Deception. Betrayal. Mistrust.
It seems the closer Rayne gets to the truth, the more she finds herself wanting to run away from it. It's complex and terrifying-more than she ever fathomed.
New family members, good and bad, pop out at her like a br...
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𝗕right blue eyes.
A mouth full of colored braces.
Impossibly black hair and an unparalleled distance.
Kai frowned, feeling an intolerable weight overtake the usual power he had in his neck and back. He tried to move, but each inch only proved to work against him. It was as if he was glued to a surface he hadn't chosen. It was as if the bright lights haunting his face were there to mock him, to sing a symphony of immeasurable redness that felt unresolvable against the thinness of his eyelids.
There was an abnormal exhaustion that tainted his ligaments.
His face furrowed deeper in discontentment as he attempted to move the fingers on both of his hands. His left hand was immovable, and while the digits on his right worked, it felt as if he were dragging the length of them through dried concrete. Like his joints were squeaky door hinges.
There was beeping near his ears.
A remote plastered to the hand he couldn't move—a button for aid.
He could feel the watchful breaths of a stranger somewhere in the room.
A guttural groan passed through his esophagus the more he moved—the more he was forced out of the reality hidden in an alley only two people found memorable. Blue skies were absorbed by red encapsulations. The walls became a locked box. The floor, a bed that was not his.
Heaviness daunted on one of his legs—as if it were hanging in the air.
Kai suddenly knew he was not in the place where he'd met and proposed to the love of his life. He knew he was no longer the brace-faced loser with a head of brunette waves—he was not in a place that meant so much to him; it was like he could feel the ache of his love like arthritis in his bones.
Fear, so completely foreign—
Fear, so agonizing—
Fear, had him hurling up.
It had his mind forgetting the pain swelling in his body. Forgetting that he'd fought against another person until he was diminished to shambles. Forgetting that the world was not as pretty as his memories—not as pretty as the love of his life.
Kai trapped the grunts of his misery behind his clenched teeth as he peeled his eyes open and returned to the world he'd hated so much. Cheese-cutter ceilings, and his leg suspended in the air by a contraption used to regulate blood flow. Faux lighting.
He blinked.
Four times.
Took even longer to lower his vision to the rest of his body.
Kai's face hardened as he noted the sling wrapped around his neck and the cast his left hand was embellished in. The leg lifted was in a similar one—so far up his leg, it disappeared underneath the hospital gown he was dressed in.
