Page 24 of Bitter Truths

The professor walks us through the expectations for the class, and by the time she’s finished, I’m spellbound. Not with the work, but with Halsey. There’s a light of excitement behind her eyes I so rarely get to see.

I think the last time she cast me such a brilliant look was on her fourteenth birthday when she opened my gift. It was the best fucking day of my life, and I wish I had taken the time to appreciate it because it was sucked from me before I could.

She gathers her things with a small smile, glancing at me absently when I drop my bag with a grunt. I can’t look away, though, from the spark that’s been missing for years, that I realize with shame, I dulled. Now, I want it back. I want that look for me, and I plan to do whatever it takes to put it there.

“What?” She frowns, her euphoria fading.

“Nothing,” I say gruffly, grabbing up my bag again as she rises and walks around the desk.

Of course, she tries to evade me, and I refuse to let her. I stand so close, my arm brushes hers. She smells fucking amazing, and I shift uncomfortably because the contact creates a burning need that I have to clench my fist to keep from acting on.

She doesn’t know how desperate my obsession is, but I plan to show her.

“Hals—”

“I’ve got to go.”

She walks away, heading across campus, and with a grimace, I watch her go because when I’m around her, all I want to do is touch her, and it’s a gnawing, festering ache I can’t push away.

Chapter Seven

There’s a perpetual numbness in my chest.

GRIFFIN

The day I met Halsey, Mother had an episode and refused to leave her room, and Father couldn’t give two fucks about my first day at a new school.

Instead, he hired a town car, and with Cook’s carefully packaged lunch, I entered the sea of strange faces.

Truthfully, by the time they uprooted us and moved, I was numb. I put on the face expected of me, but what made me give a shit was long since broken. And wandering those halls alone, all I could do was try to breathe through the lead weight on my chest.

It was Halsey who brought me back to life. Like a fucking princess in a fairytale, she breathed it back into me, and I was caught from that very first day.

A shrink would say it’s because her brilliant blue eyes reminded me of Mother. And maybe that was it at the start, but it’s not why I kept going back, craving the drug she gave me.

Nope, it’s because when Halsey looked at me, she saw someone I couldn’t see but wanted to be. She looked at me like I was her prince, and as each day passed, I felt myself morph into the character more and more.

The problem was, I wasn’t a prince, and I could only hold the pieces of my brokenness together for so long before they crumbled through my fingers.

Still, as I stare blankly at Father, his words echoing in my brain, the visceral need to call Halsey, to soak up her stare and feel her peace, clenches at my chest like a vise.

“What?” I say, searching his cool gaze.

It’s a look I’m not unfamiliar with, but now I see the hue is faded and worn. His hands, grasping the seat of the chair, are covered in spots marking his age, and his hair, neatly trimmed in the style he’s worn since I can remember, is streaked with gray.

He curves his lip, and my fingers curl into my palm. What’s he thinking in that fucking brain? Regret? Hate? Nothing?

I’ve no use for the past. It’s no better than the shitty-as-fuck present, so I push it aside where it’s been for God knows how long.

And when the silence grows, I drop my gaze because there’s nothing behind the depths of his eyes but a void.

I’m tired of the blank fucking stare.

Instead, I gaze at the paper-thin wrinkles on his hand. When did he get so old? Even his mouth is thinner, with a roadmap of age sagging the corners.

“It’s cancer, Griffin. The doctors say there’s not much to be done.” Even his fucking tone is bland. There’s nothing, no remorse, no loss, fucking nothing.

I’ve never felt the distance between us more than I do now, but the specter of either of their deaths never truly entered my mind.

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