Strong For Too Long Trilogy ✔️

Book 2: The Numbered

BOOK 2: CHAPTER 1: The Numbered

(3rd person POV)

He wanted his dark black coat to be ruined with rain as he stands on the wet, molten grass. The music played in the background, it didn't accent the kind of music he could live with in this horrid moment. He was catatonic, looking down at the coffin with an icy cold gaze that was like second nature to him now. Everyone dressed in black with grey clouds but, no rain. Not even a drizzle.

She shattered his heart, making him scream louder into the scented pillow, where he spent days, weeks stirring and spitting at himself, he looks at her laptop screen in menace.

Red.

All he could ever see was the blood skies.

She was covered in it when he pressed down and begged her to stay awake, he promised her she'd make it out of this and he would get them both out. He would give her a reason to live with him, he would show her a side of him no one else would ever see, no one else would fathom.

He didn't stand a chance.

There should have been a chance.

A chance where she made it out of this hell hole of an academy, out of Pierce's watchful eyes.

He looked at her casket as it was slowly lowered down, glancing back up at her beautiful picture, she looked barely sixteen, he thought. No one had a picture of her except for that one when he met her at that Academy. He'd finally left it, after burning her room in his drunk stir, the Academy was abandoned six months after Olive Crane's death. Terminated, along with everything else.

The flames licked at his bare biceps the more he gulped whiskey down his scorching throat. Samsara screamed when she saw Aaron Westlake clutching the bottle of whiskey and one of Olive Cranes favourite romance books in his other hand, sitting in the middle of a room lit with fire.

Suffocating fire.

Ashes and soot stuck to him like second skin when Tobias shoved himself inside, grabbing a hysterical Aaron by his under arms, getting Reynolds to help as Aaron fought harder to burn with her, to burn with the only girl he swore to protect, the only woman he loved with every fibre of his being, with every stroke of his ash-filled heart.

He was damaged beyond repair.

Tobias screamed at him, "WHAT DID YOU DO?! ARE YOU TRYING TO KILL YOURSELF?" his words flew over Aaron's head, he stared at the burning building, wondering whether it was this way that was best in saying 'Goodbye'. Flashes of her screaming, of her blood on his hands, of every fight they had. He wished he could take it all back, their fighting, the way he treated her when she first got here.

Losing her made him into a broken shell of a man that didn't want to fight anymore.

Drinking could kill him faster.

He would try it...just to see her again, even for a second...he needed to see her face, he needed to look into her eyes, he needed her lips to speak the words he longed to hear.

It wasn't his fault.

She loves him.

He never got to find out if she loved him, even if it were just a slither of what he felt for her, what he cherished and sacrificed and wanted for both of them. The Angel of death wasn't so kind and that in itself, made Aaron a weak fool in a world where there was no Olive Crane, there was no one for him now.

The long coat Aaron Westlake slouched in almost seemed to heavy on his demented shoulders. Everything felt broken down, taken piece by piece but, the one thing he no longer had...was his soul. Kissing her neck that one day in the Academy clinic was a scene his mind forced him to watch on repeat with a drilling hole in every vital organ he wanted to ruin.