Page 75 of Broken Pieces

“Max! Stop! You’re hurting yourself!” She shouts with desperation.

My shoulders heave from exertion, as I prowl forwards. She’s standing there with a thin sheet wrapped around her whilst Maddox stands guard next to her in a pair of sweats.

Ignoring the disappointed look he gives me, I aim the bat at her. “Enough, Violet! Go back inside and get some rest, because there’s not going to be any more peace for you, not now that we have you.”

There's more pain,everywhere, in my limbs, my heart, my fucking soul. I can barely see straight let alone think clearly. If I can just get her back inside then I can calm down and come up with a new plan.

“No, Max. You can’t just keep telling me what to do. I want to talk to you. We need to talk about what happened.”

“There’s nothing to talk about! All you do is lie. One minute you say you want us then the next you run away. It’s what you’ve always done. I should break your legs so you can’t even crawl away from us,” I snarl, viciously at her and she actually looks afraid of me.

“Max,” Mad warns me with a low growl.

I know I’m going too far, but I can't stop myself.

The pain is a like thunder roaring throughout my body, deafening me to reason and it won't stop until it's consumed me.

I raise the bat over my head, not intending to hurt her, but I need to get this feeling out of me.

A good scare should put her back into submission.

Before I can do anything, Mad charges at me, knocking me to my back.

“Don’t you dare fucking hurt her!” He shouts as he pins me down. Everything goes white for a brief second and it feels like my body is about to implode.

“I need it to stop,” I hiss through my teeth, tears burning my eyes. Mad's face drops as he sees my pain, maybe even feels it too.

"It'll pass, it always does. Just ride it out, but do not take it out on her." Mad's voice is low enough for only me to hear. He thinks he understands, but I've not been telling him the whole truth, that the pain never just passes. Sometimes it's bearable, but it's still always there and I can't take it anymore.

"No, Mad, I'm fucked up. I'm broken. There's no going back to the old me, the one that she deserves."

"Don't fucking say that. She loves every part of you and you deserve to let yourself accept that. You're not broken. I know you're in pain all the time, I can see it no matter how much you try to hide it and she will too. So let her in. Let us both help you."

Violet drops to her knees next to us and rests her palm on my shoulder. “Max, I know that no matter how many times I say sorry it’ll never be enough, but please believe me that I am. I never meant for you to get hurt. I’ve missed you both so much.”

As I see the terrified look in her eyes, everything I've done catches up to me and I know I made the biggest mistake of my life the day I swore to punish her.

“You think I care about this?” I motion my chin towards my arm. “It’s fucked up, but it’s better than seeing you get hit by that fucking car! Every time I close my eyes, it’s all I can picture. I hear your scream over and over in my head. Then I see you dead under the tires. For so long, I couldn’t tell what was real and what was a hallucination. All I wanted was to see you and touch you again, but you left us, Violet. You had so many chances to come back and you just stayed away. Then we came for you and you were withhim.”

“I didn’t knowwho he was! I thought he was just someone from school. I swear. If I had known his dad was the one who—” she breaks off with a sob and I look at Mad. He shakes his head telling me she really didn’t know. “He never mentioned it. Not once.”

"You didn't recognise his name from the trial?"

"No. I avoided everything about the pair of you. All I knew was what my mom told me. It's my fault, I shouldn't have hid from it all."

"And the texts?" There's no way she can lie herself out of that.

"She thought they were from us." Maddox eyes are sincere and I know that I need to start believing in her again.

I should have believed in her all along.

Rather than letting my pain rule me, making me jump to the worst case scenario, I should have been there to help get her away from James. Instead I left her to fall victim to whatever mind games he was trying on her.

He found a way to take advantage of her and took that picture.

I'm such an idiot.

She was wearing that skirt to the house party the night of the accident. The night she was absolutely wasted.