pulsing painfully in my chest at the sight of him.
He’s tall and strong, with wiry muscles and beautiful tattoos gracing his body along with a lush mouth wicked with sin. Currently, his obsidian eyes glare at me out of a face world-weary and tired. He’s always been rough around the edges, as though he’s seen things I can’t imagine, but then again, so have I.
Running my eyes avidly over his body, I ignore the pulse in my clit, and cross my arms over my chest to hide the evidence of my desire. I will die before I ever let Hayden know the power he has over me again.
Hayden’s brow dips over his eyes before he pulls his expression back into bored nonchalance. I suspect he didn’t recognize me, not with my new hairdo, slimmer physique, and extended absence, but now he knows, and there’s no hiding.
He ignores me, as he always has, with the exception of the one night where we came together. It was amazing and real, raw, and visceral, and over before it started. It was also the harbinger of the bad decisions to come, and it's hard to separate that stupid choice from the ones I made shortly after.
A path that brought me here broken but not bent, a reminder that I have to acknowledge my sins and forgive myself.
Hayden is bad news, but then again, so am I.
Grunting, Colt says, “I’m coming, dick. What about you, Princess?”
Finn gives him a beatific smile, her face lighting up with her love, and I have to turn my head away from the sight, the beauty so painful it physically hurts my chest.
“I’ll be
