Page 98 of Inevitable Destruction

DOMINIK

“Pieces”—Red

I walk down the road,Rhett’s house at my back as rain hammers down on my shoulders. My earbuds are in my ears, an Eminem song blasting as loud as it can go as I force my numb body to keep going, to just get the fuck away before it’s too late.

Even though it already is.

I shove my palms into my pocket, clutching the syringe and small vial in my iron-tight fist, my only hope at this moment.

Despondency surrounds me like an opaque, pain-riddled aura. Every step feels pointless, every breath even more so. My thoughts are jumbling around inside my skull, none of them connecting or making any sense.

He made me need him again and again until he was all I could think about, all I wanted to be around in my normally solitary life. He upended my thoughts, my beliefs, and now I’m someone I don’t even recognize.

When I was with him, I didn’t have to think or worry about my next move. I could just fucking be, and he let me. Every wall I ever built subtly crashed down around me, leaving catastrophic wreckage in its wake—but I never fucking noticed until Rhett was no longer there to fill the gaping space it left behind.

Every atom of his clung to mine, fusing them together until we were a singular, cohesive whole.

What am I supposed to do without my whole?

My feet stutter to a stop, a gasping cry bubbling up my throat. I slam my palm against my chest, against the searing, stabbing pain lancing through me. I press as deeply into my skin as I can through the thin fabric of Rhett’s T-shirt, trying anything to dull the ache, the unrelenting agony that nothing in the fucking world compares to.

My legs give out, and I crash to the concrete, not even wincing as my kneecaps brutally connect with the cement. The crack sounds through my ears, muffled through the blood rushing in them.

I throw my head back just as a ravaged cry echoes out into the night, piercing through the thick of the storm descending down upon me. It gets lost amongst the rumbling thunder, adding to the devastation the storm is bringing to my world.

My eyes flutter open, blinking hastily against the rain pouring down and my hair lashing my face as the wind whips it back and forth.

A strike of lightning bolts across the sky, illuminating the night in a gray color with a subtle green-blue haze. My eyes follow more bolts as they strike, followed by deep claps of thunder.

It’s always so beautiful—nature’s self-destruction. It fights daily to thrive, and yet, it eventually wars with itself in the most subtle form of thunderstorms, which then lead to hurricanes, tornadoes, tsunamis, fucking earthquakes.

Surviving always leads to inevitable destruction.

Death.

We can’t outrun it; we can’t fight it. It’s always there, lurking in the shadows, waiting for us.

I’ve felt death’s shadow for far too long, my constant companion throughout the years. He faded for a while when Essa was around, but the moment she tore herself from me, he came back with a vengeance—and I welcomed his familiarity.

But then Everett…

“Fuck,” I choke out through body-wracking sobs. Every limb, every muscle within those limbs, my bones, nerves, shriveled-up veins, and cells—every fucking part of me throbs.

Everett completely obliterated the thought of death—there wasn’t any room with his domineering presence overtaking my life. I became so used to him and his promises of pain that I grew to crave him as much as the drugs he gave me to keep me comfortably numb. But now, just the thought of shoving a needle in my arm makes me think about the first time, when he looked cautiously out of his mind with subtle apprehension.

I bend in half, resting my sweat and rain-soaked face into my—Rhett’s—sweatpants, breathing in the smell of the wet earth without any other choice. The rain beats down on my back, bringing nothing of the usual comfort I felt with storms.

He took everything from me.

“Which was what he wanted,” I gasp at the realization. The thought was there, ricocheting off the millions of others I can’t rid myself of.

Headlight beams bounce across the pavement in front of me, growing brighter and closer, along with the sound of an exhaust. Eventually, the sound draws impossibly close before idling. A door opens, and feet smack down on the wet pavement.

“Dom?!” Jay’s voice gets lost in the storm. I want to push away the flutter of disappointment that floods to the surface at the sound, but what’s the point? It’s not like Rhett would ever come for me.

He got what he wanted.

“Jesus, dude. Twice now I find you like this? What the fuck is going on?” he sounds close as he bends down and hauls me into his arms effortlessly. I can’t even hold myself up, letting him finagle me into his car as he wars with the storm raging on, making the task increasingly difficult.

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