Burning Bridges

Chapter 29

Do you know what it's like to see the love of your life die in your arms? To see his once active body limping painfully over yours, leaning on you? Do you fucking know what it's like to think that everything is over, just for karma to bite you in the ass?

Because I do. I have never cried harder in my life. We were just getting our happily ever after. We were ending this all. But we don't deserve it. The people that I have murdered in my lifetime are still the villians, but so am I. I don't deserve happiness, only pain.

It only took me so long to figure this out. Maybe that's why I stopped crying as his gang dragged his slumped over body back to their compound. Maybe that's why I allowed myself to succumb to the numbness. It's crazy how I gaslit myself into thinking I was the good guy. To think that killing people was for the better good.

The only goodness in my life was Jaden. And he's gone now. I could have saved him twice, but I was too caught up in my feelings to realize that his murderer wasn't actually dead. It was my fault. Just like it always is. Only this time, I can't fix it.

Even though the urge to run away from everything lingers in the back of my head like a pounding headache, I stuck with his gang to their gang infirmary. Maybe for support or to see him one last time. I don't know why I stayed, but I just stood there, on the other side of the glass wall, watching his once strong body being pumped by tubes. So many tubes.

It's been a couple of hours now, and they got his heart beating again. But only for so long. If there's anything important that I have learned in my lifetime is that you can't set expectations for others. They will just be ruined at some point in time, leaving you with resentment.

So I have no hope for Jaden. Because my expectations are never met.

As I continue to stare at his broken body, I don't shed another tear. I keep my forehead leaned against the glass just staring at the man of my dreams. I say dreams because they never come true. Especially not for me. It's a false demand that everyone expects of you when you're young, to dream big, but they never work out. People change. Reality sets in.

That girl that once dreamed of being a nurse now kills people for her own pleasure because she has PTSD. That boy with the firefighter bed sheets is now in a mental hospital because he has arsonist tendencies.

Dreams don't come true because they're not reality. They're an alternate future where anything is possible. But that's not LA. A bright and crowded city with layers of sin and darkness underneath it, ready to prey on its most naive victims. I should know because I was one of them. I learned too late that dreams are a fantasy, just like the hope of Jaden recovering.

"Hey, how are you holding up?" A husky tone rang into my ears.

"I didn't think that I would ever see you again, Bones," I commented dryly, while tearing my vision away from the nightmare. His eyes were bloodshot, crinkling tightly as he saw my face.

"You've been crying, Raven. He really meant that much to you, huh?" The look on his face was hard to decipher.

I sniffled back the rest of my tears for the twentieth time now. "He did, and now I'm the reason that he's dying." Deep breaths, Violet. Silence tore through us as Bones tried to come up with a response to that.

"Do you want to know the first thing that Ember had told us when we woke him conscious?" What? I shrugged instead. "He said that we have to go save Raven. That her life was in danger-"

"But I was just fine by myself!" I attempted to back myself up while crossing my arms. I was so sick of hearing that I needed a man to save me.

"That's not the point, Raven. Everyone that had just arrived at the scene thought you killed him and left. I mean-I know that's not-but could you blame us? You betrayed us-then saved us-I don't even know anymore." He took a deep breath, his shaggy blonde hair falling in front of his eyes. "The point is even though Ember was injured, all he could think about was you. Doesn't that mean anything to you?"

Did it anymore? He's as good as gone now. I looked up at Bones confidently. "It doesn't even matter if I cared or not anymore. I have to move on for my own sake, so good day Bones." Before he could even respond to me, I shoved past him towards the hall.

I couldn't handle this right now because I know that the outcome I want in all of this wasn't bound to happen. Also, so that Bones couldn't see me cry.

As I opened the door to the exit, I stopped right in my tracks as I heard a voice that I had thought I would never hear again. "Violet." He used the same tone that I was used to. Only this time was it laced with happiness.