Am I on the floor?

I need to open my eyes.

I take a deep breath, and a heavy throbbing whirls through my head, making me dizzy.

I open my eyes, but nothing is there.

I try again.

And again.

No. No, no no.

My hands fly up, moving over my eyelids and I blink, feeling my eyelashes flick across my skin swiftly. They’re open.

A sharp cry slips out. “No.”

Hands grab mine, moving them from my face, but I smack the person’s touch away and squeeze my eyes shut. My palms plant beside me and I scurry backward until I hit something warm and solid.

“Brielle, stop.”

Captain.

“Just breathe,” he continues. “Tell us you’re okay.”

“I can’t... I ...” I swallow. Hanging my head and covering my eyes. A hiss follows as I touch my face, and wetness coats my fingers. It’s warm.

Blood?

“Oh my god!” I try to stand, but I’m held down.

“Get the car, now!” This comes from Maddoc, but whoever he’s speaking to must not move fast enough, because it shouted again and three times as loud. “I said now!”

The floor vibrates beneath my body and moisture fills my eyes, finds my cheeks, and soaks my palms completely.

“Brielle, look at me. Let me see.”

I blink wildly in my palms, take a long and full breath, and lift my head.

My eyes are open, but I can’t see.

Blackness is all there is.

My cries are silent and have nothing to do with the ache on the back of my head or the burn along my temple, the sting in my chest, but everything to do with my stolen sight.

This is the longest it’s stayed black.

It’s normally only short periods of time, fifteen or forty-five seconds, enough time for me to panic even more, make it worse and then force myself into a calmer state.

It always works.

Why isn’t it working?!

“Why isn’t what working?”

I freeze.

“My... I...” I close my lids one last, long minute, leaving them that way for five full breaths, and when I reopen them, the room comes back into view. It’s nothing but a shadowed silhouette, but I can see.

I see Royce helplessly slumped against the wall, Maddoc holding him up as his body hangs limp in his arms. His head is dropped back against the wall, lips parted, and brows drawn in.

With a black cloud surrounding him, he forces his gaze to mine and holds.

A shuddered breath pushes past his lips, his eyes squeezing tight.

And then he walks away.

Somehow, with nothing but a world of gloom and gray in front of me, his departure colors it spades darker.

My limbs grow too heavy to hold, a sudden wave of exhaustion overcoming me.

“I think I’m going to be sick,” I gasp, my head spinning, my body breaking out into a full sweat.

The voices around me grow muffled, and my eyes close.

“She’s passing out again,” is shouted.

Darkness wins.

Chapter 32

Royce

I don’t remember leaving the school, but suddenly I’m standing in the middle of a hospital room, and everything inside me is deep and dark and fucking tragic.

I try to wash out the realization of the moment, but it’s creeping in, taunting me, mocking the parts of me that believed I could ever do right and reconfirming I’m nothing but a reckless fuck up who will forever remain one.

No matter how bad I wish I could be, the more Brielle claims she sees.

Fact is, I’m not more. I need to stop trying to be and embrace who I am.

I’m a dick, I ruin.

I break.

My goal for today, above all, was to keep Brielle safe. That was number one, and it went out the window the second I smashed through it.

I couldn’t control myself, and to be honest, I didn’t even try.

I wanted to fuck the man up as much as possible. He deserved a beating and more.

A good man would have wanted to protect his girl from seeing that.

Decent one would have at least cared.

I did neither and look where it led.

I went in there to protect my girl from harm, and I’m the motherfucker who ended up hurting her.

I hit her.

Square across the temple when I wound my hand back, and my fucking god... she fell.

Brielle went straight down onto her back, went unconscious, and all I did was stand there and fucking die inside.

I didn’t drop beside her, cry for her, help her.

I was frozen, unmoving.

What’s that say about me?

My head lifts on its own, meeting the eyes of a monster’s in the mirror on the wall, and the person staring back can’t face himself.

He’s weak, suffocating, red-painted palm prints smeared along his neck, and matching the shade stained across his hands and arms and clothes.

My clothes.

I wish it were mine, pooled at my feet and allowing me to drown in it, because I sure as fuck don’t deserve to stand here right now.

So, I walk away, into the hall where my family stands with wide, worried eyes, but I don’t pause beside them, and they don’t dare to try to stop me.

But she does.

My name is whispered from behind, and it’s a song that sears my soul.

It’s the softest, gentlest voice, the calm I don’t possess but desperately need, crave, and want.

I feel it tugging at my insides, allowing the smallest bit of air into my throat, reviving my lungs.

Breathing life into a fuckin’ zombie.

My mind refuses, but my body spins, facing the way I’ve just come from.

My chest caves in, hollows out.

Tears the fuck open.

My girl, my baby, fuck. She stands in the doorway, leaning on it for support because I’m offering her none.

She reaches for me... but I don’t reach back.

I turn and give her mine.

Hours must pass, because the next thing my eyes are peeling open and it’s nightfall. I know I’m sitting on the fucking ground, fisting the neck of the bottle, so fuck it, I tip the bitch to my lips, but nothing comes out. I glare at the gold-flecked thing.

Who drank it all?

I toss it to the side, my arm falling with it, and slump against the tree, but the thing moves, sending me flat onto my back.

Fucking moving tree.

I chuckle and attempt to push up, but my arms ain’t havin’ it, so the ground it is.

I stare at the stars, and when I find the Little Dipper, the Ursa fucking Minor she talked about, my fuckin’ chest plate cracks. Wide the fuck open.

Or that’s what it feels like.

After our night on the trampoline, I realized something I should have long before that—she loves the sky, and all that it holds. So, when she was gone, I looked up some shit and figured out how to spot the things she searches for in the dark. I had to know more about what she loved and why.

They look like the thing that comes in the Easter dye kits Maybell used to buy us after it’s been good and used, fucked-up shaped and bent at the handle. Don’t know what they mean or stand for, but I bet she does.

I was gonna steal her, get her out in the night again so we could find these fuckers, and then I’d sit back and stare at her while she told me all about ‘em.

I wonder what she’s doin’ now?

Staring at the stars?