Walls Between Us

31 | karma

you guys are the best readers in the entire world!
you know what to do for the next chapter...

*winks*

ps: happy 100k reads to us!

✩

A M A Y A

present:

There is an undercurrent of tension in Carter's silence after he finishes his version of the events. I am too stunned to move, to breathe, perhaps even to exist.

Whatever he said makes no sense to me. It is like he just unloaded a box of puzzle pieces in my lap. I am churning with guilt inside. I can only feel, hear, and see guilt.

This can't be the case. This can't be how it happened. It was supposed to be Carter's fault, all Carter's fault. That is what I have convinced myself to survive for five years.

I am blank, like a void in the dark. I am lost to myself; the guilt is ripping me apart.

"What happened to Mark?" I manage to ask in a voice alien to me.

Carter's gaze meets mine and by the look on his face, it is clear to me that he knows what I am thinking right now.

"Grandpa had him killed—" He pauses, swallowing a gulp as he watches me for a reaction. "—in a staged accident."

My back collides with the closed elevator. My knees are weak as a cry threatens to rip from me. I stop it by biting my bottom lip hard enough to draw blood. I squeeze my eyes shut, fist my hands and try to block that image from my mind.

The basement. The man with the gun. The dead man. Carter. The cops. The medics. The blindness of the next three days...

I couldn't escape my past. Grandma Sita has always been right — Karma has its way of getting back to you.

What did I even think? That I could kill a man and get away with it? Her God knew that the man was unarmed. I could have injured him. But no, I went straight for his heart. I killed him because his sickness seeped somewhere deep in me. He corrupted my sanity.

"Amaya—" Carter takes a step forward but I am quick to raise my hands before me to stop him.

"No...please..." I gasp out, keeping my sobs in. "This is my fault. Five years of pain and it was all my fault."

"Fuck, Amaya!" he curses, running his hand through his hair. "This is why I didn't want to tell you. I knew you would blame yourself."

"I am the one to be blamed, Carter." I am quick to throw back, pulling all the energy in my body to help me keep my stance straight. "I am the one who killed him. Mark's revenge was supposed to be aimed at me. Not you."

"You can't let him get to you, Am. Mark wasn't in his right mind."

"And whose fault is that, Carter? That man lost his brother. As much as I find it hard to believe, to me, he was someone who wanted to avenge his family. That's how I avenged the years of torture my Mom suffered when I killed Panther Gonzales."

Behind Carter, Dawson's face contorts to shock at my confession. He looks between me and Carter like a lost soul unable to make heads or tails of the conversation.

"Amaya, you can't be serious right now..." Carter puts his hands on his hips, sighing defeatedly.

"I am serious. This is the very reason we shouldn't be together."