Page 29 of Torment

Not even me, the girl he once loved more than anything.

I knew he would never feel that way about me again, and the thought made me feel as if I were being stabbed in the guts with a shard of my own broken heart.

Black despair filled me all over again, threatening to throttle me as I tried to stem a fresh flow of tears. In the end, I knew it didn’t matter how I felt about Mason; didn’t matter whether I loved or hated him. It didn’t change the reality of my situation. Not one iota.

I would never see another person again, aside from the beautiful monster who despised me so much. I would never see the sun again or feel its warmth on my skin. I would never look out at the flowers beyond my balcony on St. Andrew Street and breathe in all their wonderful fragrances.

I rolled myself into a ball on the mattress as sobs shook me. Another panic attack was building, sweeping me away with roaring, crashing breathlessness. I was angry, too. Angry at myself for being so helpless and failing to see what I really wanted and needed until it was too late.

In all the years since my rescue from New Eden, I’d basically sleepwalked through life. I’d tried my hardest to get over my dark, twisted past and embrace the real world, but I’d never quite managed it. When I wasn’t struggling to catch up with everything I’d missed during my eleven years underground, I was sipping at a bottomless glass of wine, numbing myself to all the bad memories and pain. A few times, I’d wondered if it was worth continuing. What was the point of doing anything? I was always miserable and tired, haunted by my previous life at New Eden.

But now… now that my existence had been threatened and my life was only a few weeks away from ending—if I was lucky—I’d never wanted it more. I wanted to run out into the world and embrace it, heart and soul, without caring if I really fitted in. I wanted to carve out a place for myself, really make it mine. I wanted to taste everything, touch everything, see everything.

I wanted tolive.

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