Page 6 of Bitter Truths

“Until?”

“Until all I could see was her. Until H.”

“Okay, but Griffin, you know why you’re here.”

“I . . . yes.”

“Tell us, tell us why you’re here.”

“Because I need redemption, and only she, H, can give it to me.” I need Halsey to see. I just don’t know what it is I want her to see anymore. The real me? Or the fairytale version she made up in her head.

“What about your mother?”

“What? This isn’t about her. It’s about H.”

“But Griff, your mother—”

“My mother tried to smother me with a pillow when I was ten. I don’t fucking care.”

“Then . . .?”

“I’m here to be better . . . for H.”

Halsey freed me, and now that I’m back in the cage. I’m afraid I’m going to wither away here. Maybe it’s what I deserve. Maybe this prison is where I belong, but even the villain in this fucked-up love story has a reason why.

∞∞∞

HALSEY

I’m staring at the wall. It’s white, fucking white. Figures. Where before color brought pain, now the eternal fucking white reminds me of the powerlessness in which I’m sunk. It mocks me because I’m black as a starless night beneath all this fatigue.

My roommate shuffles behind me, her bed making the same fucking squeaking noise that now rolls through my brain on repeat. She’s also a snorer. When she breathes in, she sucks in a gasp, and when she exhales, it emits in a slow whistle.

The soft whoosh of the nurse’s sneakers on the cheap floor passes by the room followed by shouts from down the hall. Marely’s freaking out again.

I close my eyes, but the images don’t disappear. Now they’re in 3-D and surround sound. I’m trapped behind the walls of my own making. I’m fucking fucked.

I should have turned the other way when Griffin Hathaway moved to our small town. I should have run when he looked at me with his pretty hazel eyes and that slow fucking curl to his lip. But I didn’t, and here I am because I was weak.

On the wings of this thought comes the pain, breaking through the mental fog and clenching my chest like a vise. He looked me in the eye with his poisonous lies, and I ate them up like candy.

My roommate shifts again, and I relax, the air escaping from my lungs in symphony with her slow exhalation. This isn’t the end.

Clenching my fist into a ball, I repeat the mantra in my head, over and over.

This isn’t the end. This isn’t the end.

I will not let this be the end. No, I will crawl through the fucking secrets and lies and burn the darkness surrounding me to the ground.

“Okay, rise and shine,” the nurse says from the door, and I pretend to sleep even though we both know it doesn’t matter.

If they want me to get up, then that’s what I’ll do.

“C’mon, Halsey, med time,” she insists until I sigh and roll out of bed, eyeing my roommate, who’s staring back at me with dark eyes.

What have the meds done but leave me with cottonmouth and a perpetual sense of nothingness? I thought getting better meant feeling, but maybe it’s the opposite. Maybe normal people don’t feel at all.

Ha!

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