Bloodline [h.s.]

thirty-six.

"Did you ever want to die before Kai found you?" She asked, nearly too afraid to know the answer. I wasn't entirely comfortable giving her the real answer, but I would give her any truth she asked for just to wake up with her one more morning. "Wait... I'm sorry if that's too far. You don't have to answer."

"Do you want me to?" I offered, handing her a scalpel to cut me open however she pleased for the glimmer of hope she wouldn't leave me.

"I want to know you. I am trying to understand why you did what you did... how you got to this point."

"When I was eleven, the foster mom I had at the time was a monster. I picked a fight with an older boy in the house over something I can't even remember. He beat me half to death. Because I started the fight, I had to be punished, so she locked me in a closet in her basement for two days with no food, no water, no light, and no interaction with anyone.  Being alone in the dark for that long at that age, awake for every minute of it, takes something from you. I didn't necessarily want to die, but I didn't care if the conditions were bad enough to kill me before someone let me out because I realised had nothing to miss outside of the closet. After that, I didn't care whether I survived or not."

I couldn't look at her. I don't know if was shame or embarrassment the confession had its own gravitational pull that kept my eyes down at the sheets.

"Why did you keep ending up in foster homes if your grandmother was still alive at that point?"

"Alec made it impossible to find me. No one cared where I ended up. I was the son of a mass murderer in everyone's eyes. It didn't matter to anyone that I was a child." The words sound like I was speaking about something that happened to someone else.

"Were the foster parents ever violent?"

"Sometimes," I said. She waited for me to continue.

"The worst house I was in used solitary confinement and starvation a lot. A girl had recently moved in the bunk across from mine. She had just spent hours locked in the closet because she wouldn't stop crying. She hadn't eaten in days, so when it sounded like everyone was in bed, she snuck down to the kitchen to get some food. I helped her to keep a look out for anyone, but when she dropped and spilled a box of cereal, our foster dad heard and came downstairs. I told the girl to hide. She was younger than me and reminded me of Abigail. I couldn't let her take the beating so I took it. He hit me til I bled, and locked me away in a closet with no light."

She buried her face in my neck, wrapping herself around me like a koala. I hadn't realised how anxious I felt until the closeness settled my racing pulse. These were words I had never spoken aloud to anyone before.

"I'm sorry," she said.

"What do you have to be sorry for?" I stroked my thumb over her cheeks.

"I get it, now. I understand why you did it. Every terrible thing you experienced all came back to my dad. You thought your family was dead. The only hope you had was destroying him."

She laid her head on my stomach. Her warmth still continued to surprise me. Feeling her hair sprawled out on my chest and her head on my abdomen was a comfort that caught me off guard no matter how many times it happened.

"Does that change how you feel?" I wondered.

"I feel like I know you more or I understand you. There has been this gap between when you lost your family and when Kai and Nick found you."

"What does that mean? Has that changed what you want?"

The warmth left my chest as she rolled over onto back facing the ceiling.

"Nothing feels right for some reason. And I have no idea why. I thought that understanding you would make it okay."

"Why doesn't it feel right? What do I need to do to make you feel right about it?"

We sat up facing each other in the bed, both bare chested and in all seriousness, ready to sort this out once and for all. My pulse picked up again. In this moment, I felt myself hanging on the edge of a cliff. I was so close the person pulling her back and just as close to losing my grip.

"I don't know. I'm sorry. I know that's not fair."

"What do you want right now? Don't think long term or about all the millions of factors that I know you are analyzing in your head right now. Just take a moment, and don't think beyond the one we are in this very second. No one exists and nothing else matters for a moment. Please, Bee. What do you want?"

"Aiden," her voice cracked. The beginning pond of a tear glistened on her eyelashes. "I don't know what I want."

"You do know. I can tell with absolute certainty you know, but you are afraid to act on it."

"Don't do that. Don't read me like I'm someone you're trying to manipulate." She stood up from the bed, snatching her hand away.

"You think that's what I'm doing? Manipulating you?! Tell me you don't actually believe I'm still using you." I retorted, getting louder.

This wasn't fair of me. I was not the one who should be angry. I had never given more of myself than I had to her, and it still wasn't enough. My hands overlapped behind my neck with frustration while I resisted the urge to break something. The mirror had just been repaired so that wasn't an option. I settled on pacing along the other side of the room.

"I don't know! I should but I don't, and I'm sorry for that! But I can't trust myself to make the decision. I used to have good instincts. I relied on that. Then, I trusted you with everything in me, and you ruined me, Aiden!" She snapped through her tears. My footsteps halted abruptly.

"Bee," I choked out, swallowing the lump in my throat.

"I forgave you the day you told me, and I have been terrified of my own judgement ever since! What moral compass have I got left to make this decision?! You've shattered it! You contorted my morals and handed them back as something I don't recognise." She cried.

Her arms crossed over her stomach while mine dropped to my feet. I walked across the room to her side. She clutched my arms, dropping her forehead to my chest.

"You should leave me, then. You've just said it yourself. I'm not good for you." I strained the response out of me.

My hands cupped her knees. I trapped her despairing gaze in mine. I traced her every feature into my brain, knowing this could be the last time I'm privileged to see them. Every colour in her Pacific blue irises, the height of her cheekbones, the shape of my favourite lips...

"That's the problem. I can't."

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hope you enjoyed it! don't forget to vote pls :)

sorry if this chapter seemed to drag on but there were some clarifications and questions that i thought needed answering