Page 213 of Boy of Ruin
He looks down, his eyes swollen, his nose probably permanently disfigured. I can’t find it in me to give a fuck about that as he twists his hands together, his breath shallow beneath the hospital gown.
Maverick is in the hall with the redhead, and the rest of them are with Elijah. At that fucking church.
I think about the bandana in my pocket. About driving there now and wrapping it around each of their throats.
I’m still considering it.
It was the plan, all along.
But as with all my plans that have Sid Rain in my orbit, it’s all fucked up now.
“Is that why?” he finally asks me, picking his head up, his eyes locked on mine. The blinds are closed, but light streams in anyway as the sun rises, and it dances across his gaunt, pale face, the shadows beneath his bruised eyelids. “She left because she was scared of me…leaving her?”
“That, the 6, and she was probably fucking scared of you. I hate to be the one to tell you this, but I think you’ve got a couple of fucking screws loose in that fucked-up head of yours.” I’m at the foot of his bed as I deliver the words, and I see his jaw tighten.
Then he seems to relax against his bed, inclined so he’s sitting upright. He rolls his eyes, and I almost want to laugh, but despite what she might see in him, we aren’t friends.
We’ll never be friends.
After today, we’ll never be fucking anything.
My heart threatens to shatter as I think about it, and I can’t really breathe.
“You’re legitimately insane,” he mutters under his breath, turning his head to the side and closing his eyes. “So don’t give me any more mental fucking health advice.”
A smile pulls on the corners of my lips, but I bite it back even though his eyes are closed. Fucker.
“And why’d you fucking do that?” He suddenly sits up, apparently too fast, because he winces as his blue eyes connect with mine. “Why’d you fucking mark her? How could you fucking—”
I hold up my hand, palm facing him. “You marked her too.”
He leans back again, but his eyes are still narrowed as I shove my hand in my pocket, clenching it into a fist, not wanting to feel the tremor return.
Not wanting him to see it.
“She won’t give you up,” he says again, and I hear the vulnerability in those words. I don’t much give a fuck about it, but I know how he feels. Like he can never quite have her completely.
She’s feral.
She’s not one to give into anyone, to surrender her heart. We both have pieces of it, but I don’t think either of us are strong enough to take the whole thing.
That kind of pain hurts. It’s different from anything else in the world. Loving someone with your entire being, and only being returned a sliver of it. The sliver is like a knife through your chest. You almost want to pull it out completely, drop it, turn and run. It’d be better than the agony.
“She will never stop loving you.” He says those words with anger, his jaw clenched as he stares at me in this sterile room. Big enough for a few beds, because he’s a goddamn fucking Malikov.
Something I should’ve been.
These are things I should have had.
But I think of Pammie hanging all over him when we were teenagers and my skin crawls.
I don’t want that.
Neither of us got anything good out of being born what we were. Him rich and spoiled, me the product of a drug addict, poor and lacking.
We both got fucked.
So did she.
