Page 71 of There Are No Saints

I’ve never regretted anything I’ve done.

It’s an ugly feeling. Depressing and unending, because you can never go back. You can never undo what’s been done.

I can’t shake it off. I can’t get rid of it.

My heart rate spikes and I’m sweating harder than ever.

I jump to my feet, looking wildly around my office.

I don’t want to feel regret. I don’t want to feel anything I don’t want to feel.

This is the singular factor separating me from everyone else in the world: I choose what I feel and what I don’t. They’re all slaves to their emotions. I’m master of mine.

I’m superior to everyone else because I choose not to feel anything that weakens me.

But in this moment, I’m weak. She’s making me weak.

With a howl of rage, I yank the driver out of my golf bag. I whirl around looking for a target, any target.

The solar system catches my eye: gleaming, glittering, the jewel-toned orbs rotating in space.

I swing the club through the air.

It crashes into the model, exploding the fine Venetian glass into a million pieces. The pieces pour down on me, cutting my skin in a dozen places, a rainstorm of shattered glass.

I keep hitting the model over and over and over again, beating it, rending it, destroying it.

When at last the club falls from my numb hands, the solar model is nothing but a twisted ruin. Beyond recognition. Utterly destroyed.

I loved that piece.

Sometimes you have to kill what you love.

* * *

20

Mara

When I was done fucking Logan, I told him to go home.

“Can I get your number first?” he said, his grin a white slash in his paint-covered face.

“I don’t think so,” I said, as kindly as I could. “That was just a one-time thing.”

“Oh,” he said. “Well, it was a great time. At least for me.”

I smiled without answering.

I was already feeling guilty that I’d basically used him as a prop in an act of spite that was beginning to feel more insane by the second.

But not insane enough to stop.

After he left, I still carried that painting all the way to the top floor and hung it in Cole’s office.

He doesn’t even lock his door, the arrogant fuck.

I knew he’d see me on the security cameras, but I was also pretty sure he watched the whole damn event, so the painting would hardly remain a mystery either way.

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