When Cami moves in with the 2 most popular guys in school in a new foster home placement, she realizes that her tragic past just might make it so that she will stay lonely forever.
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Cami has...
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The steam was fogging up all my senses, clouding out all the intrusive thoughts and suffocating them under a blanket of hot air so thick I could barely see.
The shower knob was turned as far as it could go, but it still didn't heat the chill lingering beneath my bones; it didn't erase the past two weeks and everything that had broken me in the meantime.
The heat from the water wasn't enough to do what needed to be done, but it did enough.
It didn't soak the fire down past my skin to the muscles and veins beneath. It didn't destroy the monster hiding under the surface, roiling and pacing and begging to be let out to let the world hear its beastly roar.
I kept it on a short leash, unable to escape and terrorize, but sometimes--like that night--I let it out.
I let it shine through behind my eyes, let it bare its teeth at those who could hurt me and who do so without thought of consequence or reason.
Sometimes, I wish the beast would take over and reduce the rest of me to the shell of a person I'd become without it.
But I knew that I was nothing without it.
Was I nothing with it, too?
Was I still even here?
Was I already nothing, already the blank emptiness my mind craved to un-feel each and every day to stop this madness from creeping in and swallowing me whole?
If I couldn't climb out of the despair, maybe I should've just found a way to cease to exist.
Maybe this steaming, burning water would show me the way.
I stepped into the spray, letting out a whimper of pain that barely reached my ears.
I reveled in the pain, letting the flames of water lick up and down my spine and shoulders until I could feel the skin blistering beneath its heat.
The sound of my skin boiling and bubbling was almost audible until the water immediately turned to ice, hissing pelts of icicles where I wanted wrath and fire and flame to reside.
Pulling back the curtain revealed Grey, hand still partly in the shower where he'd turned the temperature gauge to freezing.
"What the hell are you doing in here?"
He didn't look guilty, or ashamed, or even particularly too out of place, which was a given considering this was--and has been--his bathroom for his entire life. Why would he seem out of place?
But then, why would he feel the need to interrupt my shower time?
He tucked his hands into his back pockets, an easygoing smirk on his lips as he leaned back against the countertop, acting for all the world like he was reveling in a prank on his new housemate.
