Page 92 of First Verse

Nothing was real.

“Do you want me to stay?” Jax murmurs.

I shake my head and straighten. His arm falls away as I face the open doorway. The curtains in Wilder’s bedroom are pulled aside. Sunlight fills the room, but I don’t see or feel it. I’m a vortex of dark, bitter cold. But I’m not afraid.

I embrace the dark.

I walk a few steps into the room and stop. Wilder sits at the foot of the bed, his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands. He rocks slowly back and forth, fingers clenching and unclenching in his hair. He looks like he’s in pain.

I feel nothing.

“Kendra, I told you—” He looks up and gasps. The blood drains from his face, turning his golden skin sallow. One cheek stays slightly red from Kendra’s slap.

I wish she’d punched him. Broken his perfect nose or split his perfect lips.

Now that my denial has been stripped away, I see the signs clearly. Both in the present and in retrospect. Eyes that are more brown than green and slightly glazed. Eyelids a touch too heavy. Pupils that are either extremely constricted or huge. Right now, they’re far too dilated for the brightness in the room. Sweat beads on his forehead. Goosebumps coat his neck and bare, trembling arms.

A word comes to me: dopesick.

He’s withdrawing and needs a fix.

Bile coats my throat, my body clenching against an overwhelming feeling of violation. All the times he was inside me, told me he loved me, while I had no idea he was high. Sudden bouts of sleepiness blamed on his schedule. Random errands and not answering his phone. Not looking me in the eye. Manipulating me into thinking he’d changed, that he had no secrets from me. Encouraging my vulnerability while he lied.

Lied.

Lied.

Wilder stands. A small prescription bottle rolls across where he was sitting, and he shifts to block my sight of it. “This isn’t what it looks like,” he says weakly.

“Don’t bother.” My voice is empty. As cold as the endless dark inside me. “I heard everything.”

“Fairy, please. Let me explain.”

“I’m not your Fairy. I’m not your anything. We. Are. Done.”

His chest convulses. “Please,” he whispers. “I’ll go to rehab. Right now—today. I can fix this. I can change.”

Cracks spread through my frozen core, but it’s not sympathy that fractures me.

It’s rage.

“I don’t care what you do,” I snarl. “I’ll never forgive you or trust you again. Do you hear me? We’re through. You’ve lied to me for weeks, but the worst thing you did was make me believe you loved—” Stabbing pain in my chest takes my voice. My vision blurs with tears.

He moves toward me. I scramble backward and collide with the doorframe. “Stay the fuck away from me.”

Features contorting, he falls to his knees. “I d-do love you, Evangeline,” he says through wracking sobs. “More than anything. P-please, please don’t leave me.”

“This isn’t love, Wilder. This is manipulation. You only love yourself and whatever’s in that bottle on the bed. You disgust me. I hate you. I fucking hate you!”

I don’t realize I’m shouting until gentle hands capture my shoulders from behind and Jax says, “Hey, it’s okay. Let’s go.”

He pulls me out of the room and down the hallway.

Behind us is a guttural scream.

I feel nothing.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN