Page 72 of Broken Pieces
Because here, I’m not the wreck everyone looks at with guilt in their eyes. I’ve got a purpose. I count.
The days fall into a rhythm.
Start early. Work hard. Go home with every muscle screaming for rest.
My hands stay busy enough to keep the noise out. While my body is tired enough to sleep through the dark.
And for once, that’s enough.
So, I keep my hands busy. Wrench in one, torch in the other. Sweat dripping down my spine.
But still… Skylar is still here with me. In every bolt I twist. Every grind of steel. She’s even in the goddamn fucking air.
I tried to fuck her out of my system last night, with a girl whose name vanished with the night. She smiled too easily, dropped to her knees like she’d done the whole routine a hundred times. I told myself the release would help. That closing my eyes would make Skylar vanish.
But the second her lips wrapped around my cock, everything in me screamed this wouldn’t work.
It wasn’t right.
It didn’t feel at all like the way Skylar touched me.
All I wanted was Skylar. On her knees. Mouth slick. Eyes burning. That wild fucking fire in her stare before I snuffed it out.
I came hard, in the chick’s mouth, she swallowed everything I gave her, but there was no victory in it. Just a hollow kind of ache that settled deep and stayed.
She laughed, wiped her mouth, and asked if I wanted to grab a drink.
I walked away and didn’t even glance over my shoulder.
No one gets close to what Skylar carved into me.
And I fucking hate that. Almost as much as I need the fire she lit in me.
Rainer gave me permission to make the apartment mine. Said the apprenticeship was official now, which is good because the money I had saved is already gone.
I’ve tried to build something real. Little by little, it’s started to feel that way.
There’s a blanket on the bed now. Thick enough to bury myself in when the nights turn mean. Weights stacked in the corner that I lift until my arms shake and my abs burn. Until the pain silences everything else.
But nothing drowns her out.
Not completely.
I lie there some nights and tell myself I’m safe, that I made it out. And for a minute, I believe it.
But then the dark crawls in and all I can think about is her.
I don’t get why the fuck she’s still in my head. She doesn’t belong in my world. It’s been four goddamn weeks—gone, out of her orbit, out of her life—and I still can’t fucking shake the pull.
That alone pisses me off more than anything.
The sun cuts hard through the windows, a blinding strip of light slicing across the concrete. My hands are slick with grease, shirt clinging to my back, soaked from the heat.
I kill the torch, peel the goggles off, and squint into the glare.
That’s when I see her.
A blur of movement.
