Sins of Aiden

23

CHAPTER 23

AIDEN MARTINEZ

The ceiling above me is cracked.

A thin rupture running from one corner to the other, basically imperceptible in daylight, but now—under the cold, perishing glow of the hallway lamp—it looks like a vein. Like something brittle and overstrained and ready to just burst.

Kind of like me.

Drip. Drip.

I don't blink, simply persist in staring at that fracture, wondering, guessing how long it will take for it to web over the rest of the ceiling—hoping it will splinter enough to crush me altogether.

I lie absolutely still on the mattress.

My arms are spread, eyes open, breathing quiet enough that I almost convince myself I'm not here at all. That I'm somewhere else—someone else. Someone who didn't burn the last good thing in his hands to ash.

But the sound ruins the fantasy.

Drip.

The soft pat against the floorboards.

Drip.

Again. And again.

Warm crimson liquid falls from my slip knuckles—landing in shaky irregular rhythm—like it's my body's way of keeping time with the wreckage inside my chest.

The room is a disaster around me.

My mirror is shattered—huge shards still clinging to the frame, the rest dispersed across the floor like glitter made of knives. The dresser drawers are hanging open, one ripped entirely off its tracks. There's a dent in the wall near the door. Another above the light switch. A third next to the bed, where my fist hit after I ran out of breath.

Everything is out of order except for the silence. That part is intact, a punishment in itself.

I inhale through my nose.

My ribs feel taut around my scraped lungs. Nothing moves as it should. My hands—my fucking hands aren't even hands right now. Merely raw, torn skin and bone and heat.

Officer Briggs only let me out because Lucas' mom threatened to get the county involved. If it were up to him, I'd still be in that fucking cell, pacing the walls like a caged animal. Which—in truth, is fine.
Because he wasn't wrong.

I was an animal that night.

Some volatile unhinged animal, ready to take someone's head off if they so much as breathed wrong in my direction.

I try not to blink. Because if I do—flashes of images cut through my bones—fierce enough that the room around me dissolves, and I'm right back in that fluorescent box at the station. The interrogation room that smells like burnt coffee and aged apprehension and just fucking unsettling people.

Officer Briggs shoved me into that room—of course it had to be him—like he was done pretending I'm just another kid with anger issues.

I remember the metal chair. Cold to the touch and too small to sit on, like it was designed to remind you that you don't get comfort in a place like that. I remember my hands cuffed in front of me, wrists aching, the metal glinting against the harsh lights— biting into skin already grated raw.

Officer Briggs, the shithole, leaned back in his chair with that disappointed, fruitless look he gets every time he sees me. Like he once hoped I'd turn out better and is now personally offended that I didn't.