Cold Fire [SAMPLE]

[43]

CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

Just like that, the hope I had discovered shatters, along with everything else in my world, and it’s suddenly extremely hard to breathe.

I’ve failed.

Sarah’s disease is finally catching up with her and I’ve failed.

My eyes look over at Caden, who seems to be taking things extremely well. There’s no shock anywhere on his face, only a deep sadness and something like regret.

My mouth works it out long before I do. “You knew.” It’s not a question.

Caden looks up at me, guilt flashing across his features, and suddenly I’m angry. I charge towards him, my feet pounding loudly against the wooden floor. “You knew she was dying and you didn’t tell me,” I say as I cross the distance between us, my tone accusatory and sharp. Even after all that’s happened this morning and last night, he’s still lying to me. 

Without thinking, I reach out and slap him across the face. There’s a sharp intake of breath off to my left and in the silence that follows, Caden presses a hand to his cheek, shocked.

“How could you?!” I say and my voices rises as pain finds its way into my heart. “How could you lie to me like this?”

“I’m sorry,” he says quietly, looking back at me with pained eyes. I can almost see his heart breaking.

“Sorry isn’t good enough!” I’m vaguely aware that I’m shouting but I don’t care. The lid on the bottle within me has slipped off halfway and all the emotions contained within it are starting to pour out. “Sorry isn’t going to fix this! Sorry isn’t going to save Sarah.”

There are tears on my cheeks and I don’t know how they got there or when I started crying. I’m staring at Caden fiercely – or as fiercely is as possible with tear-blurred vision – as I wait for him to say something – to say anything.

“I’m sorry,” he repeats, and I’ve had enough.

“You’re an asshole,” I whisper viciously, and then I’m storming away from them, my tears flowing in streams.

“Melissa,” Katherine says, but I’m not listening.

I find that I can’t move fast enough, my ragged breathing increasing with every second I spend inside the house. The walls feel like they’re closing in on me and I make a dash for the door, nearly collapsing as I burst outside. I get a few steps of the way down the path and then I do fall, my legs too weak to hold me up now that my emotions have made me a thousand tonnes.

When I hit the ground, I expect the bottle within me to shatter, but it doesn’t. It does the opposite and cap itself off, and in some ways, that’s worse. In a rush, all of my emotions are sucked into the bottle until I’m left with a few pathetic tears.

I sink into the snow, my body heavy with emotions I can’t reach, and let my tears roll of my skin and melt into the white. I want to scream and thrash and cry out, but I find I can’t, and it’s like someone’s wound up a spring within me and isn’t letting go – all this tension and pressure and it just sits there, unwilling to budge, even when at any moment it feels like it could all come loose. 

I lie there for ages – until time loses its meaning and everything is just one giant second. The snow is almost warm under my skin and I absently dig my fingers into the white, not expecting to feel anything.

I don’t.

I roll onto my back, staring up at the blanket of endless grey above me as the tears leak slowly down the side of my face. I feel heavy and exhausted and weak, and I feel myself slipping into the world of sleep, the sound of the wind in the trees acting as a lullaby.