I don’t. I straighten slowly instead, blood dripping from my fingers onto the floor. My head tilts as I stare down the barrel. “Do it,” I murmur softly.
Adriana is screaming now. I hear my name. Over and over.
Aiden’s finger tightens on the trigger, but something flickers across his expression. Uncertainty or fear...I can’t tell. But hesees that I’m not afraid, and that I actuallywanthim to pull it. His jaw clenches. He lowers the gun just enough to step backward toward the door.
“This isn’t over, you fucking asshole,” he says, voice tight. Then he’s gone, and the door slams. And I’m left standing there, bleeding and buzzing and furious because it still isn’t enough. The rage has nowhere to go. It roars inside my chest, clawing for an outlet. I turn and drive my fist straight into the living room mirror.
Glass explodes, and pain finally sparks through my hand, but it onlyfeedsthe fire. I hit it again. And again. And again. Blood streaks across the fractured reflection, splitting my face into a dozen warped and fucked up versions. I don’t recognize any of them. Adriana is begging me to stop, but I barely hear her.
The mirror is shattered and bleeding in front of me. Just like me. My hand is shredded, skin split open, glass embedded in my knuckles. Blood drips down my wrist and onto the hardwood. The sting itself is distant, though. Interesting.
I can still feel anger and pain.
Adriana’s frantic voice is somewhere behind me. “Jude, stop. Please, stop.”
I ignore her, crouching slowly and staring at the glittering wreckage at my feet. I reach down and pick up a shard that’s longer than my palm and clear enough that I can see my own monstrous face through it. For a moment, I see the mask instead of my face. It makes me flinch.
I turn it in my fingers, the edge of it catching the light. My pulse pounds in my ears, my head roaring with dissatisfaction. I wanted to fucking kill him. He needs to be dead and bleeding out on the floor. I want to rip him apart with my goddamn teeth and hands. It’s an animalistic rage that I’ve never felt before. It has nowhere to go now that Aiden ran.
It wantsrelease.
I lift the shard and press the cool glass lightly to the side of my throat.
Adriana makes a pitiful, scared sound.
I tilt my head, watching in the broken mirror as the edge kisses my skin. A thin line of red beads instantly. The sensation is sharp and clean. It feelsreal.
I can control this pain.
For the first time in years, this would be my decision.Mine.
“Jude.” Her voice cracks on my name.
I press harder, enjoying the pain for once, because I’m inflicting it myself. Because it’s the only fucking thing I can even feel anymore. Anything is better than this numb hell I’ve been buried under.
Hands slam into me, Adriana throwing herself at my chest so hard we both nearly go down. The shard slips, slicing across my collarbone instead of my throat. Blood spills down my skin, but she doesn’t care. She grabs my wrist with both hands, nails digging into my skin, trying to wrench the glass away from me. Her own hands are slicing open in desperation.
“Stop it!” she sobs. “Stop it, stop it,stop it—”
“Get off me,” I growl. My voice doesn’t even sound like mine.
She doesn’t let go. She wraps herself around my arm like she’s trying to anchor me to the goddamn ground. Her tears are hitting my chest. I can feel them. “Don’t do this,” she chokes. “Please. Please don’t do this, Jude.”
I wrestle her, slamming her back against the floor and stare down at her, breathing hard. My vision pulses and darkens at the edges. The room feels like it’s tilting. “Why?” I ask, almost curious. “Why the fuck not?”
She looks up at me then, and I can see that she’sterrified. “Because she loves you,” Adriana sobs.
The words scrape against something raw inside me, and my grip tightens on the shard. “Don’t,” I warn.
“Youloveher,” she says anyway, her voice breaking. “Goddammit, Jude, you loveEmma.”
My entire body seizes, the name detonating inside my skull. I see a flash of brown hair and honey brown eyes. Then pain. Electricity. Conditioning. My muscles lock automatically, heart slamming against my ribs as if I’ve been shocked again.
“Shut the fuck up,” I snap, pulling her up and slamming her down again, forcing a yelp out of her.
But she keeps going, because Adriana has never known when to stop. “She would bedestroyedif you died like this,” she sobs. “You think she wouldn’t feel it? You think shewouldn’tblame herself? Don’t do that to her. Don’tyou fucking dare.”
I’m panting now. I try to pictureherface, and my body reacts immediately with nausea and a phantom jolt across my ribs where they’d hit me with a baton or shock me.