It was midnight and Cami had been a catatonic shell of the lively, passion filled person she once was.

She hadn't spoken a word to me, only murmuring near nonsense to herself after Parker had alerted me to what the hell had happened.

At first, I'd stared at him in accusation, pushing his shoulder in an attempt to get him to tell me what the hell was going on—but he'd been adamant that this wasn't about him.

Her warm brown eyes were devoid of all life; cold, hard, iced over pain staring me down deep into the pits of my soul.

I'd pulled myself from the room when she'd finally settled enough that she was no longer shaking, curled up on my bed in the blankets and staring at the wall as if her eyes were lasers that could burn a hole directly through it and aid in her escape.

"Is Cami alright?"

I startled as my mother came to a stop at the top of the stairs; her warm blue eyes filled with concern for the daughter she'd never got to have.

"She's fine; laying down in Grey's room. It's the only place she wouldn't freak out again. I don't know what happened, I just heard her on the phone and then she had a breakdown, basically."

"Oh, no. I was worried this would happen."

I was left out of the conversation even though my mother knew sign language. I didn't attempt to interject myself into this one.

"I checked her phone and saw that it was from the prison. Her father contacted her. It must've triggered her PTSD from finding her mother as a child."

"Finding her mother? You mean Cami had to see her after..."

"Yes, after her father...did what he did that sent him to prison for second degree murder."

"And you just conveniently left that information out of the 'welcome' packet?"

"I'm sorry, we tried to keep it as quiet as possible. Your father...he used to work with Michael, Cami's father. When I found out that she was in the system and going to the same school as you two, I knew that I had to do something."

"Yeah, he 'worked' with Michael. Sure."

My head turned to Parker's at the same time my mother's hands started to shake ever so slightly.

"What do you mean?"

"I heard you two talking the other night, mom. I heard everything. Everything. The truth about Cami's mom—how dad only cheated because you did, first. Why don't you go on and tell Grey that truth, huh? And while we're at it—why don't we discuss how Grey could've been able to talk this entire time if he'd just suck it up and go have surgery? Or how the entire reason that Cami's mother is dead is because dad stepped out on his marriage with you because you were the one to do it first?"

You could hear a pin drop in the room.

Parker's anger was palpable, a building escalation that rose and rose until there was nothing left in its wake—the world decimated by his words.

My world...destroyed in an instant.

My eyes were accusatory, but my mother wouldn't meet them.

I'd always felt a distinct shift in my relationship with my father a bit before my attempt. I was eighteen, but my father didn't pull away at fifteen after I tried to off myself.

No, this had happened two years before, when I was thirteen.

He'd suddenly stopped coming to my guitar lessons, so I stopped bothering to practice or show up, too.

He'd refused to help me with my homework, though he was quick to jump and do Parker's for him if he'd been too tired at football.

It was part of the reason why my mental health had declined so drastically and at such a young age.

I know, I know—poor little rich boy, doesn't have his father's love anymore, his brother is the favorite. What gives him the right to try to kill himself?

Sometimes, your mind likes to play tricks on you.

"The world wouldn't even notice if I were gone," it whispers in your ears. "Who would even miss me? No one."

No one.

No. One.

"Parker, I—"

"Don't. Unless you're going to tell Grey who his real father is? Or you—"

He turned to me, then. That anger swimming and swirling and festering under the deep blue surface of his darkened eyes.

"Schedule the fucking surgery. Quit punishing yourself for something that happened three years ago. Just—stop being a goddamned coward. It's just making things worse for everyone else. You think this is fun? You think it's cute to just refuse to talk to us? I miss my fucking brother!"

"I—I'm n-not—"

The air was lodged in my throat, the garbled sounds straining and burning and so utterly painful I could've passed out from the attempt to speak, but it had to happen.

I had to say it.

I had to make something I said actually count.

Maybe this time it would stick.

"I'm n-not your b-brother."

I was practically wheezing on the ground, hands on my knees and sucking in great lungfuls of air that squeezed and squeezed until I could see nothing except for the stars clogging up my vision.

"That's enough. I'm going to check on Cami, boys we will talk about this later. Grey, go get some water."

Except I didn't move from my spot in the hallway.

"Parker, I thought you said she was in Grey's bed—oh, wait. She's in her room, nevermind."

She'd left my bed? Had she heard everything, heard about my cowardice, and been disgusted?

She finally realized what I'd known all along.

I wasn't worth the gum she scraped off her shoes—let alone her beautiful, star speckled smiles that lit up my darkness.

I wasn't worth the beauty in her dark eyes that matched the blackness of my own, if only in color.

I was not worthy of Camille Astor, but I was going to make sure I would be.

Maybe Parker was right about one thing—I was a coward.

And maybe it was time to prove to myself and to everyone else that I could be worthy of something.

I would apologize to Parker later...but then, after what I'd heard in the hallway, I wasn't sure he even deserved one.

Parker's car drove like a dream beneath my hands, and while school was the last place I needed to be after what had just happened the night before, I couldn't avoid my grades.

They were my escape plan, after all, in case the state somehow delayed my inheritance.

With my luck, that was exactly what would happen.

I'd end up on an academic scholarship at an Ivy school in a different state and my social worker would somehow figure out a way to get ahold of the money that was supposed to be mine.

The money that was supposed to pull me out of this nightmare I was living.

The money that as supposed to save me and get me far, far away from the place my mother had taken her last breaths.

The place where my father had been the one to steal the oxygen from her lungs.

The school parking lot was devoid of Grey's motorcycle; it made sense.

I had woken up an hour early and escaped out of the house long before the rest of them had stirred from their sleep.

I'd spent the extra time driving around aimlessly, searching for the cave Grey had taken me to weeks ago.

I'd found it. Archived the information in my mind. Kept driving.

And driving

and driving

...and driving...

Until there was nothing but tire tracks swallowing the hole left in my heart from what I'd found out the night before.

Their father...Parker's father, at least.

His familiar profile had been stuck in my head for weeks, but I didn't understand why.

I didn't know why the dean of my new school resembled someone I'd caught a glimpse of so many years ago.

I couldn't have figured out he was the man my mother had been having an affair with so long ago.

I couldn't have known...

Could I have?

Or was I still in denial of the things that my mind refused to accept?

And Grey...

God, Grey.

He was stuck in a punishing cycle of self-hatred that he wouldn't even go to the doctor for the surgery that would save his voice.

He felt he didn't deserve it.

And I understood it completely.

Wholeheartedly.

Because I felt unworthy, too.

Undeserving of justice for what had happened to me.

Undeserving of the satisfaction of seeing Colton in jail, rotting right alongside my father.

The students traversed the campus grounds like insects infesting somewhere full of life and happiness, diluting it until it soured and became infected with their filth.

Colton was standing there along with the rest of the insignificant insects.

He was just...standing there.

Laughing.

There was still bruising and slight redness around his left eye and nose that was noticeably more swollen and crooked than it had before, but it somehow humanized him in some way.

It made him seem vulnerable—like he could be hurt.

Because he had.

Because Parker had punched him into the ground until he was almost oblivion on the wind.

Would I have even wanted him to stop if he had?

No.

I didn't.

The thought was almost as sickening as what he'd done to me.

No, it was worse.

It was the proof that I'd been corrupted by the anger and violence swarming around me my entire life.

There wasn't Parker or Grey here to save me now.

There was no one that could save me besides myself.

I hadn't been able to save my mother—I was only a young, half clueless twelve year old who believed the sun rose and fell with her parents.

A little girl who thought it was so achingly true that her mom and dad loved her more than anything in the world.

They didn't, though.

They loved the superficial things more. They loved their selfishness more.

My father loved his pride and damning wrath more than he cared to protect his young daughter at home.

My mother loved sneaking around with one of my father's friends more than she cared about her daughter 'sleeping' upstairs.

She didn't even wait until the lightbulbs had cooled in my room after flicking them off and saying her goodnights before bringing that man...the dean of my school into our home.

The moment I put the car in park and opened the door, the group that had fallen apart in his absence who were suddenly huddled together again as if nothing had ever happened turned their necks in my direction—no doubt thinking it would be Parker instead of me.

Upon noticing I was alone, Colton's eyes widened and his smile became feral.

He was a beastly animal—fangs dripping with blood and eyes a scarlet so deep they were almost black.

His poison tipped talons stretched out with his hands as he flexed them, preparing for a feast on his favorite prey.

Mori was nowhere to be found, though.

Good.

I didn't want her anywhere near me when this happened. When things finally reached the peak they'd been climbing to.

I was ready, though.

There would be no freezing this time.

If Colton came for me today, I would not shrink back.

I would not cower. I would not cry.

I would face the beast with a smile on my face and claw his eyes out with claws of my own.

Because what he did to me?

It had sharpened me into something almost unrecognizable—had broken and shattered me into pieces that were rounded and soft and I had glued them back together and reformed them into something powerful and strong—with the help of Grey and a stable roof over my head.

He'd taken advantage of me, my situation, my entire life...and he was not going to get away with it.

Not this time.

No, this time, I would be ready.

And he would have no idea what hit him.