Page 41 of Chaos

“I’m so fucking sorry, Eris. I tried to save him.”

His words echoed in my body and paralyzed what little hope I’d stupidity clung to and ripped it into shreds. I’d never wished to hear those words again, especially from Drex. Hell, I denied them the first time I heard them. This would be my end. I knew better than to let anyone in, but like the idiot I am, I did, and this is where it led.

“I tried, Eris.” He sounded like a broken recording of the trooper that came to my house after the accident. A record I’d rather shatter than listen to again.

I hated the world for letting me feel happiness with Drex, no matter how brief we’d known each other.

My knees kissed the floor as I wept in front of the man I now hated. Despite the betrayal rising and falling as the tide, my arms extended and wrapped around his legs, needing something to ground me. A man, until a few moments ago, I was certain I loved, bent his knees and knelt to the floor to hold me.

“I hate you,” I cried, beating his chest with as much force as I could as defeat took over my body.

“I hate me, too,” he whispered and I only cried harder, wishing he wasn’t who he was. Some may say life isn’t fair. I longed for a trivial situation to say that cliché statement. My life was far beyond being unfair. It was downright vengeful. I’d fought connecting with someone for eight years, and I finally forgave myself enough to feel love, only to have my chest ripped open wide and left to bleed.

“Why?” I begged him for the answers I didn’t want, but knew I had to have them. Even if this was the end of us, I needed to know what he knew.

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