Page 198 of Broken Pieces
“I don’t want to be free of you.”
“Then you’re fucking stupid.”
Zane leans forward, elbows on the table, shoulders tight. His eyes lock onto mine and don’t waver.
“You think I want you coming in here every week?” he spits. “Being here, wasting your life on someone who’s already been written off? I’m a fucking inmate now, Sky. A number. A mistake someone’s already boxed up and filed away.”
His voice cracks, just enough to bleed.
“And you—” He cuts off, jaw clenched so tight his neck strains with the pressure. He shakes his head, breathing hard through his nose. “You’re not meant for this shit, Sky.”
My hands tremble under the table, but I keep my voice steady. “You don’t get to decide that for me.”
“I already did.”
I reach across the table, desperate to close the space between us, but he jerks back as if my touch might poison him.
“Zane, please don’t do this.”
“I don’t want you here.”
“You don’t mean that.”
“I do.”
The words hit bone.
Tears press against the back of my eyes, stinging, but I refuse to let them fall.
I shake my head, heart cracking open in my chest.
“You said you loved me.”
His mouth tightens, the muscle in his jaw ticking. His fists curl on the table, tight enough that his knuckles go white.
“That night,” I whisper, “you said it to me and you meant it.”
He leans forward. “I lied. I said it so I could fuck you. Get it through your fucking head that I don’t love you,” he snaps. “I never have. You were just a fuck. That’s all. Easy pussy.”
My whole body goes still, every part of me frozen in place.
My ears ring. My skin burns.
He stands and turns his back, as if I’m invisible, and heads toward the guard stationed by the door—the same one he walked through moments before.
I sit there, stunned, watching the boy I love walk away with pieces of me still in his hands, knowing that there’s nothing left to hold on to.
Chapter Thirty-Four
Zane
Thedoorclangsshutbehind me.
I swear that sound is gonna haunt me for the rest of my fucking life.
The cell’s small.
Ten steps from one end to the other if I push it. Thin-ass mattress on a slab of metal that barely qualifies as a bed. No pillow. A steel toilet in the corner reeking worse than it looks. The walls are stained with a hundred lives that passed through before me. The light above flickers with a kind of desperate rhythm.
