Page 11 of Bitter Truths

I was barred at the door and came home to another useless fucking evening of staring at the wall. But after brooding for a week, I renewed my efforts to see Halsey. I know I’m in deep shit, just as I know I deserve every bit of it. Still, I can’t turn away from her. I never fucking could. This is the crux of the damn matter. She tore my heart out, or at least I thought she did, and still, I couldn’t let her go.

This is what I get for allowing my demons free. I broke this between us, and now I need to fucking fix it, but how?

Cushioning my head with my hands, I look up through the cracks at the stars. We used to spend hours in this damn fort, and I didn’t care because if she was with me, we could do whatever the fuck she wanted. During my lowest, when I thought I might truly be losing my mind, I tried to disassemble it. But the boards wouldn’t budge, and the nails bit into my fingers.

Now I’m right back where I started, staring at the wood fucking walls of the prison I’ve been in since I met Halsey Moore. Every memory I have in this fort is with her, and back then, it ate at me, and I couldn’t escape the deluge.

Shit, I was so fucked in the head, I tried to erase her from the picture by fucking someone else here, but it didn’t matter because she never left my thoughts.

I should have done a lot of shit differently, but I can’t go back. The problem is I need Halsey to move forward.

Griffin: I won’t give up

Hals: And I won’t give in

I stare at the stars that I loathed for a long fucking time and chuckle because for a while there, I couldn’t stand to look up and see them twinkling back at me.

Chapter Three

You crawled into my soul, and I couldn’t break free.

HALSEY

Fuck me. Clutching my chest, I try to breathe, but it’s not possible because there’s no air. I thought my fury superseded everything else, but I was wrong, and now I’m faced with the inevitable question—what the fuck do I do now?

Earlier I asked to use Mom’s car, but she said she couldn’t spare it, and Max volunteered his. I grudgingly accepted because I know he’s trying to weasel his way back in, and I’m not up for it, but I acquiesced under Mom’s expectant stare. I had no choice.

It’s the last weekend before we head back to school, and I was blissfully ignorant to the possibility of running into Griff. Now I’m reeling because, after a summer of avoiding him, my luck ran out.

It’s a small town. That I lasted this long is miraculous. However, just seeing him tore open the chasm that was scabbed over and bleeding beneath the surface, spewing my hate and pain into the universe.

I thought I could go to the mall for new art supplies because although it’s a start and stop kinda thing, I’ve been drawing here and there, even painting. They don’t compare to the murals I created on Griffin’s wall or the work I made so easily before, but they’re more than I thought possible just a year ago.

Strangely, this newest revelation opened a box I thought closed forever, and I’ve been transferring my pain to the canvas. The images are dark and ugly, which is not a surprise given the shit that bubbles beneath my skin.

My hands were full of brushes and new colors as I envisioned my next project, but then I heard his voice, and my stomach dropped to my toes.

Freezing at the deep tone I would know over any other because, after all, it haunts me in my dreams, I spun around with my jaw at my knees.

And I stared at Griffin incredulously, a flush heating my cheeks born of both need and aversion.

My fingers numb, I dropped the articles clutched in my hands into a bin in the middle of the aisle. A low buzz hummed in my ears and my heart clenched so painfully in my chest it was hard to breathe.

I floundered, caught between the ache I haven’t been able to shake in years and the resentment burning in my veins.

Still, I refused to show him my turmoil because, in this, he doesn’t deserve to see my pain, another piece of me left behind in the wake of his effortless cruelty.

Truthfully, I don’t know how long I can resist him, so I need to cut him off quickly and let the severed limb bleed. Otherwise, it will be one more thing I can’t find my way past.

I’m only human, though, so I allowed myself the weakness of admiring him, dressed in jeans and a tight shirt. His arms, oh his fucking arms, bulged as he clenched his fists at his sides.

He’s so beautiful there should be a shrine erected to his glory, except he doesn’t need the adulation. He’s arrogant enough as it is.

He grew his hair over the summer, and now it brushes his ears, the dark silky strands soft to the touch. I know because I ran my fingers through it after the last time he fucked me, where he looked into my eyes, and I forgot years of torture and fell for the bullshit.

Those same treacherous hazel eyes blazed at me as he took me in, flaring when they reached my tank top and the swell of my boobs, before dropping down my bare legs and back up with a burn that sizzled my skin.

I sucked in air that I didn’t have because fuck me if I wasn’t breathless before I turned to walk away, except he grabbed my arm.

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