“You broke her heart, you know that? And you
broke my fucking heart…I needed that letter. I needed to know she
loved me, but you took that from me too…”
“You are just like her! You’re selfish and
hateful! You probably take those evil drugs and spread your legs
for any man who walks by. You’re despicable. Just like her. She
burns in Hell, just like you will.”
“Florence!” Garlan bellowed.
Everyone quieted. Exhausted, Kyra looked at
her grandfather, who had finally had enough. Florence cringed away,
her face paling and her tears falling harder. She sniffled, looking
between her husband and Kyra.
“That’s enough. I can’t take this anymore,”
he said, shaking his head and looking as if the weight of his
wife’s bitterness had aged him more than time. He walked past
Florence and handed the letter to Kyra. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know
about the letter. If I had, I would’ve made sure you got it. I hope
one day you can forgive us for what we did to you and your mother.”
Garlan turned his head to his wife, his expression loathing. “If we
ever deserve your forgiveness.”
Kyra looked down at the letter. It was
completely ruined. The water had turned the paper into shredding
clumps of goo. The ink bled and blurred into an unreadable mass.
The only link Kyra had to her mother was ruined. She’d ruined
it.
The line between her and her mother was
blurring. She felt the darkness inside her open its gaping maw and
devour her. She was cracking apart, right there, in the house of
her enemy.
A sob escaped her throat, and she turned and
ran. The door was still open where she’d barged in. She didn’t
bother closing it. Halfway down the steps, she fell, wrenching her
ankle to the side. Sobbing, blinded by her tears, Kyra tried to
stand. She would’ve fallen if not for strong hands wrapping around
her waist.
“I’ve got you,” Hale said.
Kyra looked up at him. Water dripped down
his face, but his eyes were full of real love and compassion. She
wilted against his arms, sobbing even harder. “It’s ruined,” she
said over and over.
Hale tucked her into his truck. He must have
followed her over and waited outside for her. The thought tore
through her harder than the wind that blew around them. The storm
was upon them, but she had already been through one.
She was destroyed. Everything was gone. All
that remained was a skeleton.
thirty-one
P
lease just go!”
Kyra howled.
Hale hovered in the door to her bedroom. “I
don’t think you should be alone like this…”
He was right, she thought. If she’d told him
about the cutting, he would know not to leave her. He would know
that the only thing she wanted in the whole wide world right then
was a shiny metal blade. He should stay, but the rational part of
Kyra wasn’t strong enough to tell him that, to tell him that she
needed help right now. She was too lost, too ravaged, to speak the
words. She’d told no one but Stevie that she was broken. No one
else knew. And Stevie didn’t know what was happening right now.
She didn’t know that Kyra had fallen into a
hole so deep that she couldn’t feel anything but the hollow echo of
her silent screams around her as she plummeted down and down and
down.
“I don’t want you here!” she shouted. “Leave
me alone!”
Hale still hesitated. He was torn between
going and staying. “Kyra…”
“Get out of my fucking house!” She threw her
laptop at him. It bounced off the wall and landed on the floor,
cracking apart like a split fruit. She screamed in frustration.
Nothing was working to make him leave, and she needed to feel that
cutting pain before her heart exploded inside her chest. Hale
advanced toward her once again, his hands stretched out, reaching
for her. And that made her snap.
“I bet Cade tried to drown himself just to
get away from you!”
Hale jerked as if she’d slapped him. The
compassion that had been in his eyes moments before iced over.
She’d done the trick.
“You know what, Kyra? Fuck you!” Hale
shouted, his rage twisting his face. He slammed her bedroom door
hard enough to crack the picture frame that’d been hanging on her
wall. She hadn’t even noticed it.
He’d framed his drawings for her.
thirty-two
K
yra didn’t know
what time it was. It was so dark outside that she couldn’t tell if
it was night or day. The storm rocked around the house, making the
old structure howl and screech like a banshee. She covered her ears
and screamed until her head threatened to split apart.
She felt nothing but her own pain. The
darkness ate itself around her and bore down on her like a monster
with snapping jaws and dripping drool. This was it, she thought.
This was where she’d go finally crazy.
Her eyes flickered to the bathroom. The door
was open. Inside the medicine cabinet was a razor blade. She
couldn’t hold off the desire any longer.
She didn’t want to kill herself. This
wouldn’t be a suicide attempt, she told herself. She was in
control. She just needed one cut, one little slash. Besides, she
just wanted some relief. Relief from the howling inside of her.
Relief from the everlasting fall through the darkness inside her.
Relief from the pictures of her mother that played across her mind
in an endless loop.
Tutus and dance recitals. Birthday cake
crumbs and melting candles. Lila on Garlan’s shoulders, laughing
and clinging to his head. A whole life. A good life. A short one
too.
Something banged against the side of the
house and Kyra fell out of bed.
She crawled to the bathroom.
This had to end.
thirty-three
D
eeper.
Deeper this time.
Don’t be scared. Make it deeper to feel.
Make it deeper to float away.
Deeper and it’ll take away those bad
feelings.
Kyra whimpered at the searing fire
stretching across her skin. The tears pressed against the back of
her eyes. But the pain…the pain was the most intoxicating relief.
It drowned out the black hole that writhed inside her.
Even if only for a moment. And then she had
to cut again.
Like the princess and the magic, she
thought. A laugh bubbled from her mouth. She choked on it, gagged,
and cut again.
The blood trickled down the bone of her
wrist. It felt cool against her feverish skin. Shivering on the
bathroom floor, she watched its inching path down her thumb. There
it hovered, curling into itself until it fell ever so slowly to the
floor. There it splattered, sending tiny droplets over the
beautiful white tile. There it lay, waiting for company.
As more drops fell, Kyra wondered if her
blood would stain the grout.
Hale would hate that.
thirty-four
T
hey kept coming
back. Kyra couldn’t keep them at bay. The tsunami of emotions gave
her no relief. She felt them all, the entire gamut. They were
relentless, battering against her.
The darkness. The princess. A kingdom of
white horses and knights in shining armor and castles that glinted
in the warm, summer sunlight. There, just there, in a sleep so deep
that not even the sadness could reach her.
She shook her head. No, not the sleep. Just
relief. She only wanted relief. So she kept cutting. She kept
thinking she was in control, only to feel it slip away more and
more with every passing moment.
“Please,” she prayed. “Please.”
She couldn’t stop. She prayed to stop. She’d
lost control.
Lost herself.
thirty-five
S
he crawled out to
her room, stopping once because her body was shaking too badly to
move. Her vision slanted horribly, but she managed to make it. She
threw her hand up to the night stand, fumbling about until she
found her phone. The glass lamp tumbled off the table and crashed
to the floor beside her. It shattered inches from Kyra’s face. She
ripped her phone from the wall where it had been charging.
Blood streaked across her phone as she
fought to pull up a text to Stevie. Tears coursed down her cheeks,
knowing that she’d finally done it. She’d finally broken herself
beyond repair.
“Hello? Kyra?”
Kyra blinked down at the phone. She’d
somehow called Stevie instead of texting her. She hadn’t meant to
do that. Her brain was too sluggish to keep up. Another course of
shivers cascaded through her body.
Cold. So cold. So tired.
“Kyra? Dude, what’s up?”
“Stevie?” Her voice cracked, and she choked
over the dusty dryness of her throat.
“Kyra? Kyra, what’s wrong?”
“Stevie, I…” She looked down at her arms.
Gashes spread across them. She hadn’t kept them neat or ordered.
There was no pattern, no method. It was just a gruesome
checkerboard of a girl who needed relief, a girl who’d lost
control.
She couldn’t cover these marks. There would
be no hiding now.
“Kyra! Talk to me!”
Stevie sounded frantic. She sounded scared
to death. Looking at her arms, Kyra thought her friend might have a
right to be scared. She couldn’t remember what she’d said.
“She told me a story about a princess and
the magic that kept the darkness away, but it doesn’t work.” She
sniffed, feeling lightheaded. She looked away from the blood and
swallowed loudly. “It never works.”
“What the fuck are you talking about? Did
you cut yourself, Kyra? Did you hurt yourself?”
She couldn’t help it; she looked back down
at her arms. “No.”
“Oh,” Stevie said, sounding confused. “Dude,
are you drunk? Cause you should hear yourself right now. You really
had me freaked out.”
She laughed, the sound making Kyra laugh
too. The storm was getting worse. The banging on the side of her
house grew louder.
“I didn’t cut myself.”
“Well, that’s good. You know it’s not too
nice to call your friend who’s in alcohol rehab when you’re
drunk.”
“I couldn’t feel it anymore,” Kyra mumbled.
She fell back to the floor, cracking her head against the wood. The
phone fell from her hand, but she still heard Stevie’s reply.
“Couldn’t feel what? Wait…Kyra?”
She picked the phone up. She had to try a
couple times because her hands were slick with blood. “The cuts. I
couldn’t feel them anymore. So I cut deeper to feel it. To feel
something besides all the…the pressure in my head. But…but I think
I did too much.”
“What?” Stevie shrieked. She started
screaming to someone in the background for help. “Kyra, what
happened? Are you at your house?”
“I didn’t feel it, I swear. That’s why I
kept cutting. I wasn’t trying to hurt myself. I just needed
relief.” Kyra sobbed. “She’s dead, Stevie.”
“Who?”
“My mom. She’s dead, and I have
nothing.”
“Listen here, you have everything, you
bitch. Now get a towel and wrap up your arms. Do it now. Wrap them
fucking tight or I swear I will kill you myself.”
Kyra heard glass shattering downstairs. “The
storm’s hurting my house,” she mumbled before she blacked out.
thirty-six
K
yra!”
Something stung across the side of her face.
Blurrily, she blinked her eyes, looking up to see a figure shrouded
in shadows looming above her. She tried to cringe away, but the
figure held her tight.
“Damnit, Kyra, stay awake!”
The figure sounded a lot like Hale, but Kyra
thought it was more likely Death or maybe even the prince from the
fairy tale. She was lifted into the air rather indelicately. The
figure kept slapping her and shaking her until she bit her
tongue.
“I should’ve known…I should’ve…” The figure
was sobbing as they bounced down the steps. Before they were even
outside, Kyra felt the drops of water like rain dripping down onto
her face. “Please, be okay. Be okay. I love you. Kyra, I love
you.”
thirty-seven
T
he first time Kyra
woke, she was in a hospital. Slow, continual beeping filled the
room. She was too weak to move, but she couldn’t if she wanted to.
She felt the restraints tight around her bandaged wrists.
Outside her room, through a large glass
window, Hale was wrapped in Cade’s arms, his massive shoulders
wilted over and shaking with sobs. The sight was wrong, off
somehow. Hale was the protector, the fist around all those he
loved. He was supposed to be the one who held instead of the one
who was held. But he looked small and broken. Cade’s long, lanky
arms were the perfect length to envelope the broad, bowed form of
his brother.
Both protectors. Both perfectly molded to
weather the storms for each other.
Cade met her eyes through the window,
glaring as if he hated her.
Kyra understood. She hated herself too. She
turned her head away and went back to sleep.
thirty-eight
T
hree weeks later,
Kyra returned to her house. She’d spent a few days in the hospital
while her wounds healed. She’d suffered bad blood loss and shock,
and if it hadn’t been for Hale returning to her house to finish
their fight and then breaking in when she didn’t answer, she
probably would’ve died. The hospital released her into the care of
Dr. Clemens. She’d spent the next couple of weeks healing at The
Lodge.
Her aunt and uncle had come to see her many
times. Stevie and Cade had come too. Cade was like a puppy
following her around, but she was committed to her sobriety first
and foremost, she told him. Then she would roll her eyes at Kyra.
Hale never came. Kyra made the mistake of asking about him once,
but Cade had looked so uncomfortable that she didn’t ask again.
Never again did she catch Cade glaring at her.