Page 11 of Endless

"I've been doing it off and on since then. It makes me feel like I'm in control. I'm the only one who can inflict pain when I cut myself. I get to choose how badly it hurts. I get to choose how long it will hurt. I get the control over when I want to end it all." She looks up at me, broken and exposed. "It makes me feel something in a world where I've spent so much time feeling nothing at all."

I ache to comfort her, to hold her, and tell her everything is going to be okay no matter what. I want to tell her she never has to be alone ever again. I hold back because she just met me tonight, and I don't want to risk scaring her away.

"Thank you for sharing that with me. I know it must not have been easy. If it's worth anything at all, I think you're incredibly strong. It takes a lot for a person to be able to admit something like you just did."

She leans into me, resting her head on my shoulder. I wrap my arms around her back and hold her in a close hug. This moment right here is everything. Having her in my arms to hold and comfort is better than I ever imagined.

"Kellan, what is this pull between us? I don't understand why I feel so comfortable around you after we just met. I've never felt like this."

"Sometimes two beings are just meant to find comfort in one another," I admit.

She sighs, like she wants to further question my statement, but she doesn't. She simply relaxes further into my hold, and the two of us watch as the sun sets and the darkness engulfs us.

Chapter 7

Lena

Meeting Kellan in the graveyard was unexpected. Something about him seems so familiar, but I can't place it. Up until today, he was a stranger that I've never seen, yet for some reason, I feel safe around him. Maybe I shouldn't have let things progress as far as I did tonight. Something about him called out to the very core of my soul.

I was lying there on the blanket, tossing my stress ball, thinking about how easy it would be to die. My mom would make some big show over how hard everything is for her and how she just doesn't understand where she went wrong with raising me. My father would whine about the cost of everything. Since Dani and I cut things off, I don't have any real friends. Lexi is there sometimes, but she's always been a friend of convenience. We talk about boys and school, that's about it. It’s all surface-level.

As soon as my gaze locked with Kellan's green eyes, every thought I had of worthlessness and despair disappeared. Time seemed to freeze around me. In his presence, death was no longer something I yearned for. My mind was quiet, and the urges dissipated.

He brought me a peace I've always longed for. It's uncanny, really. This one person has the ability to make me feel the way I've always wanted throughout my life. Is this what being normal feels like? We talked for hours about so many things, and he just listened. Nobody has been willing to listen for such a long time.

I hold my arm out, looking down at the unhealed cuts along my wrists, and remember the way his skin felt against mine. It was like a surge of electricity pumping through my veins. I've never felt so free and alive.

Then, there was the gentle way in which he asked about the scars. He genuinely wanted to know. He wasn't looking to make fun of me or judge me. He told me he would never laugh at me. Something in me believes in that more than anything I've ever believed in before. I stayed at the cemetery with him until the sun set, and we reluctantly parted ways.

As soon as he left my line of sight, all of the feelings of worthlessness and despair came rushing back in, crashing upon me. It was almost some sort of validation that he was the one keeping the feelings at bay. I found myself standing there for a while after he left, wishing he would come back and take it all away again.

Reluctantly, I loaded myself into my car and came back to my apartment. When I walked inside, I found out Carson had already left for the evening, thankfully. Since breaking things off, we have been doing a pretty successful job of avoiding one another. I have no desire to see him and have nothing but pure distaste for him.

I don’t understand why he insists on living here. It’s been a week since we broke up, and he’s made no effort to leave. He has plenty of friends and teammates on campus that he could move in with until the end of the school year. I'm convinced his main goal in life is to torture me as much as possible. Fucker.

With a sigh, I crash into my new bed. I moved all of my things to the second bedroom as soon as I could. I had absolutely no desire to stay in the room we shared.

I lay in bed and stare up at the ceiling, wondering how the fuck I'm supposed to get through the rest of this school year with him living here. If I had any kind of self-respect, I would suck it up and ask my parents for help. My dad makes more than enough money- to afford putting me up in a new apartment.

It's just more complicated than simply asking for something with them. Asking my parents means having a conversation about Carson and me breaking up. The guy that my mother freaking set me up with. She probably paid him to date me so she didn't have to live with the shame of her weird daughter still being single.

I won't talk to them. My mother will get her text every few days, and that's it. The fact that she found a way to involve herself in my romantic life pisses me off. Anger is a better emotion than despair and the longing to die. I’ve been feeling a lot of anger lately. I suppose I'm making progress, right? My mother would be so proud.

I let myself drift off to sleep with thoughts of my parents, their meddling, and how I'm supposed to move forward with the rest of this school year. Allproblems that I will, no doubt, push off and avoid.

Darkness surrounds me, and I feel as though I'm drowning. There is no peace here. There is no happiness. It's as if everything I've been feeling while awake has manifested itself into my worst nightmare.

Screams tear through my mind as I walk down a dark hallway. There is a pale light toward the very end that I covet. It seems peaceful there. I want to get out of this darkness more than I've ever wanted anything, but it's no use. No matter how far or fast I walk, the light never gets closer. It always stays just out of reach.

The walls start to close in around me, and panic swells in my chest. I crave safety so I run faster, trying to escape the inevitable fate of the walls squeezing in around me.

Just as I feel like there is no hope, a figure appears in my path. I can't see who they are through the darkness, but there is no turning back. I have to keep moving forward. I run toward them and catch a glint of their bright, shining eyes staring back at me.

The aura around the figure is dark but it calls to me. As I move ahead, I notice the light is finally getting closer. It's almost like the dark figure is bringing me to the light. As the figure comes into focus, it's not really in focus at all. It is a moving cloud of smoke with tendrils splaying out from it.

One of the tendrils inches toward me. I should be afraid, but it seems so inviting. I finally step forward into the light as a hand emerges from the shadow and grips my throat. Instead of reaching out to try to get it off of me, I run my fingers along the shadowy hand in acaressing manner.

I'm pushed up against a white wall that seems to have appeared out of nowhere, and the figure takes shape in front of me. The cloudy smoke dissipates in some places, and an outline of a man in a cloak takes its place. The man has no concrete features outside of the deep green eyes that stare into mine. Eyes that look so familiar. It’s all white around us now.

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