Page 185 of Craving Venom

I drop my head down, pretending to check something in my bag. “Nothing happened.”

“Faith. Talk to me.”

I zip the bag shut. “I said I’m fine.”

It’s a lie.

She knows it. I know it. But I can’t give her the truth.

“There’s something you need to know. About the night after Halloween.”

“I don’t have time for this.” I push past her, brushing against her shoulder as I head for the door. “Is Xaden driving us or not?”

“Yeah. He’s downstairs.”

I don’t look back.

Because if I do, she’ll see everything I’m trying to bury.

I don’t really know how to start this.

Maybe because some small, desperate part of me still hoped I’d live long enough to come home and say it to your faces. To look you in the eyes and just… break down. To finally stop pretending I was strong enough to carry this.

But I’m not.

And I’m sorry.

God, I’m so sorry.

Not for what I did—not at the time, anyway. I thought I was protecting someone. I thought I was doing the right thing, in the only way I knew how. But I’m sorry for how it destroyed everything. For how it turned all of our lives into something unrecognizable. For how it took whatever was left of me and burned it to ash.

And for how it shattered whatever pieces of your hearts still had space for me.

There’s not a night I don’t replay it in my head. That night. The way it collapsed so fast, like the floor gave out from under me. One moment I had a future. A jersey with my name on it. A team that believed in me. A family I still thought I could make proud. And then—sirens. Cold metal around my wrists. Flashing lights. My name on the news like a scar that wouldn’t fade. And then came the silence. The worst part.

Your silence.

I remember the trial. I remember scanning the courtroom for something familiar in your eyes and not finding it. You looked at me like I was a stranger. Like the boy you raised was already gone.

Maybe he was.

Maybe I buried him the moment the cuffs went on. Maybe he died the night everything else did.

But before I take this last breath, I need to say the only truth that still feels real to me:

I never stopped being your son.

Even when you couldn’t look at me. Even when I couldn’t look at myself. I still loved you. I love you. And every single day behind these walls, I held on to this stupid hope that maybe, just maybe, one day I’d walk out those gates and see you waiting.

Not to forgive me. Not even to speak.

Just to know I mattered enough for you to show up. To meet my eyes, one last time.

But that day never came. And now I know it won’t.

And I can’t do this anymore. I can’t keep pretending this place isn’t swallowing me whole. I’m tired of being what it feeds on. I’m tired of hearing my own heartbeat and wondering if anyone out there still remembers it.

So I’m leaving.

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