Page 6 of Dominion

“I think I’m going to go to bed,” I murmured, avoiding Zoe’s eyes.

I could tell she was worried about me, but I didn’t have it in me right now to console her when I didn’t even know how to calm myself down. I needed something, anything, some kind of miracle to make me believe that everything would work out in the end.

But miracles didn’t exist for people like me. They existed for the good ones, for the bright ones, not for the ones who had darkness following them every step of the way. Good things happened to good people and I never exactly belonged to that category.

“Sky—”

“I’ll be fine, Zoe.” I smiled as I passed next to her and pressed my hand to her shoulder. “I just… I just need things to keep moving, that’s all.”

Silence descended around us only broken by the soft chirping of the birds nearby. I was good at this, lying to the people who cared about me, but what good would it do for her to know that my walls shattered? That in the ruins of everything I knew,everything I was, laid a broken heart that didn’t really want to be mended?

I couldn’t tell her that, but I could protect her from myself.

She didn’t say another word, but I could feel her eyes on my back as I crossed the porch and entered the quiet house. The door slammed behind me, leaving Zoe outside. Even though I wanted to admire the sunrays peeking through the windows of the living room that could be seen from the entrance, or the large portrait in the dining room on my left that depicted the story of a makeshift family in front of their clubhouse, I couldn’t.

The strength I was holding on to was slowly crumbling, and once I finally shattered into pieces, I wanted to be alone.

I ran upstairs, pressing my lips together, as if that could help me to keep this anger at bay. As if me holding it inside of my body could prevent me from doing any more damage to those I loved. But that was the thing, wasn’t it? We always hurt those we loved even when we didn’t want to.

I planned on going straight to my room, straight to the bed that wasn’t mine, that smelled like a foreign land, but the ajar door of the room that Cillian took beckoned me. As I pushed it open, I saw him bent over the small coffee table in the middle of the room.

White powder I’d seen many times laid all over the glass of the table, separated in straight lines. His eyes held mine—shame, remorse, anger at himself, all reflected in those dark orbs, but I understood.

I understood better than he could know.

I liked to think that I didn’t have a problem, but my skin itched, too tight for my body, suffocating and unfit to take me through this ordeal. I knew what it was like wanting to disappear, and standing here, looking at him, I knew he wanted to disappear as well.

“I thought you were asleep,” I said as I entered the room, closing the door behind me.

“I tried.” He shrugged and leaned back into the chair, trying to seem nonchalant, but I knew that posture. That “I’m not doing anything wrong” posture, as if that could get us out of the mess of being caught. I’d done it so many times that I lost count.

For a while there, I thought I’d be able to go through the day without my little crutch, without a little something to help me survive, to help me forget, but I had lied to myself.

I hated myself for what I was about to do.

I hated this weakness, this inability to stand on my own two feet. I hated the fact that I couldn’t face the world without some kind of crutch.

But those lies packed in a pretty, little package with a bowtie, where I told myself I didn’t need happy little pills, they were laughing at me now. The only thing I did was replace one crutch with another. Without Ash and Dylan here to lean on them… I couldn’t fucking do this.

I’d read that some people have addictive personalities. They got addicted to drugs, alcohol, other people, adrenaline, whatever came in the form of oblivion, and mine… well, my addiction was this—the need to forget. The need to stop thinking.

If I could just stop my mind from spinning for one goddamn minute, I could be happy. I could. I wouldn’t have to overthink everything. Every single situation had outcomes that were never happy ones. Everything I ever did had to be dissected, broken apart, and judged by the inner bitch that lived in me, who always laughed at everything I did.

It was hard running away from yourself, but at least with this, I could shut her up. I could quiet down my demons even if it was just for a couple of minutes.

“Do you mind if I join you?” I asked, already crossing the room.

A thousand questions lingered on Cillian’s face, but just like how I wasn’t going to ask him what made him snort coke at seven in the morning, he wasn’t going to ask me. We knew. We both knew that there were some things you couldn’t say out loud.

There were some demons you couldn’t defeat no matter how hard you tried and seeing him sitting there in nothing but his short-sleeved t-shirt, I could see the bruises and marks on his pale arms.

But I wasn’t going to ask.

“Are you sure?” Three simple words from his mouth, laced with worry, but he and I knew that I was. I was surer of this than of anything else.

I nodded without a word and dropped down on my knees on the other side of the table, opposite of him.

“Have you ever done this?” he simply asked, all the while looking at me, his knee bouncing in a rhythm only he could hear.

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