UNDONE

Brad

The sting of sunlight pierced through the broken blinds, carving jagged patterns across the mess around me.

My room was a ruin—furniture overturned, shards of glass glinting in scattered piles, papers and photos littered across every inch.

I could still feel the remnants of last night’s argument, the way Leah’s words cut through the silence, her icy stare unwavering as she declared her plan to redecorate Sarah’s room.

Erase her from our hell.

Her words lingered, seeping into every shadow. Leah, who once clung to life by a thread, had transformed herself from fractured to fearsome, her strength as cold and sharp as a blade.

The ice queen, rising again, seated in judgment over the city. She didn’t have the same power she once held, but she wore her bitterness-like armor, gaining ground with a calculated precision that made her unstoppable.

But me? I was still here, caught in the wreckage, haunted by the ghosts that Leah was so hell-bent on burying. Guilt filled every breath, every heartbeat, seeping into my veins until it was the only thing keeping me alive.

Leah wanted to move forward, to rip out Sarah's remnants, to scrub every trace of her from these walls. But I was bound to the past, wound tight in memories I couldn’t break.

“Erase her from our hell,” Leah had said, her voice as cold as the air that had settled between us as if Sarah had never been more than a blemish to be scrubbed from memory. But I couldn’t erase her.

Every inch of this place was soaked with her ghost, from the scattered shards of glass to the silence that pressed in around me, thick with everything I’d failed to be.

I stumbled out of bed, the crunch of glass beneath my feet grounding me for a brief moment. I knelt, gathering up fragments of broken things scattered across the floor as if putting them back together could somehow fix the broken parts of me.

My hands shook as I lifted a torn photograph, Sarah’s wide-eyed, innocent face staring back, untouched by the pain that had come later.

“Sorry,” I muttered, the word falling flat in the empty room. An apology too small, too late.

I forced myself up and made my way to the bathroom. The scalding water bit into my skin, a burn I clung to as the hangover faded into a dull ache. But the silence returned as soon as I stepped out, pressing in on me like a weight I couldn’t shake.

I made my way to the desk, where Dalton’s diary lay open, the pages worn from countless reads. His handwriting—twisted, venomous—was burned into my mind like scars.

Every line, every confession, was a reminder of what he’d done to Sarah, the ways he’d used her, broken her, piece by piece until there was nothing left but fragments. And me? I’d been right there, watching, too wrapped up in my own self-pity to see her suffering.

The whiskey bottle on the desk was a familiar weight in my hand. The burn spread through my veins, dulling the edges of guilt and blurring the sharpness of Dalton’s words and Sarah’s face. I drank until the burn faded, leaving only a numbing haze in its wake.

Leaning back, I let the guilt seep in, filling every crack in my mind. Images of Sarah alone in that cabin drifted through my thoughts. I hadn’t been there when she needed me, hadn’t seen the signs, hadn’t done anything to save her. I’d let her drown.

Dalton’s words echoed in my mind, each line a reminder of my failure, my cowardice. Sarah had begged me for help, and I’d turned away, leaving her to fight her battles alone.

And now she was gone, swallowed by the darkness, while I was left here, haunted by ghosts I couldn’t escape.

Eventually, the haze pulled me down, and I slumped forward, my forehead resting on the pages of Dalton’s diary.

The whiskey blurred everything, the lines between past and present dissolving as I drifted into a restless, drunken sleep. Images of Sarah, Dalton, and Leah’s ice-cold stare circled in my mind, shadows I couldn’t escape.

When I woke, the sun was lower in the sky, casting an eerie glow across the room. My mouth was dry, my head pounding, but the guilt remained, sharp and unyielding. I took another swig from the bottle, the burn a hollow comfort as I staggered to my feet.

There was no point in cleaning up, no point in trying to piece anything together. I grabbed my jacket, the bottle still clutched in my hand, and stumbled down the stairs, past the empty halls of the mansion that once held life, laughter, voices. Now it was a tomb, a monument to sins we’d all buried.

In the Camaro, the engine’s hum was the only grounding thing.

I took another long pull from the bottle before tossing it aside.

The road blurred as I drove, each mile bringing me closer to the club, to the place where it all began, where I could finally end this.