Vengeance (Burning Beliefs #2)

Chapter Twenty-Two *edited*

SERENA'S POV

It's strange, this feeling inside me. It's like nothing I've ever felt before. It's a twisted confusion, a stinging frustration, an eruption of betrayal burning me from the inside out. It's half emptiness. The kind that leaves you sedentary and broken like paper shreds. It's half hopeless, an unforgiving iciness spreading from the tips of my fingers to my toes. It feels like rubbing alcohol pouring undiluted into an open wound.

The morning sun has been overtaken by clouds. The warm, pastel light has been swallowed by a sparking, rolling, collection of God's anger. The grit-coated wind whips against my face, unconcious tears melting against the bitter frost. It's a midwest summer thunderstorm. Having lived in Colorado, the center of all weather ceizures, these things aren't uncommon. But this one is different. It doesn't feel like an old, Grandfather clock soul. It feels alive. A raging, burning, animal crawling through the calm of the sky.

I throw my back against the dusty wall of the warehouse. Every breath is like someone is jamming an ice pick down my throat. My eyelids flutter shut, my fingers clench at my sides, a hurricane vortexes in my stomach.

Clomping footsteps distract me from the soulful pain.

I stifle a sigh. "I knew you'd follow me," I say.

"Of course I did," Zach responds. "Rena, this doesn't change anything."

I laugh humorlessly. "Are you kidding me? This changes everything."

"I meant that it doesn't change us."

I open my eyes and step away from the whitewashed wall.

"If you have a kid with somebody else, that somebody being my sister, then it sure as hell changes everything. There would be no us."

"Are you sure I'm the father?"

I press my lips together. "There is one other option. The one person she always seems to run back to, but that doesn't mean there's no chance. We have to wait it out."

"For nine months?"

"For as long as it takes!"

Zach's eyes contort into a twisted, steel blue regime of confusion.

"It's you, Serena, it's always been you. You are my constant," he says.

"We're not the kind of people who get happy endings, Zach," I stare intensely at the rain spitting onto the ground. "I think it's time we accepted that."

He doesn't respond. He just looks at me hopelessly, in an all-too-familiar gaze meaning we're at the brink of losing a battle already lost.

I cross my arms. "We should go back inside, before we drown in the rain."

He nods silently.

Inside the echoing hallway, the pitter-patter bounces up and down and sideways across the cement. The air is eerie cold. Our breathing is tranquil and steady, but I'm sure he feels the same kind of black-hole-emptiness I do.

Only Gracie, Zephira, and Dean are left sitting at the table. Dean's pale gray-green eyes are locked on my sister. Sam's wife's face is blank.

"Are you okay?" Dean asks.

I smile grimly. "Stupid question."

He shrugs.

Gracie looks at me, but she doesn't say anything.

I take a deep breath. "Everybody makes mistakes. Yours is just a little more... pronounced than most peoples."

She raises an eyebrow.