A thousand questions tumble through my mind. “What kind of a mess?”

She chews on her bottom lip nervously and then sighs, annoyed. “Why do you care so much about this?”

I shake my head and shrug. “Because… I’m worried that… that you might have done it… on purpose.” I almost mumble the last part and I’m not sure if she heard me or not.

“Worried about me? Really?” She seems skeptical at the possibility.

“People worry about people all the time,” I say.

“No they don’t,” she insists and her eyes briefly flicker with anger. “And besides, you don’t even know me.”

“Well, this is me trying to get to know you.” What the hell is wrong with my drunken mouth tonight? It’s like it’s got a mind of its own. “Look, maybe—”

She covers my mouth with her hand and shakes her head. “No more questions, okay?” Without giving me time to answer, she spins around, turning her back to me. I think she’s going to leave, but instead she leans back against me, pressing her back into my chest.

Then she starts to dance. And I mean really dance, leaning just to the side to keep her weight off her ankle as she hypnotically rocks to the rhythm. Her h*ps move from side to side, matching the beat perfectly. The movement brushes her ass up against my c**k and I start moving with her, grabbing at her hips, delving my fingertips into her, and her back arches. The more the song goes on, the more into it we get. Sweat beads out skin and there’s so much contact and friction between our bodies it seriously feels like we’re veering toward sex. Then she does this little move where she gradually, but gracefully lowers toward the floor. Her body slides down mine until the back of her head brushes against my cock, which is rock hard. Then she pushes back up, dragging her body up mine again. By the time she’s standing upright, I’m about to grab hold of her, take her to the nearest room and f**k her until she screams out my name. I need to get back control over the situation.

I get distracted, though, as she lets her head fall to the side and her arms come up and wind around the back of my neck, her movements owning me. I get a glimpse of the back of her neck and the dragon and two stars tattooed on her skin. I haven’t f**ked very many girls with tattoos but good God I need to start because it’s mind-blowingly sexy. I slide my palms around to the front of her stomach and I crush our bodies together. Heat blares through me as the smell of her blends with the alcohol in my system and it makes the hunger and overpowering need inside me feel like it belongs there.

Her hair is swept over her shoulder and her neck is just inches away from my lips. The desire to suck and bite at her skin is intoxicating and without contemplation over what I’m doing or what it’ll mean, my lips part and my tongue slides out along her skin. It’s not like I’ve never licked a girl’s neck before. I have many times, just like I’ve kissed and f**ked many times. Usually it drowns out any noise inside my head, but right now I can still hear all of it, if not more. It’s louder. Sharper. More potent and I’m afraid I’m going to lose myself, lose control. But it’s almost like my mouth is being magnetized to her skin and I start sucking on her neck, nipping and grazing my teeth gently along it. With the way her muscles tense, I half expect her to turn around and punch me in the jaw. I sort of wish she would so I’d walk away… at least I think I would… I might actually want to stay more. But instead her head falls to the side, giving me access to devour the taste of her.

My hand wanders up her ribs, across her breast, her nipple hardening underneath the thin fabric. I graze my thumb across it and then move my hand all the way up to the hollow of her neck. She groans as I press my fingers gently into her collarbone and leans back against my chest, putting her weight against me. Reality starts to blur away as I move my hand down her body to her leg and start pulling the fabric of her dress up, desperate to slip my fingers inside her and make her groan louder.

“God, you’re so beautiful…” I breathe against her neck as my hand reaches her upper thigh. “We should go back into one of the rooms…”

She starts to slant her head toward me, our lips briefly brushing, and desire floods my body at the spark of contact. I grip handfuls of her dress, opening my mouth to devour her, when suddenly she pushes my arms from her and moves away from me.

She peers over her shoulder at me, her cheeks a little flushed, but her expression emotionless. “Thanks for the dance,” she says and then putting her hands up above her head, she makes a path through the crowd, eventually disappearing into a swarm of sweaty, drunk bodies.

I stand in the crowd, shaking my head at myself, dumbfounded by my own idiocy. “God, you’re so beautiful? We should go back into one of the rooms.” Yeah, it wasn’t my best line ever but Jesus, she runs off more than anyone I’ve ever known.

After analyzing her for way too long, I decide that it’s not my f**king problem—she’s not my f**king problem. I need to move on, cut whatever it is that’s drawing me to her, get over my developing obsession with the mysterious girl who jumps out windows and seems to show up wherever I go. Leaving most of my thoughts of Violet behind, I shove through the crowd and push to the kitchen where the counters are lined with bottles and bottles of alcohol. There are so many choices it’s like Christmas. I select a bottle of Crown Royal and slam back another shot… or two… or three… or four… until they all blur together and I can’t think anymore.

When I’m almost gone, veering on blacking out, I find the first decent-looking girl I come across and flirt with her until we’re heading back to one of the rooms. It doesn’t take long after the door shuts before our clothes are off and I’m thrusting inside her. The headboard bangs against the wall as I pin her hands down to the side of her head and she screams out, not my name because we never got that far. Her head is tipped back, her neck arched, her skin beaded with sweat. As I stare down at her, thrusting our h*ps together, all I think about is how I can do anything to her right now. For a second it feels right. I don’t feel so helpless and f**ked up inside. So controlled by the things around me and my past. I feel drunk and high on this girl under me, who’s ready to give me whatever I want. For a brief moment I have control over everything. There’s not all this noise inside me, reminding me of the bad and horrible stuff that makes up my past. I feel content and still inside. Then I’m pulling out of her and the wholeness inside me empties out. The girl rolls over to her side and moments later she passes out. The control I felt over the situation is dissipating and I feel like helpless kid again, which is so f**ked up. I climb out of bed and get dressed, and then I leave her behind, hoping I never cross paths with her again. As I exit the room, the control fleetingly rises again, but once I step out into the living room again it’s all gone. Leaving me to try and outrun it again.

Violet

After I leave Luke on the dance floor, I hurry for the back of the house, trying not to run, but I can’t help but walk quickly. The guy I was working before I headed out to Luke catches me by the arm as I’m crossing the kitchen.

“Hey, where’d you go?” he asks as he reaches for a beer on the counter. “I thought we were going to go somewhere and talk.”

“We will, but I have to take care of something first.” Before he can respond, I jerk my arm out of his hold and leave him behind with his jaw hanging open. I burst out the back door and then stare at the small lake a little ways out in the backyard. There’s a dock stretching out over it and that’s where I head, pushing past the crowd and to the grass, the sounds and lights of the party disappearing the farther away I get. The closer I get to the water, the quicker I walk, the pain in my ankle tearing at my muscles. When my bare feet brush the wood of the dock, I run as fast as I can toward the edge. My heart thrashes in my chest, my blood pumping furiously. It wants to escape the adrenaline rush, but me, I embrace it, bask in it as the adrenaline pours through me like liquid fire, burning away everything I feel at the moment; the want, the desire, the way I let Luke touch me and how I let myself feel when he touched me. He wasn’t just groping me. What was going on inside my body was very real. Too real. So real I actually briefly considered going back to a room with him and letting him do whatever to me because I wanted him to.

When I reach the end of the dock, I gather every ounce of energy I have left and jump, releasing all the oxygen from my lungs until I’m empty of air. Empty of everything. Seconds later, I crash into the water and the cold water floods over my body, drenching my dress, my skin, my hair. It weighs me down, drags me under, and I don’t fight back. I willingly let it take me over.

I remember when I finally realized that my parents weren’t coming back. That they were dead and the blood I saw all over them wasn’t just in my imagination. That the images of them lying on the floor, their bodies still, and their eyes open wasn’t just a picture I’d drawn up in my head. It was real. The reality that I was alone started to seep in and even at six years old I knew that nothing would ever be the same.

I’d never be the same.

It was hard to feel it, the blunt truth that I didn’t have parents anymore. There was a lot of pain. A lot of razors slicing at me from the inside. Needles stabbing at my veins. A hole rapidly growing inside my heart. I felt it—I felt everything. I’d wake up sometimes at night clawing at my skin, trying to dig the feeling out of me, but all I’d ever get were cuts and scratches.

The first couple that took me in thought I was crazy. I heard them talking about it once, that they worried I’d hurt them or myself and why wouldn’t they after what’d I’d seen. Death. Violence. Murder. The morbid part of life—it was branded into my head, which meant I was going to become morbid myself. It confused me and I think I actually started to believe that it might really happen, that I changed into a violent person. Between the idea that I’d end up hurting someone and the constant pain inside me, I decided to give up feeling all together. Turn it off. Shut down. Self-induced numbness.

It was hard at first, especially at night when my mind seemed insistent on remembering everything. But one night when I woke up from a nightmare, panicked and my head a little muddled, I’d gotten confused and thought I was back at my old house. I’d run out of my room, miscalculating where the stairs started and I ended up tripping. I nearly had a heart attack as I fell down the stairs, the carpet scraping at my back and legs, my life flashing before my eyes. When I finally reached the bottom, I stared up at the ceiling feeling the adrenaline pounding through my body and all the pain and fear I’d felt from my dream was replaced by a rush of energy. For a second, I couldn’t feel the razors or needles or the hole in my heart. My mind and body were content. It was the first real moment of peace I’d felt in a while and it was silently and painfully beautiful.

After that, it became a habit. I’d wake up in a panic and run out of my room and fall down the stairs. I was intentionally doing it and I knew it was insane, but it was making me feel better. My foster parents were heavy sleepers and didn’t notice at first, but I did wake them up occasionally. At first I played it off as being sleepy and confused but by the sixth or seventh time they started to wonder if something was up and they started asking questions. So I told them the truth, hoping they’d understand. They looked at me with fear in their eyes and two weeks later I was moved to a new home. After that, I stopped telling the truth and I found different ways to get my adrenaline rushes. Running out in front of cars, standing on top of buildings, letting myself sink into the water until my lungs felt like they were going to combust.

I know what I’m doing is dangerous, but I don’t care. It’s better than feeling the razors. The needles. The unhealable hole in my heart.

The water is cold but not very deep and I reach the bottom quickly. I let myself sink to the ground, my knees pressing against the muddy bottom. My arms float to my side, my hair in my face. Above my head, the moon glows distortedly and beautifully through the ripples in the water. Everything is silent. The water. The night. The emotion inside me. I shut my eyes. I let myself start to drown. I stay as still as I can until my lungs ache to burst. Until I become light-headed. Until I feel myself start to leave reality. Until I’m at the point where I’m about to no longer exist. Then I push upward. Bubbles float from my mouth as I rise, kicking my feet. I stretch my arms up and moments later I burst through the water, gasping for air. Adrenaline is drowning the inside of my body as my lungs fight to breathe—fight to stay alive. Water drips down my hair into my face as I lie back and float in the water, staring up at the moon, my chest rising and falling, up and down, my body half above the water and half below.

Chapter 6

Luke

I was seven when I realized that there was something really wrong with my home environment. It wasn’t something I’d slowly discovered. It was suddenly forced on me when my mother showed up in the middle of the night after being gone somewhere for hours. She was freaking out, chattering about being sorry. I think she was high out of her mind and it looked like there was blood on her hands and clothes, but when I asked her about it—even though I was scared shitless of her answer—she only hugged me for hours, rocking me like a baby, and told me everything was going to be okay. The thing was nothing was ever okay from that point on. It’s still not okay, but livable, as long as I have enough alcohol in my system that the fucked-up parts of my life don’t feel real. As long as I have control over the things that I do I’m fine. The problem is that lately the control I’ve worked so hard to get is slipping from my fingers.