My Byrd was gone.
You will always fail.
So, now, all I had was this—breaking the only thing I could get my hands on.
You will always disappoint.
All I could do was punch trees like that would somehow fix the gaping hole ripped out of my chest.
You will never be great.
All I had left was destruction.
But, none of it was enough.
You will never be good enough.
Failure.
Loser.
Disappointment.
I only stopped when my legs gave out beneath me. My back slammed into one of the few trees still standing, and I slid down until I was sitting in the snow. Clarkson appeared from out of nowhere, somehow avoiding the carnage I had just committed, and squeezed herself under my legs. I could hear her whine softly, mournfully. Impossibly, I was barely able to breathe, my chest heaving and my sobs sawing my throat deeper. I could barely make out anything around me through my tears. I knew the clearing looked like a battlefield with the downed trees, scattered shards of bark, and the shredded forest. If I were human, every bone from my fingertips all the way up to my shoulders would be broken and shattered beyond repair, muscles torn, and skin bruised and sickly. But, I only felt an aching, rattling soreness in my bones and the muscles under my skin as they patched themselves together. The skin on my knuckles itched as it stitched itself back together to be better than before. Only a small part of me noticed my healing, though. As spent as I was, I still could only focus on the red that was Byrd’s cooling blood in the snow among all the ruin and how its trail stopped at nothing.
You will never be good enough.
Failure.
Loser.
Disappointment.
You will never be good enough.
Failure.
Loser.
Disappointment.
You will never be good enough.
Failure.
Loser.
Disappointment.
When the bones and skin on my hands had mostly healed, leaving just blood behind as any sign that I had been hurt, I shakily pulled out my phone and fumbled with the touchscreen. I couldn’t see who I called, but I knew it was one of the cousins.
“Things have to be pretty bad for you to be callingmeinstead of Cole right now,” Nat answered on the second ring. “You know Ihatetalking on the phone.”
“Natassa,” I rasped, my voice sounding like an absolute wreck even to me, but it was still laced with all the severity I could muster for the moment, including using Nat’s government name—something I never did. “I… Byrd w-was... I-I lost her.”
A beat passed. My pounding heart and rough sobs filled the tight, sharp silence. When Nat replied steady, low, and serious, I was reminded why I called her my little bitch in charge. She always knew how to rise to the occasion when I needed her most. “Where are you?”
“I’m in a clearing. Head to where we sent Byrd’s mom off, and there should be a trail for y’all to follow to me.”
