Before I can kick him, Bran pushes him away. “That’s rude. Apologize, Lan.”
“Me? Apologizing?” He bursts out laughing. “Good one, Bran. You’re effortlessly funny.”
“I apologize on my brother’s behalf,” he says, barely looking at me.
Christ. This fucking asshole, I swear. I glare at him and he ducks his head, cutting off eye contact like the coward he is.
“What’s going on here?” Lan snaps his fingers in front of my face. “Hey, you. Eyes off my brother before I fucking blind you.”
“Lan!” Glyn chastises.
Bran lifts his head and the fear I see in his gaze makes me sick to my stomach.
He’s so terrified about the notion that anyone could find out about us that he looks like he’s on the verge of throwing up.
“I’m out of here,” I announce and leave without a look behind.
Fuck the lot of them. Starting with Brandon fucking King.
I walk back to the mansion and then take my Harley on a ride along the seashore. But neither the air nor the vibrations of the bike lighten my mood.
After half an hour, I park by the beach and pull out my phone.
I find a text from the bane of my fucking existence.
Bran
Thank you and I’m sorry.
Motherfucker.
Me
What for?
Bran
I’m sorry for how I spoke. Thank you for leaving and not clashing with Lan.
Listen, I think he’s suspicious about something.
So?
It’s best I keep my distance from the penthouse for now.
Typical Brandon. Running away at the first sign of danger seems to be your modus operandi.
You don’t know Lan. He’s like a dog. If he comes sniffing around, he’ll find out everything.
And that’s such a fucking tragedy?
Nikolai, please. Don’t do this.
You know what? I am doing this. I don’t have time for spineless, indecisive assholes. I’m neither your plaything nor your booty call.
What does that mean?
Go find yourself another toy. We’re done.
Oh, wait. We were never anything in the first place. Delete my number.
21
BRANDON
I’ve never been addicted to anything, so I didn’t realize how notoriously painful it is to go through withdrawal.
It’s been two weeks since Nikolai told me we were done—in a text—and I’m still not over the bursts of loneliness.
Two weeks and it’s getting worse, not better.
It’s not your common withdrawal, after all. Or maybe I’m just a newbie at this entire thing and don’t have the foggiest clue about how to handle these types of situations.
Sometimes, the pain and nausea get too much and I’m smothered by the black ink and have to purge it out.
Somehow.
Anyhow.
I’ve seen my blood more often than not in the past two weeks. The other day, I let it flow and flow until I lost consciousness in the bathroom. A part of me wished I’d never wake up.
A part of me prayed for it as I lay on the bathroom floor, my eyes blurred with moisture and my heart too tired to keep pumping life into my useless body.
My brain checked out and my thoughts came to terms with how utterly fucking tired I am.
Of myself.
Of everything.
I still am.
My brush ghosts over the canvas, adding strokes of warm colors, intertwining and mixing them until they match my hollow insides.
Art is the only thing that keeps me grounded. I don’t even go to practice anymore after I purposefully sprained my ankle.
I’m withdrawing from social circles with all sorts of excuses. Studies. Work. Pending deadlines.
I just don’t have the energy to deal with anyone or anything at the moment. But more alone time only pushes me toward bad habits.
Cutting and blood and fucking self-loathing.
I’m spiraling and I can’t stop it.
I’m falling and can’t hit the bottom.
My hand trembles and the plaster that I covered with my thick watch burns. The injury tingles and my blood pumps into the barely healing cut.
The doomsday feeling racks my brain and saliva floods the inside of my mouth.
Tick.
You’re so fucking weak.
Tick.
A disgrace.
Tick.
Fucking useless.
The brush falls from between my shaky fingers and hits the floor, leaving an orange stroke on the plastic.
I open the drawer to my right and grab my Swiss Army knife almost on autopilot. If I just open it one more time, no one will know.
If I just purge the black ink surrounding me, I won’t feel trapped in my own skin and it’ll be over.
Except that I repeated those same words the last five fucking times I did this. Five times in the span of two weeks. Five.
Bloody hell. I’m losing control.
And yet my fingers wrap around the handle and I remove my watch and then place it on the table. I peel off the plaster and stare at the dark-red skin. The last time I did this, the cut was so deep, I lost a lot of blood. I thought it’d never heal and I’d need stitches.
The skin mended itself back together again, fruitlessly hoping for closure, for healing, like a fucking masochist.
The first time I cut myself was by accident when I was shaving at seventeen. I watched the tiny droplet of blood rolling down my jaw and neck and felt an immense sense of relief.
It was the first time I looked at myself for a solid minute without feeling the need to smash the mirror.
So I became a bit careless with my shaving and cut myself here and there just to see more of my blood. The harder the blood flowed, the more the black ink receded.
But I didn’t do it often. I was extremely careful not to make my parents suspicious. So when Dad joked that maybe he should teach me how to shave again, I stopped doing those small nicks on my face and neck.
I started shaving down there and cutting between my thighs where no one could see. I would sit in the bathtub and watch the blood trickling out of me, close my eyes and suck in clean air.
After I started uni, I began cutting my wrist, but only in the exact same spot, drawing over the three lines that could be hidden by a watch.
But I didn’t let myself do that often, either. No more than once a month, maybe. When the nausea constricted my throat and I couldn’t breathe without gagging on the black ink.
When it hurts to the point I can’t exist within my own fucking skin.
The frequency hiked up in the past couple of weeks to the point that I can’t control it anymore.
When I was with Nikolai, I didn’t do it, because he was awfully perceptive. He could sense something was wrong with my hand and arm and kept asking about it for weeks. I kid you not, he would be like, “By the way, how did you hurt your hand? It looks serious.”
Considering all the sex, I didn’t dare cut my thighs, and the weird part is that I wasn’t really overwhelmed by the urge to see my blood.
It was manageable, until it wasn’t.
Until now, where I’m fantasizing about cutting my fucking wrist off.
“Hon…please. I’m so worried about you. Please talk to me. Tell me something. Anything.”