Chapter Eighteen

January

T he front door closes behind Cade with a soft click. His words echo in my ears, playing over and over in distorted patterns that leave me shaking and gasping for breath that just won't come. My stomach roils and pitches.

I clamp my hand over my mouth and stumble blindly toward the bathroom. My knees hit the tile floor and I cling to the porcelain bowl, vomiting up everything I've eaten today. It all tastes like stomach bile and ashes.

Cade. God, Cade.

"No," I whimper, choking and gagging as the walls I erected years ago to keep myself alive come tumbling down. Memories tear through me, each hitting with the force of a bomb blast. They hurt. Oh God, they hurt.

Cade's big body engulfs mine, keeping me safe from something I can't even comprehend as shot after shot explodes outside. I know something is wrong. I can feel it in my bones , but I don't understand. My mind refuses to let me put it all together.

He jumps to his feet and glass falls all around him. The sheer terror on his face has my breath stalling in my lungs. He barks at me to stay inside and then runs out the front door as the roar of an engine sounds outside.

I stumble to my feet and follow behind him, scared and confused. I don't understand what's happening.

I turn toward my house, looking for Cade. My mind lurches, trying to make sense of what I'm seeing.

Titan's lying on the ground beside my mom, surrounded by garbage and pink wrapping paper. Neither of them is moving.

A whimper climbs up my throat when I see the blood pooling around Titan's big body.

I didn't understand what I was seeing until I heard Cade screaming. He sounded like someone was burning him alive as he yelled the word no over and over, begging for someone to help him. Not even as I stood there, staring at my mom and Titan on the ground, did I believe my world had just ended. Not until Cade fell to his knees beside Titan and I saw the blood all over his hands did the magnitude of the situation hit me.

My mom and Titan were dead, shot to death for reasons I'm only now coming to understand.

Cade told me he had so much blood on his hands that he'd never wash clean. Maybe I should have believed him when he said it. But I didn't.

I still don't believe it. Because what happened to my mom and Titan isn't his fault.

It's mine.

That's the painful truth I've been trying so desperately to bury for the last seven years. That's the painful voice in the dark that taunts me…the one I'm so afraid of that I've never even let myself think about that night. That's my secret.

It was my fault.

I knew something was wrong—seriously wrong with Titan—but I didn't want to face it, so I just pretended it wasn't happening. I pretended I didn't notice when he suddenly started bringing in more money, or when he'd be gone all night and then sleep all day. I pretended not to hear the whispers from my classmates about him when they thought I wasn't listening. I pretended not to see the text messages or hear the phone calls that constantly pulled him away when he did bother to come around for any length of time.

I ignored every sign, even when they were staring me right in the face…because I didn't want to accept the truth. I was so mad at Titan, so disappointed he was pushing me away that I watched him drown and never even tried to throw him a life-preserver. I just stood there and let it happen.

Cade thinks I pushed him away because I blamed him.

I pushed him away because I felt so damn guilty that I couldn't look at him without feeling like I was going to break into pieces. When I told him to leave, I wanted him to fight me. I wanted him to save me from the darkness clinging to my soul, the pain that threatened to annihilate me with every breath I took. I desperately wanted him to fix it for me and didn't think I deserved it. So I pushed him out the door.

Knowing the extent of what he's been suffering through alone kills me. He blames himself because I told him it was his fault. All he ever tried to do was protect me and keep together the only family he had left.

He's been punishing himself since that night so I wouldn't ever have to know the truth. He lived a lie for years so I never had to know that the real monster in the dark…is me.

It's always been me.

I guess his nickname for me was fitting all along. I am a little monster.

"Mama! Titan!" I wail as the dam breaks wide open and all the pain I've been so desperately trying to ignore slams into me. I pitch forward, striking my head on the edge of the sink.

When the world starts to go black, I'm still conscious enough to hope it's forever.

I wake up in the bathroom floor with my head pounding. Blood rushes in my ears, playing counterpoint to the roar of recriminations and accusations I can't seem to escape. Images of Titan, my mom, and Cade assail me, tearing me apart over and over. Even breathing hurts as their images twist up with my own guilt until memories of them scream that I'm the reason for all this pain.

Blood pours from the bullet wounds in Titan's chest and streaks his spiky black hair. He points a finger at me, mouthing that he hates me. That he should be alive and happy.

"Why didn't you try to save me?" he asks me. "Why didn't you care?"

Half of my mom's face is gone as tears of blood drip down her ruined cheek. She repeatedly screams the word selfish . The disappointment in her eyes—the betrayal—breaks me. Looking at her is like looking at a version of myself…one so much more selfless than I've ever been. She sacrificed so much for me and Titan, working sixty- and seventy-hour weeks just so we would never go without.

Cade stares at me, those beautiful eyes of his a haunting blue that tears at my soul. He doesn't say anything, but he's bleeding too…from all those wounds he received trying to outrun my selfish words. All those attacks he endured trying to redeem himself for crimes that were never his fault.

Every single second hurts worse than the last.

I stumble to my feet and the room sways around me. Their accusatory stares are burned into my irises. I can't see through them. Everything but them is blurry and I just want it to stop. All of it.

I stumble and trip, banging my hip into the edge of the counter. Bottles of makeup and hair products careen to the floor as I grasp around, feeling blindly for a bottle of pain medication that's been in the cabinet over the sink for the last year, untouched.

Twenty pills. That's all it'll take to make it stop. I know because I've thought about it before.

As soon as my hand closes around the prescription bottle, I cry out in relief…and then fight to open it. My hands shake so hard that I can't get the lid off.

I just want to make it stop—make it all stop—but I can't.

I can't.

I can't.

I can't.

"Dammit!" I scream and throw the bottle across the room before falling to the floor.

I scream and cry until my voice fades, my throat feels like it's bleeding, and I'm choking on my own spit. Seven years of grief and self-hatred pour out of me, purging itself in a flood I'm not sure I'm strong enough to withstand.

I don't try.

Instead, I let it take me.

"January? Oh, Jesus. January!" Mariah falls to her knees beside me. "Please be breathing," she begs me. "Please be breathing."

"I'm breathing," I try to tell her, but all that comes out is a garbled groan.

She sobs in relief anyway.

I don't know how long I've been on the floor. I think I've passed out a couple of times, but I don't really remember.

Mariah's hands flutter around my face, making me moan. Something is wrong with my head. It hurts like hell. Just the touch of her fingers to my forehead makes it feel like my brain is trying to rip its way through my skull.

I peel my eyes open to find her with her hair up in a silk net, wearing pajamas with little cupcakes on them and no makeup. Tears drip down her face, landing against my skin with wet plops.

"I thought you were dead!" she cries, pulling herself to her feet long enough to grab a towel before she drops down beside me again. "There's blood all over the place."

I roll my head to the side to see what she's talking about, but wince as another wave of pain slams into me. She presses the damp towel to my head a second later and I realize I must have busted it open. It hurts like hell, but I don't remember when I hit it or even how.

"How-?"

"Michael," she whispers, guessing what I'm trying to ask her. "He showed up at my door. Said you needed me."

"He told me…" I squeeze my eyes closed and fight back a whimper as all those wounds we ripped wide open pulse and throb. It's odd. I can't remember what happened to my head, but I remember every word Cade said to me. I remember the torment on his face when he said them, the guilt and pain burning in his eyes. I remember what it feels like to burn alive without ever touching a flame. "Titan and my mom…. Titan was dealing for Kaleo for two years. He was trying to help pay for me to go to college."

"I'm so sorry," Mariah whispers.

"Is…is he okay?"

"I don't…" She shakes her head, not finishing whatever she was going to say because we both know it'd be a lie. Cade isn't okay. He hasn't been okay in a long time. Neither of us has been. We've just been trying like hell to hang on and pretend we didn't lose ourselves when Titan and my mom were murdered.

But we did. Something inside both of us broke that night. It's been broken ever since.

"I need a doctor," I mumble.

"That's probably a good idea," she agrees. "I don't think you need stitches, but you might have a concussion."

"Not…" I stop and swallow. "Not that kind of doctor. I…I thought about killing myself," I whisper, my throat burning. "I tried to take a bottle of pills, but I couldn't…I couldn't do it."

"Oh, January," she gasps. Her hands tremble against my skin where she's holding the towel to the cut on my forehead. She doesn't sound disappointed, just…sad.

"I've thought about dying for a long time," I admit. Saying it out loud hurts like hell. Tears burn up my throat and pool in my eyes, but it's the truth.

For years, I've wondered what it would feel like to just close my eyes and never have to open them again. I used to hold my breath and wonder what it would feel like if I never took another one. I thought death would be so much easier than facing a life without my family and Cade, but I don't want to feel like that anymore.

"I don't want to die, Mariah. I don't…I can't…I need help."

I have to get help and face what happened. I have to find a way to live with the guilt and the pain and the shame because I don't want to die.

I want to live.

For myself. For Mariah. For my mom and Titan. For Cade. Because when I thought about taking those pills? I didn't stop because I couldn't get the lid off. He's the reason I didn't go through with it.

He's always been my reason.

I have to face this, because I can't let him carry it alone anymore.