Page 5 of Our Ruined Beginnings

But now, I feel nothing but rage.

There’s a fog over my mind, like a vortex that longs to keep me trapped inside. My friends laugh around me, chattering over one another while they rush to tell stories of their summer adventures, but I can’t focus on them. I can barely focus on anything but the wash of thoughts flooding my brain.

This time last year, I was smiling, laughing, ready to make the most of the next four years of my life. Now, it’s different. Without Caleb at my side, everything feels darker, more dreary. As if I’m traipsing through life, not living it.

Then there’s her…

As the summer drew on, I’d convinced myself I could forget her, could push away the vitriolic thoughts that took root in my mind every time she crossed it. But, if anything, it only got worse.

The rage still lingers, eating away at my insides, but there’s something else bubbling under the surface too. Something I can’t put a name to, and I don’t want to waste my time thinking about.

Knowing she was supposed to be here is one thing. My dad told me she was still coming, her own father making her. But it’s different to know she’s really here.To know that, at any moment, she may cross my path, and I’m supposed to … what?

Smile and wave? Say hello and pretend like her being in my space isn’t robbing me of any goodness that may still live inside me? Isn’t robbing me of the lifemy brothershould be living?

Fuck that. I want her to feel the hurt I do. To understand even a little of the pure rage that simmers beneath my skin at the thought of her name.

“Is that what last night was about?” Lacy asks, interrupting my building anger, and I turn to Bethany with a cocked brow.

“You should’ve come out with us after all,” she replies, a wide grin spreading over her lips. “We ended up at Harper’s on the way back.”

I flinch at her name but keep my questions to myself. Thankfully, Evan asks them for me. “What were you doing over there?”

“We saw her leaving on our way out so took the opportunity to let her know just how unwelcome she is here, nice and early.” Bethany preens, pushing her hair over one shoulder and turning to look at me expectantly.

The fuck does she want—a pat on the back? For what?

“What does that mean?” I ask, keeping my tone neutral despite the rumble of emotion that threatens to swamp me.

“We broke in and trashed her room. Looked like she’d just got done unpacking, too. What a shame…” She laughs and steps into me again.

Before I can push her away, or ask her to elaborate, a body comes careening around the corner, and my heart somersaults in my chest as my eyes draw in on bouncy curls. It takes my mind a second to catch up and register that it’s not Harper, but that only makes me angrier at my instant reaction at the possibility that it could have been, and the way I’d felt something akin to hope blending into the anger.

“Keep away from her shit,” I snap, whipping back to face Bethany.

“Why?” she asks with a deep frown.

I wish I could answer, but the truth is, I don’t know why.

I want her gone—out of my sight, and far away from the life I’m trying to live now—but I can’t say there isn’t another part of me that wants her to linger here a while longer.

“If we hit her shit too hard, she leaves, and we lose the opportunity for payback. We save the best for last. Start slow and wear her down, then right when she’s at her breaking point, we take the rest away from her too. I want her broken. For good.”

Evan is nodding along by the time I’ve finished, and the others fall in line easily enough. “Fine. No one goes into her roomyet. Anything else is fair game, though, right?”

“Everything else is fair game…”

I bite my tongue to keep from saying anything stupid. This is good. It’s what I want. Her gone, and my memories of this place untainted by her damage.

So, why was my gut reaction to give her a reprieve? She doesn’t fucking deserve any of my protection, not when she willingly puts others in danger. She doesn’t deserve me to still be stupidly hopeful that it was her coming around that corner, wanting to glimpse her face like it’s the fucking oxygen I need to breathe. She doesn’t deserve to be here, living her life like nothing happened.

“…and I know what’s next.”

Chapter Three

Harper

Withinmyfirsthourat Davis U, it becomes obvious my wish of fading into the background and completing this semester by drifting along in my own world is not an option.

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