The Beast

Chapter 32 - Packing

I let out an irritated huff as I struggled to zip the large black duffel bag filled with my clothes on my bed.

"Here, let me help you." Arias pried my hands carefully away from the bag. "Why don't you move on to something else?"

I nodded, maneuvering around the small bedroom in my parents' house.  The air was uncomfortably quiet as I packed away most of my life into whatever bags I had left.

I wasn't sure where I was going next, but I knew I had to get out of here.

"I can't believe he's just kicking you out like that." Maia strolled into the room with a bag of my stuff from her house. I threw it together before we came here, and it had Arias' clothes mixed in with mine. "What an ass."

I shrugged my shoulders and sighed when I had to empty my vanity. The top drawer was stuffed full of pictures and small items given to me over the years. There was a lot of random clutter, and they would likely get lost or broken if I took them with me.

Arias was standing strangely still by my dresser when I finally picked out the nicknacks I for sure wanted to take with me. His foggy moss eyes were glued to the framed pictures on top, and he was playing with the strap of my filled duffel bag with both hands as he readied to put it with the rest that were piled by the door.

Packing now pushed to the back of my mind, I maneuvered around the end of my bed and cautiously stopped at his side. He was completely absorbed in whatever he was thinking to notice how close I had gotten.

"Are you okay?" I placed my hand on his arm to pull him away from his thoughts.

He cleared his throat awkwardly and ran his other hand through his hair, dropping my bag to the floor. "I'm fine." He picked up the picture of me and Marcus, the line of his jaw pulsing as he clenched his teeth closed. "I just can't help but feel like this is my fault."

I scoffed and put my hand over the picture so he would look at me. "None of this is your fault. It was bound to happen eventually, either I get kicked out or finally grow the balls to just leave." He sighed again. "I would rather be sent away because I want to be with you than stay here and be miserable. I want to be with you, it's okay."

He finally nodded, seeming to be okay with my words. I was actually starting to get excited to see where life will take us next-without the pressures from my father or what my pack would think of us.

"Hey, look what I found." Maia held a broken necklace up for us to see. "I haven't seen this in years."

I grumbled at the sight of the necklace. My grandmother had given it to me a year before she passed, and the first time I was actually allowed to wear it when I was in high school, it got caught on Jackson's sleeve when he put me in a headlock and snapped the delicate gold chain. I was so upset, and ended up throwing it in the top drawer of my dresser so I could fix it eventually.

Of course, that's just one of the many things that I didn't get around to-like fixing the hole in the wall that I hid with my dresser from the day Marcus tripped and slammed his head into the drywall.

I was going to miss this room and the memories attached to it, but it's time to create new ones somewhere else.

I saw the familiar head of dark brown hair before I could spot the face that held identical features to mine. His nearly straight nose, thick eyebrows, and wide blue eyes that we got from our mother were looking over my room with confusion.

"What's going on?" The pretzel stick that hung out of his lips fell to the floor, crumbling into multiple pieces across the wood. He took in the pile of bags and nearly empty vanity, and the bed that stripped of blankets and sheets. "Are you finally moving all the way into Maia's? Do I get your room to put my gaming stuff in?"