Page 19 of Broken Pieces
The voice that crawls under your skin and stays there.
The way he smells, and those hands.
I saw the scars.
Healed over by time but still there. Faint lines slashing across his knuckles, quiet confessions of every fight he’s walked into and every one he didn’t walk out of clean.
I wanted to ask him about them.
But I didn’t.
I know what it’s like to hate a question like that. To have someone’s eyes linger too long on the scar above your eyebrow, as if it tells your whole fucking life story.
I never let anyone ask me about mine. So I wasn’t about to ask him about his. He deserves to keep his secrets. Even if I can’t stop thinking about them.
There are three other girls in this room.
One cries in her sleep, the kind of soft, broken sobs that make you feel like a monster for not caring.
One whispers to the ceiling after lights out. Things no one wants to hear. Secrets she buries in the dark because there’s no one else to give them to.
And the last one’s already half-dead. Her body breathes, her eyes blink, but whatever made her alive left a long time ago.
We’re all ghosts in this place. Drifting past each other, pretending we’re not desperate for someone to notice we’re still breathing.
I pull the thin blanket tighter around my body, even though the room’s already too warm. It’s not the cold I’m fighting. It’s the emptiness. I need something to wrap around me. Something to hold me still. Even if it’s just fabric and lies.
Zane’s grin flashes again in my mind.
Fuck him.
He slipped under my skin. One night on a rooftop. That’s all it took. One laugh that shouldn’t have happened, one moment I didn’t guard hard enough. And now I’m splitting at the seams, cracking open in places I swore I’d welded shut.
I roll onto my stomach, shove my face into the pillow, and scream until my throat’s raw.
I want to forget the way he looked at me. The way his voice dipped soft when he asked that dumb question about the stars. The way my fingers almost brushed his.
I want to forget all of it.
But I can’t.
And that makes me want to lash out and punch something.
I’ve seen him at school.
He moves through the halls as if the place was built for him alone. The girls orbit him, always giggling too loud, tilting their heads at the exact angle they hope will catch his attention.
He isn’t the golden boy with a football in hand, the kind teachers worship and parents parade around. He’s the bad idea that pulls you in anyway. The dare you take even when you know it will end in tragedy. The mistake that leaves bruises you don’t regret.
I could pretend I’ve never watched him, never noticed, never let my eyes catch on his shoulders or that grin.
But that would be a goddamn lie.
I’ve seen him lean against lockers, talking to girls who have no idea what the fuck they’re doing.
I’ve watched him pull that smirk he threw at me a dozen times on other girls. And I hate that it worked on them too. Hate that some part of me wonders if I’m nothing more than another piece in whatever fucked-up game he’s playing.
As if one glance, one cocky comment, could be enough to make me spread my legs.
