PREFACE

 RYDER.

In all my entire life, I’ve always believed in only one thing; That love doesn’t exist. Not in this shitty world of mine. It’s a belief that was forced into me right from childhood. For a parent to have abandoned their own kid, for a mother to have abandoned her own son, there can be no other love. 

I’ve carried so much pain in me. I’ve carried so much hatred and they weigh heavily on my shoulders, pulling me into the never-ending darkness. As a young boy with no family, I grew up to hate life itself. Then he found me. My savior found me and implanted love into me, but still yet, it wasn’t enough. I was long gone, lost in the darkness that I’ve grown so much to love. Damaged and broken beyond repair. There was no redemption for me, but still yet, I tried to hold on to the light that’s the Smith family until that light left when I killed Declan. It pulled me back into that darkness, losing all forms of sanity, and I watched as I broke further.

Being in the darkness for too long seems to change something in me. I always want violence. I always thirst for blood. I thirst for the kill. I thirst for taking other’s lives. I was turning into something else. Something an eighteen-year-old boy should never have to go through. Something so painful that it pierced into my soul till it became a part of me.

I needed to fill that hunger. I needed to fill the bloodlust, so I tried a different way.

Tattoos. 

At first, my ultimate aim was to damn my parents. I didn’t know them–still don’t–but I viewed them as those perfect rich people and having a rebellious son was something to damn them even though it’s stupid and fucked up because they don’t even care that I exist. I did it anyway. Then the feeling of having that needle stretch inks across my skin turned into something else. It turned into something that moulded my pain. At least for a little while. Then it turned into something I can confide in. I could tell my body secrets that no one else has to know. They meant not just inks to damn any shitty person; they turned to my personal journal. Stories stretched across my skin–never to be erased–and always reminding me of the damned person I am.

But the inks couldn’t satisfy my bloodlust, I wanted something more. Something that requires survival, something I can take out my anger on, so I tried a different way–a deadly one.

Fights.

The feeling was dominant, incredible even. I love the feeling of bones cracking against my knuckled. I love the way I give others pain just like I had it; I love the struggle for survival, and I love being the always victorious one. 

Then she came.

Who was this young woman? Who was this young woman that made her way into my darkness without even realizing? Who was this young woman that smiles at me even when I do so many fucked up things to her? Who was this young woman that helped me even though she owes me no damn thing? Who was this young woman that stayed after listening to my fucked up pathetic story? Who was this young woman that knew I killed people–innocent people like I had told her–and instead of the furious, jury expression I had expected to see across her face, her expression remained unchanged and that little obnoxious woman had the fucking guts to tell me it wasn’t my fault? Who was she? How dare she? How dare she stayed after listening to that? Why didn’t she curse me out and scurry her way farther away from me? Why didn’t she?

She broke me. Broke the darkness away from me pieces by pieces. She brought her light into my fucked up world. She’s the one that stayed after listening to my sob story of killing the one family that has ever truly cares about me. She’s the one that looked past my flaws. She’s the one that saved me. She is my redemption.

And I’m about to lose her.