It was never effortless to love Aaron Warner. He was a difficult teenage boy who seemed to forget a lot of the time that that was what he was-a teenage boy. He'd always felt that loving or even caring for him would be impossible for all the world to...
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I'M TEARING DOWN the hallways, breathing so heavily I can't see properly. My heart aches with a suffering so great I'm sure I'll never know happiness again.
Just as I was going to give happiness a shot again too.
I can't be. I can't. I can't. There's no possible way. In what world could my whole life have been orchestrated into a theatre show for the founders of The Reestablishment? How could I have been related to Juliette Ferrars—a girl I only met a handful of months ago—without ever knowing it?
Castle knew. I'm sure of it. There's no way he didn't. It's obviously why he wanted Aaron to tell me so badly. People I've trusted for as long as I've known them have been lying to me. They've always been lying to me.
But for some reason, I'm sick of asking myself what I did to deserve all this. I'm sick of wondering why the universe decided to hate me. I'm just sick, period. Sick of asking and thinking too much and pondering and letting all my questions drain me slowly. If the world wants to hate me, let it. Let it rip me open and tear out everything I have left. Let it.
Because I will be so much worse.
Before I know it, I've reached a highway. I escaped my soldiers and I'm standing in an abandoned highway, the sun setting. It's been two hours of running away from everything I know. A war battles within me. One where the one side decides to forever hate Aaron for what he's done. That he's betrayed my trust far too often for me to ever let it live with him again. But the other side sticks up for him. Says he never knew and he's just as much a victim as I am. I may have just been a girl but he was a boy too. We were kids.
Some would even say we still are.
I plop down on the hard concrete ground, glancing either way like a car is sure to somehow race down it toward me. I have sisters. Two of them. And I've known one of them for months now. The other one is being held captive by The Reestablishment, tortured daily. And my boyfriend helped.
Oh. God.
Haven't I given enough already?
This world is greedy. It always wants more and more and more from me and when I say no, when I fight back, it robs me instead. Leaves me breathless and scarred eternally. I could enter my next life and I somehow know I'd remember this one. Simply because the world would never let me forget.
I know I'm not perfect. I know I've made mistakes and I've lied and I've sinned and I've been a flawed person. But this is too much. I'm always the fool, wearing her heart on her sleeve like it won't make her end up shattered entirely.
"HEY! BLONDIE!"
My head whips around and I'm glad I'm sitting down because I'm not ready for the sight before me: Nazeera is flying. She's in the air, her dark braids swinging about. This is the first time I'm seeing her without her shawl on. Her hair is stunning. Her warm eyes contrast her demeanor as she floats down to me and I have to steady myself even though I never got to my feet in the first place.
