Page 11 of Make Me Bleed
And so, so alone.
CHAPTER 4
ABEL
The driveto Laneridge Health Care Center seems to take longer than usual as I stare out the window and into the overcast sky. The clouds are dark and full of depth as they morph across the sky, rolling and moving as I do, following me to the center.
I adjust my earbuds in my ears, keeping the volume up as I try not to focus on the way the driver maneuvers between cars on the interstate. Closing my eyes briefly, I picture a vast nothingness. Just a serene scene of blackness, but of course, I’ve never been so lucky. Flashes ofhisface flutter through my mind’s eye. The dark waves of his hair, his golden-green eyes, and the way his pupils would dilate in hunger, inanger,just for me. His body and each sinewy muscle not-so-hidden beneath tight-fitting clothes. The way his long fingers would grip a basketball, the length of them curled around the leather with veins bulging so enticingly, I would vibrate with the desire to sink my teeth straight into them. To mark him with the shape of my crooked teeth.
“Fuck,” I mutter to myself, cranking the volume on the Deftones song as I drop my head back against the headrest, eyes rolling into the back of my head, clouds disappearing for a moment.
“Everything all right back there?”
“Yes, thank you,” I mumble, scrubbing my hand down my face in exasperation. Everything is so far from “all right,” it’s not even funny. I can usually keep Peris from the forefront of my mind easily enough. All I have to do is focus on what’s in front of me.
My clients, my apartment, my friends. But sometimes… most of the time… even that’s not enough to keep him from me.
Not when I flip on the news and the sports section comes on and there he is—his angry face front and center and better than even my memory can conjure.
And it aches…
But it’s a different kind of ache. Something akin to regret and shame.
Because he’s grown up.
No longer does Peris have that boyish curve to his face. His jawline is sharp enough to cut glass, jutting out from his face as he sneers at the camera like it personally offended him—and I’m sure it did.
His hair is longer, waiver, but he keeps it pushed back from his face, highlighting the tanned state of his skin, like he spends all of his time outside in the sun. And his nose… long and straight and perfect with a gold fuckinghoopin one nostril like that doesn’t completely fuck me up.
Peris Baxter got a piercing. In his face. And it looks incredible on him. The gold jewelry brings out the golden hue of his irises—I wonder if Gabriel told him he should go for gold over silver… most people tend to choose silver, it seems. Or maybe not.
Fuck if I know.
Either way, he’s… different. He’s in university, playing basketball like he always dreamed of. He looks better than ever, and he’s so far away but way too close to ever be near me again because I left him.
I left him.
And I know he doesn’t give a fuck that I didn’t have a choice. He’s too selfish to see there wasn’t one, and I’m too selfish to give it to him.
It’s too late to ever go back. Too much has happened.
Bitterness and hatred has accumulated over our year apart, and as much as I think of him, I’m not the same boy, and he’s sure as hell not, either.
“We’ve arrived,” the driver states, yanking me out of my tumultuous thoughts. I jolt in my seat, yanking my head away from the window and toward the front to where the building’s front doors lie.
A sense of foreboding washes over me for the first time in a long time, and it’s quickly swamped by guilt because she doesn’t deserve that.
With a deep breath, I thank the driver and get out, preparing myself for the day ahead. It’s going to be good.
I’ll make sure it’s good—for her.
“Good morning, Abel. Good to see you.”
“Morning, Meredith,” I say in greeting, nodding my head.
“She’s in the rec room. She wanted to play Uno,” Meredith says with a brow raised, and I groan loudly and playfully.
“Oh boy, she’s feeling adventurous today, isn’t she?”
