Instinct » Liam Dunbar [Book 3]

15

CHAPTER FIFTEEN » FALLOUT
"I loved him."

☽

Everything was silent.

The house held a heavy emptiness within it as I stepped inside. But there was an emptiness inside of me too – as if I'd lost a part of myself. As if my heart had sunk into my stomach, leaving an empty space where it used to sit.

Gently, Scott placed a hand on my shoulder, maybe a comforting attempt to get me to move further inside, but I couldn't even find the strength within me to walk.

At the sound of the door closing shut behind us, my mom stepped in from the other room. Almost instantly, her face changed, it fell, as if she'd been crushed just by looking at me.

"Oh, honey."

I stayed completely still as she wrapped her arms around me, holding me tightly, tighter than she ever had before. My reddened and sore swollen eyes began to burn with tears again, a rawness to them.

"He's gone," I swallowed thickly, almost choking on the lump in my throat. "He's really gone, mom."

"It was hunters," Scott added lowly. He too struggled with the words, as if he couldn't bare to say them out loud.

"Th-they killed him–" I pulled away from my mom's embrace, as a spark of anger began to boil deep within me, ferocious and fiery. "They killed Brett and Lori." The words sounded too sour on my tongue.

Rage churned within me, as if it was hungry for a desperate destruction. I turned away, moving as far away from my mom and Scott as I could, knowing it was too much to handle, too much to try and control.

Everything around me turned into a blur. The sounds. The taste. The smell. As if my world had been stripped from everything, leaving an empty shell of nothingness.

Everything was just...gone.

I paused in front of the picture shelf, trying to hold back the intense feelings and emotions burning bright and fast within me.

I had to hold it together.

A tear traced down my cheek, and within seconds the floodgates had opened. My chin trembled, and I found myself gripping the shelf, breathing heavier than I ever had before.

I was losing it again. I could feel it. Any happy memory, any thread of happiness was unraveling at the seams. The whole world was crumbling at my fingertips.

And I felt hollow.

"Becca–"

A waving hot trail of agony hit me. I reached out, my hand swiping at everything on that damned shelf. Pictures frames, small ornaments, they all fell to the floor with a hard, cold crash, finally breaking the silence in the house.

I glanced down at an old photograph of my dad and I, reaching down to pick it up. "Rebecca, honey–" mom started, her voice wavering slightly.

"Look at this," I snapped, holding the picture in the air. Annoyingly, it was the only one that hadn't smashed; there wasn't even a single, tiny crack. "This piece of shit," I threw it down to the ground, the glass shattering into tiny pieces. Scott and Mom tensed. "Where has he been, huh?!" I was shouting, I was screaming, releasing a violence into the air. "Some lame fucking excuse of a dad," I slammed my boot down as hard as I could, feeling the glass cracking underneath the weight of it.

I was trembling. But I couldn't stop. Even when I pressed my hand against the wall, I still shook, still trembled. And I was crying, I was sobbing, and I couldn't stop. As if there was something inside of me that hurt too much to be contained; something that was about to break loose from my skin.