The Shattered Genesis (Eternity) (40 page)

             
“So you thought that was it? You thought you’d leave your mother and I behind? You thought you’d escape here
and shack up with that asshole, Maxwell?”

             
“How do you know him?” I demanded after realizing that very little fear in my heart existed, even in the presence of his rage. I only wanted to know where their association had begun and what the meaning was behi
nd it. It was difficult for me to feel fear in the face of his anger anymore. I had become so accustomed to it.

             
“You left us to die, you bitch!”

             
If there was one thing in life that I loathed most venomously, it was the use of gender-based insults. “Bitch
”, “whore” and “slut” were disgraceful but there was one more that was downright despicable. He had called me that before, generally after having one too many drinks.

             
What a weak man he was...

             
“Where is my mother?” I refrained from referring to her as “M
om” for I felt that the term was too closely correlated with warmth and sentiment. I had been doing that for years and it drove them both crazy.

             
“Where do you think?! She burned up just like I was supposed to! Isn’t that what was supposed to happen? Well,
you should have done your homework, you stupid cow, because this whole expedition was bought and paid for by me! What, your little friend James didn’t tell you that? Was he too busy following after you like a pathetic puppy dog?”

             
“You enjoy asking rhetor
ical questions, though I must say, I have always found them to be quite useless in determining what one wants to know...”

             
“Shut up!” He barked at me before punching the side of the ship right beside my head. I only flinched slightly, which only infuriated
him more. “I guess he also didn’t tell you that he engineered the ship?”

             
Well, that explained his calmness while the rest of us thought the ship was going down... That explained his calmness that had remained in tact throughout all the peril we had exper
ienced, actually.

             
“Now I want you to listen to me. Stay away from him.”

             
He had lied to me. I would have nothing more to do with him for that alone, not because my father had ordered me to keep my distance.

             
“If I catch you with him, I’ll deal with it the
same way that I dealt with your stupid little friends.”

             
I looked at him, knowing that my eyes were going to turn red. It was that rage again. It was that inescapable feeling that I must end the life of someone causing me pain. For my pride, for my love o
f the people he was cruelly and disrespectfully referring to, for the years upon years of hatred and abuse between us, I would end that man.

             
“The two that couldn’t keep their noses out of your mother’s business went easily.” He continued to prod me with a
sadistically triumphant smile scratched across his misshapen mouth. “The other two, not so much. You’re my daughter. I might find the sight of you to be disgusting but you’re
still my kid. So do you want to guess which option I’m going to favor when I get
rid of him?”

             
I was through with James. I was ready to pretend that nothing had occurred between us. But the thought of losing him permanently, though I knew I would never be with him again, almost brought tears to my eyes. Tears streaming down my cheeks
were as rare a sight as a unicorn tumbling out of a rainbow above Antarctica, so I hope one realizes how extreme the pain I felt was when I pictured James being irreversibly gone.

             
I hated him for lying to me. But I could not hate him. It made no sense and
to me, everything made sense. I did not find the confusion regarding my feelings for him to be a place in which I wished to spend my time. I shook my head slightly to clear the rambling, conflicting thoughts from my mind.

             
“Tell me that you’re not going t
o see him again.”

             
I did not reply. I was proud to the point of recklessness and always had been. Even now, as I faced the possibility of physical pain, I could not cast my pride aside. It was too resilient, like the cockroaches I assumed were still scaven
ging amongst the ashes of our earth.
             

             
“Brynna Claire,” He growled as his fingers locked painfully around my upper arms. “Do not test me. I don’t like raising my hand to you but I will if you don’t answer me.”

             
I raised my eyes to him, fantasizing about
reaching out abruptly and shoving my palm up into his nose with all the force my newly acquired strength would allow. The bones would shatter and a jagged piece would be shoved up to pierce his brain. I wanted to lean forward and take an unforgiving bite r
ight out of his throat. I wanted to jump on his back, grasp his head and rip it from his neck, destroying him the same way I destroyed that creature in my apartment.

             
Instead, I taunted him:

             
“Raise your hand, little boy.”

             
His hand came up and he moved it
behind him so that he could muster enough force to send me to the ground. I’ll admit, the pain evoked a small cry from me. I crashed sideways into the side of the ship before sliding down into the dirt. Looking up in time to see James suddenly appear in f
ront of me did not improve my now very disagreeable mood.

             
“Go. Go away.” I gasped out as I widened my eyes in an attempt to clear my blurred vision. He was sitting me up. “You lied to me and I want you to go.”

             
“Brynna, I lied to you because I knew you wo
uldn’t trust me. If you knew that I had worked with him to build this, you wouldn’t have come with me. We did vote on whether or not to allow them to come. We voted against them both, just like I said. I don’t know what he’s doing here. I thought you’d be
safe from both of them here.” He was speaking quickly, trying to explain away committing the ultimate betrayal in my little world before I managed to hoist myself up and leave him forever.

             
“So you thought you’d
save me
, James?” I narrowed my eyes as a new
outrage gripped me that had nothing to do with my father. How dare he suggest that I needed to be rescued? I was a strong, independent woman who just so happened to be abused, sometimes severely, by her father. That didn’t mean that I was weak and in need
of a knight in shining armor. How incredibly pathetic that would be…

             
His own defenses rose abruptly; a cold glazed over his warm, brown eyes and his jaw tightened. The armies inside of us were raising their weapons, ready to fire on the enemy that had in
vaded their strongholds. We were pulling away just as we had begun to grow closer.

             
Deep down, past the anger, the betrayal, and the self-loathing I felt at allowing myself to move too close to him, my heart was splitting. I dreaded the moment he walked aw
ay from me. I prayed that somehow, I would find whatever was needed to change my mind; I searched desperately for some inner strength that would persuade me to let him stay. No revelation of the sort came nor did my swelling pride dissolve.

             
“I told you th
at you would pull away,” He told me furiously, “You thought it would be me. But I knew it would be you.”

             
“Congratulations. Would you like some sort of award for your vast knowledge on the inner
workings of Brynna Olivier?” I hissed back just as viciously.

             
“It is quite an accomplishment considering that you’re so fundamentally f…”
             

             
“This conversation has reached its end. I do not tolerate liars.”

             
“But you tolerate that son of a bitch, who just punched you in the face?”

             
“He’s my father. You’re… You’re…”
I was stammering, a new phenomenon that I was not familiar nor comfortable with. The sudden change in my speaking pattern was evidence that I did not mean what I said next, “You’re
nothing
, James.”

             
He studied me as he shook his head slightly. I wanted to
see anger on his face and the desire to fight me on my resolve to push him away. Doesn’t every woman want that? But all I saw in James’s face was a new determination to get as far away from me as he could and to stay away this time.

             
My heart split even mo
re fatally. I was surely bleeding to death internally. The part of me that cared for him so deeply and needed him blindly begged me through her rapidly falling, acidic tears to reach out, wrap my arms around his neck, and beg him to stay. Unfortunately, th
e side of me that did not allow such fragility to be shown to anyone, but especially men, crossed her arms, shook her head and dug her heels in. She would not beg James Maxwell for anything. She would not beg
anyone
for anything.

             
“Good luck to you, Brynna
.”

             
His words were so cold. They were so final. There was not the smallest hint of that beautiful affection I knew he had for me. Over the past several days, a devotion to one another had bloomed in each of us. Mine was wilting away as though its water-sou
rce had been evaporated with one harsh ray from the sun. His was effectively eradicated; I wondered if even the smallest traces of it would survive for even an hour more.

             
My father ushered me back to the crowd and I turned to watch James walking in the op
posite direction, getting further and further away by the second. There were so many people. If I ever needed to find him, I would more than likely be unable to do so. That was the last time I would see him, ever.

I walked back to where Maura, Elijah, Penn
y and Violet were standing together and chattering nervously. Only Penny comforted me with a warm hug around my leg and a kiss on my throbbing cheek when I knelt down in front of her. The rest just diverted their gazes and pretended not to notice the bruis
e that was already forming there.

“Your eyes are really dark blue.” Penny told me with her brows furrowed in curiosity. “Normally, they’re the color of the sky. Now they’re like the ocean.”

I was barely listening to her, God bless the sweet little girl. In
my ears was the rhythmic tapping of the blood droplets as they rained down from my split heart and filled up my insides until they would eventually rise to my eyes where they would fall.

I forced it away. I forced that immense, unimaginable pain away. I a
llowed myself just that one moment of agony as I replayed the exact second when he had disappeared from my sight over and over again.

I cannot explain it. I cannot think about it for long. The memory pains me still.

Quinn

             
Our housing compartment had
been the very last, so by the time we got to the ship to retrieve our bags, people had already made their camps. The lucky people who had resided in the first compartment were able to set up right in front of the ship. We were forced to set up far in the b
ack, closer to the tree line at the end of the field.

             
I had very little experience with camping, though my father had insisted that we try it when I was a little kid. Though my tent-constructing skills left a lot to be desired, I managed to build ours in
under two hours. Of course, I had required the assistance of a woman from the camp next to ours.

             
“Too bad we got the last compartment, right? We’re all the way back here in the nosebleeds.”
She had told me as she expertly hammered a peg into the ground.

             
“I know, right?” I replied, “I guess we’re second-class citizens.”

             
“I guess so.” She looked up at Alice, who was standing away from us and staring off into the darkened forest. The leaves on the trees were a dark evergreen; the sight of them made me tired
for some reason. The forest was odd; every type of tree I could think of was cluttered together in my view. A weeping willow swayed in the wind, its long, flowing leaves grazing the rough trunk of a tall palm tree. A pine tree cowered in the shadow of a t
owering oak. I couldn’t help but muse how weird this place was.