Page 65 of Sparks of Insanity
He lifted his hands helplessly.
“All I have here is the medical information about your state when you were admitted here. Were you seeing another mental health professional? Perhaps I can gain access to their notes, or discuss your case with them.”
“Fuck’s sake.” I stared at the ceiling, wondering why this asshole was making my head hurt more than my fucking arms did. Pain relief only did so much, and the dull throbbing in my wrists was this angry reminder that I’d tried, and failed, to take control of my life.
“I never touched her, but they suggested I did, so I lost everything. I was a fucking decent guy until her. Hey, why don’t you just write in your notes that I’m a kiddie-fiddler, and have done with it. That’s what they all believed. Even people who’d fucking known me my entire life! Oh, and she wasn’t even under age! Jesus, yeah, that’s my story. I didn’t interfere with my student, who also wasn’t under the age of consent, but somehow that still makes me a monster. You know, the system is really at fault here. But the system gets to live on without losing everything. Me? Yeah, I got a nice big fuck you from them.”
“You were admitted to the hospital, after arriving with a young man and woman, who’d administered life-saving aid, and they apparently waited for almost sixteen hours, before they were sent away at your request.”
“You’re wondering if that was her? If she was there when I did this, then yeah. It’s a long story, but she fucking destroyed me. She’s insane, by the way. Oh, her whole family is. Hey, if you like this stuff, go talk to them. They’ll give you an epic boner, with their craziness.”
The doc, whose name I refused to fucking remember, made a note that time.
“Ember and Blaze Cross were the ones who brought you here.”
“Yeah, I figured that much. Seriously, I thought you shrinks were supposed to be smart. Don’t they teach you the simple shit like that?”
He folded the notes again and tucked them in his pocket.
“The animosity isn’t unusual for people in your situation, Eth-”
“People in my situation? Wow, how many teachers whose lives were destroyed try this, and end up here? Do you have like a little therapy group specially for guys like me, who wanted to help people, and got royally buttfucked by them instead?”
The doc stood up, brushing his hands down the front of his perfect trousers, resting a hand on the metal rail along my bed, which felt way too fucking intrusive for this stranger, but then after what I’d been through with that crazy bitch, were there really any limits or boundaries anymore?
“Listen doc, let me make this easy for you. I’m completely and entirely brain-fucked, and it’s not going to be fixable, so cut your losses, and move on to the next one. I may or may not try this again when I get out, but I also may or may not hunt that bitch down and kill her instead, so yeah… I guess what I’m saying is, get fucked.”
Wow. Okay, I’d definitely lost my mind, and those were the kind of words that got a man an extended stay in a medical facility, weren’t they? Lucky me. Still, at least I was safe from the Cross family for a while. That had to count for something.
36
Ember
Three weeks without Ethan.Three weeks suffering from the absence of him in my life. Three weeks of enduring my family, and their incessant attempts to distract me, or soothe me, help me, in their own ways.
Blaze was visiting a lot, sometimes with Anneka and the baby too. They were still fighting over the name, and all kinds of things had been thrown out there, including Flambé, and Fiore, but so far, she was heavily resistant to any fire-related names. She wouldn’t win though, because the men in my family always got what they wanted.
Take Ash, for example. Not content with hounding me every chance he got, to point out that I’d destroyed a decent man, and I was just as bad as the rest of the family, he’d started saying he’d seen Ethan around the area, like he wanted to taunt me on a brand new level. Ethan had refused to see me, and had been kept in longer than I’d expected, after some kind of mental crisis, andafter that he’d vanished. I had to find him, but I had no idea how to even begin with that.
“Em, fancy going for a run with me?” That was dad Dory, who’d recently decided that fresh air and exercise were the answer to every damn problem. My other dad went with him often, but today he was nowhere to be seen.
“I don’t do running, and you know this, dad! Why do you keep trying to drag me out there?”
His face dropped slightly, and I felt like a bitch for throwing his offer in his face.
“Sorry. I’m just-”
“You don’t have to apologise, Em. I know we’re all bugging you lately, but you seem so lost since you came back from the other house. I wish I knew how to help you.”
So did I. “I don’t think anything will help except seeing Ethan again. I need to know he’s okay. I need to apologise for the sick things I pushed him into.”
Dad sat down on the sofa beside me, resting his palms on his knees as he stared forward, keeping his eyes away from mine.
“I know you know that we’ve all got our issues, and we’ve all done awful things over the years, mostly to each other. It doesn’t mean that love can’t grow, even after all the bad things we’ve done. Your mum chose to stay with me and your dad, and we did things that most people wouldn’t be proud of.”
“But you are?” He chuckled, stroking his beard as he kept staring straight ahead. Was this conversation easier for him if he didn’t have to look me in the eye? What did he think he’d see on my face in response to his words?
“The things we did shouldn’t have led to love, or to this amazing family we have now, but it did. Blaze inherited the worst of me, and the worst of Gray, but luckily there was a little of your mum in there too. Okay, I guess inherited is the wrong word, since only one of us is biologically his father, but natureand nurture? It’s all the same thing, really. Was he predisposed to act the way he did, because of his genetic makeup? Or was it because of the things he heard, witnessed, and learned by being parented by us? Was it in him from childhood, or did it occur after that damn school? I think we both know it was always there. It’s in you too. Your behaviour proves that you’re also very much our daughter, and as such, you’ll do things that might surprise you, that might horrify you. You’ll do things that others would judge as wrong, and you’ll maybe even regret some of them, but that doesn’t mean you can’t win over the love of the person you want.”
