Switching myself off, I drop my phone onto the floor, discarding it like a candy wrapper. I flop back onto my chair with my eyes closed, as if whatever consequence of my future actions wouldn't matter anymore.
No matter what kind of human being you are, as long as you have relationships with others, you're bound to get hurt.
Reciting these words like a sermon in the bible, the tingling sensation on my back starts up again, like an itch I'll never be able to fully scratch away. Pushing away from my desk so I can drop my head in my hands, my vision blurs as if I'm being shoved underwater with my eyes open.
Ice is like glass—if it's thin, you can easily see through it, and it melts under heat.
The thicker it is, the more opaque and powerful it becomes.
But like glass, ice is fragile, and it shatters all the same.
"Don't get attached." I whisper to myself, sitting upright and folding one leg over the other. "Why did I become attached...?"
The pain my chest starts to throb as much as the itch in my back, so much that I double over to clutch my shoulder. Grimacing, I brush my hair to the side, biting my tongue till I draw a copper taste.
Ezekiel's smile as he goes off to school.
Jace's face when he wakes up.
Axel's grin when I make jokes.
Elliot saying goodnight to me.
And Colt...
"I can't do this..." I choke out, phlegm filling my throat as I turn my attention back to the screen of my computer. "I can't..."
My keyboard wet with tears, I stride on, typing a thousand words per minute. Words pass by mindlessly, then paragraphs, then pages. It's only till midnight that the tears and itches go away, my eyes dried up from the metaphorical waterfall that had just been flowing, and my back as unfeeling as the day before.
The scars on my back that had been exposed to the entire school—the entire world even—represent something important. Each break in my skin symbolises a lesson, each scar reminds me everyday that pure relationships are irrelevant in a world that benefits those who are unsympathetic.
Switching everything off, I expect ice to crawl into my heart and freeze it shut. But the ice never comes, nothing comes.
Everything goes away.
I can't feel.
I can't feel anything.
***
About to take my first step up the staircase in the Lloyd mansion foyer, I mentally brace myself for any scenario that would hit me as I silently attempt to make my way to my room. However, my challenges would start even before I reached the top of the staircase, a timid voice from behind the marble banister snapping up my attention.
"Miss Leigh." Kenna claps her gloved hands together, clearly uplifted by my arrival. "You're back early today! It's only a little past 12:30-"
"You're maid, not a clock." I growl, wrapping one hand around the railing tightly. "If you want to tell the time, find a University that'll accept you and you can get a degree in it."
Kenna stumbles back, clearly wounded. She grips her wrist, eyes brimming with water as she sniffs out a quiet apology.
A stab of pain goes through my heart as she takes off her gloves and dismisses herself for the night—she'd been working overtime to wait for me to back home. Shaking myself and focusing on my resolve, I'm not surprised that on my way back I'm greeted by another familiar face.
YOU ARE READING
Princes & I
Romance"The closest thing I've had to family is the postman, cause I sure saw a lot more of him than I did my own father." Torn out of a cold and broken home and thrown into a new family of five princes equipped with vastly different attitudes, Leighton C...
