Fight for You Read Online Nichole Rose

Categories Genre: Alpha Male, Contemporary, Dark, Virgin Tags Authors: Nichole Rose Advertisement1

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It's always been me.

I guess his nickname for me was fitting all along. I am a little monster.

"Mama! Titan!" I wail as the dam breaks wide open and all the pain I've been so desperately trying to ignore slams into me. I pitch forward, striking my head on the edge of the sink.

When the world starts to go black, I'm still conscious enough to hope it's forever.

I wake up in the bathroom floor with my head pounding. Blood rushes in my ears, playing counterpoint to the roar of recriminations and accusations I can't seem to escape. Images of Titan, my mom, and Cade assail me, tearing me apart over and over. Even breathing hurts as their images twist up with my own guilt until memories of them scream that I'm the reason for all this pain.

Blood pours from the bullet wounds in Titan's chest and streaks his spiky black hair. He points a finger at me, mouthing that he hates me. That he should be alive and happy.

"Why didn't you try to save me?" he asks me. "Why didn't you care?"

Half of my mom's face is gone as tears of blood drip down her ruined cheek. She repeatedly screams the word selfish. The disappointment in her eyes—the betrayal—breaks me. Looking at her is like looking at a version of myself…one so much more selfless than I've ever been. She sacrificed so much for me and Titan, working sixty- and seventy-hour weeks just so we would never go without.

Cade stares at me, those beautiful eyes of his a haunting blue that tears at my soul. He doesn't say anything, but he's bleeding too…from all those wounds he received trying to outrun my selfish words. All those attacks he endured trying to redeem himself for crimes that were never his fault.

Every single second hurts worse than the last.

I stumble to my feet and the room sways around me. Their accusatory stares are burned into my irises. I can't see through them. Everything but them is blurry and I just want it to stop. All of it.

I stumble and trip, banging my hip into the edge of the counter. Bottles of makeup and hair products careen to the floor as I grasp around, feeling blindly for a bottle of pain medication that's been in the cabinet over the sink for the last year, untouched.

Twenty pills. That's all it'll take to make it stop. I know because I've thought about it before.

As soon as my hand closes around the prescription bottle, I cry out in relief…and then fight to open it. My hands shake so hard that I can't get the lid off.

I just want to make it stop—make it all stop—but I can't.

I can't.

I can't.

I can't.

"Dammit!" I scream and throw the bottle across the room before falling to the floor.

I scream and cry until my voice fades, my throat feels like it's bleeding, and I'm choking on my own spit. Seven years of grief and self-hatred pour out of me, purging itself in a flood I'm not sure I'm strong enough to withstand.

I don't try.

Instead, I let it take me.

"January? Oh, Jesus. January!" Mariah falls to her knees beside me. "Please be breathing," she begs me. "Please be breathing."

"I'm breathing," I try to tell her, but all that comes out is a garbled groan.

She sobs in relief anyway.

I don't know how long I've been on the floor. I think I've passed out a couple of times, but I don't really remember.

Mariah's hands flutter around my face, making me moan. Something is wrong with my head. It hurts like hell. Just the touch of her fingers to my forehead makes it feel like my brain is trying to rip its way through my skull.

I peel my eyes open to find her with her hair up in a silk net, wearing pajamas with little cupcakes on them and no makeup. Tears drip down her face, landing against my skin with wet plops.

"I thought you were dead!" she cries, pulling herself to her feet long enough to grab a towel before she drops down beside me again. "There's blood all over the place."

I roll my head to the side to see what she's talking about, but wince as another wave of pain slams into me. She presses the damp towel to my head a second later and I realize I must have busted it open. It hurts like hell, but I don't remember when I hit it or even how.

"How-?"

"Michael," she whispers, guessing what I'm trying to ask her. "He showed up at my door. Said you needed me."

"He told me…" I squeeze my eyes closed and fight back a whimper as all those wounds we ripped wide open pulse and throb. It's odd. I can't remember what happened to my head, but I remember every word Cade said to me. I remember the torment on his face when he said them, the guilt and pain burning in his eyes. I remember what it feels like to burn alive without ever touching a flame. "Titan and my mom…. Titan was dealing for Kaleo for two years. He was trying to help pay for me to go to college."


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