Forbidden Sensations: A Dark Romance Savannah Rose (readnow TXT) 📖

I wanted to wipe the tears away, but I may as well have been paralyzed. Or chained to a tree. Useless from the waist up, that was me.

I blinked, but I still couldn't get the sting of ash out of my eyes. Nor could I see Ramona. I wanted to see her. I had to see her. There was a strange, indefinable something deep within me that told me I needed to see her. I wanted to say I was sorry, and I wanted her to know that I meant it.

I'd never apologized to anyone, for anything. Not even my mother. Not even when she found me banging the funeral home's assistant director at Josh's wake. Who does that, Maddox? Nobody does that. But you did, and now look at you.

I'd rather not look at me.

I rolled onto my back, and tried to look, instead, at the stars. But there was so much sand, so much smoke in my eyes, all I could do was close them. It hurt to close them, but keeping them open hurt more. I listened to the roll, crash, roll of the waves. Most people liked that sound. Found it soothing in its repetition. Some would say it coaxes them to sleep. One of Mother Nature's lullabies, if you will.

For me, there was nothing comforting. I didn't know what it was like to die, but by god, how I felt right now came very, very close.

Then, there was a compression against my chest. Good fucking grief, now what. Everything hurt, I just wanted it to stop hurting, and now to top off all my god damn misery, now there was something on me. An animal..? A hairless animal… what in the shit was it?

I wanted to push it away, but I could not. No hands, no arms, no way. I forced my eyes to open – could barely see the figure poised above me. It was pointing something at me… but everything was so blurry… my head pounded, my throat was too dry to speak, and I heard something go 'click'.

The hairless animal pushed against my chest, then was gone. It must have jumped away, scared of that clicking noise, and I wondered what it was. A rabbit? No, rabbits have fur. Maybe a lizard? Islands have lizards. No, it was a rabbit. It had to be. A bald rabbit. I'm a bald rabbit, too. Are there rabbits on islands...?

“You don't give up, do you?”

My head rolled to the side. I saw the bald rabbit, right next to me. It looked more like a foot, though. A feminine, human foot. It had pretty, brown toes, and I felt the sides of my mouth curl up, my lips cracking and stinging as they did. Must be chapped.

“What the fuck are you smiling for?” Ramona asked, impatient. “You're a serious god damn lunatic, you know that?”

“...takes one...” I swallowed. Even words felt like they weighed a ton. “...to know one.”

“Oh, real funny, asshole,” she said, and lowered whatever it was she had pointed at me. I thought it may have been her flare gun, but it hurt to keep looking at it. It hurt to keep looking at her. I shut my eyes, wondering when my brain would stop swirling around my skull. “Always figured you for a quitter, Maddy,” she went on, her voice sounded like it was coming through a tin can. “If it's not handed to you, you're not going to reach for it. What gives with this, huh? You crawl your ass all the way over here, and for what?”

“...say I'm sorry.”

She snorted. “Ha-hah. You've never been sorry for any–”

“I'm sorry!” I screamed, ripping the lining of my throat like an old, moldy rag. But I meant it. I really god damn fucking meant it.

I wanted to claw at the sand, dig my way through my frustration, but my fingers, and my hands, they were nothing more than dead appendages. My larynx felt like I'd been drinking gasoline, then swallowed a lit match. Hot needles battered against my eyes. Tears cut rivers down the sand plastered on my face, running over the cut on my cheek and then down my neck.

“Damn right you're sorry. A sorry sack of shit.”

“...sorry she died. Your sister… I didn't mean it, I-I didn't know...”

“Said every pathetic corporate slimeball after they get caught. After they get called out on their crap. You're a piece of work, Maddy. No wonder your folks are disappointed. Is that why they can't stand you? Because you're a heartless son-of-a-bitch with no soul? Remorse?” She knelt down close to me. I could smell coconuts. “Is that why?”

I shook my head. There were a lot of reasons why they hated me, but there were too many to list. I couldn't talk much anymore, anyway.

“Do you even know why?”

Nodding was hard. My neck didn't want to move, either.

“Why do they hate you, Maddy?” she asked with a smile on her face. You can tell when someone’s smiling, even when you can't see them.

“...be-cause, I...”

“Bee - cause why?”

“Because I lived.”

Ramona didn't respond. For the longest time, there was no sound at all. Save for the crash, crash, crashing of waves and my own, haggard breathing.

She could have still been there, for all I knew, pointing her flare gun at me. I rather wished she'd just go ahead and pull the damn trigger, to be honest.

I suspected, however, her justice would be far more poetic if she were to just let me lay here and die. Slowly and painfully, like she wanted. Like she believed I deserved. I’m not even going to pretend like there wasn’t a part of me that agreed with her. And it wasn't until this moment, on this god forsaken oasis, that I realized why.

Josh was the good son, the star athlete, everybody's darling. I was the perverted, ego-maniacal deviant. The bad seed. The rotten apple.

If my parents