Holding Back [COMPLETED]

Chapter 38 - "I don't want to talk."

Another part needed that, needed to have someone tell her she was wrong despite the evidence against it. She knew Jace could be it.

But she was empty-handed and his curtains were closed against her.

Turning away, she entered her room and went in search of her phone. When she found it, she sent off a message before her logical and cynical side could stop her. She waited, staring at the screen. Minutes dragged on. When it felt like no response was ever going to come, one did.

"I don't want to talk. I don't feel like being yelled at for no reason today."

Haley blinked at Jace's reply then set down the phone. What could she say? There was nothing to say. Anger boiled upside her and she climbed off her bed once more. After grabbing a toppled book, she stormed onto her balcony and raised her hand about to hurl the object at Jace's window.

Only a tiny thought of the consequences halted her. She dropped her hands, squeezing the spine, glaring at the doors. She didn't want to talk to him, she wanted to punch him. She wanted to scream at him again because she was on the deck because of him.

Before she would have been fine curling beneath her blankets and blocking out the world, but now the world was inside her heart and she hated him for it. Hated that a piece of her had been uncaged when she had worked so hard to build those walls.

Spinning away from the temptation to care or do something stupid, she stormed back into her room and tossed the book aside. She paced, wearing a hole in her carpet, her hand dragging paths through her hair, knots snagging at her fingers. Inside her chest, a furious monster had its claws in her heart and was eating away at it.

Back and forth she walked, too many thoughts and feelings tearing her in all directions. She wanted it all to stop, wanted to go back to when nothing could hurt her. Return to a life where she was stone and events glanced off her, barely chipping at her.

When her thoughts began to scream in her head, she dug her headphones out and hit play. Curling up on her bed, she willed the noise to drown herself. Lyrics and rhythms pounded away in her ears, but still, her mind persisted in traveling back to the previous night ripping apart every second until it stopped at the point where it had all gone wrong. Though Jace looking like he was about to kiss her had been one point of cause, the second was the fight with Isaac and everything she had failed to say.

Haley sat up, struck with an idea. Driven by one thought, she scrambled into her closet and threw on the first thing she saw. She wiped her hair up into a messy ponytail and snatched her purse. Downstairs, she found her mother at the dining room table, papers scattered about her. She tore her focus away from her work and eyed her daughter's jumbled state with a worried crease of her eyebrows.

"Haley, I haven't seen you, are you-"

"Can I borrow your car?" Haley asked, the words rushing out.

"Are you okay?"

Haley shook her head then nodded. "I just need to fix something. Can I borrow the car?"

Instead of answering, her mother pulled out a chair adjacent to her.

"Mom, I really can't-"

"If you want my keys, you'll sit down."

Fighting the voice in her head that told her to run and find a different way to fix everything, Haley sat. Her mother rested her arms on the table, papers crinkling beneath her. The lines by her eyes wrinkled with worry.

"What's going on, sweetheart?" she asked, concerned.

"Nothing."

Haley's leg bounced beneath the table, every limb feeling as if it were trying to escape her body.