Angels don't Burn

by UnfortunatelyWriting

Clara Hale is seven when she unknowingly meets her mate for the first time. A quiet boy with curly hair and blue eyes. The Hale fire leaves Isaac reeling as his best friend and her family are assumed dead. Six years later, her older brother Derek offers him something incredible. Then the impossible happens: Clara and Cora survived the fire and have finally returned. Isaac x OC.

4. All His Fault

2010

Isaac watched the time tick off the clock with void eyes. Wishing the hand would move quicker but also wishing it would stop altogether. Eighth grade was hell. Home was hell. His job at the cemetery was hell.

And now, Camden was never coming back.

His father's temper had worsened, if that was even possible. There were no more good days like there had been when Camden was home. Every night Isaac watched in fear as a new bottle was emptied, and wondered what was waiting for him at the bottom.

Last week. . . last week his father had tried something new. He, he couldn't, he meant, he couldn't. He couldn't even think. . . Isaac forced himself to take a deep breath.

Closing his eyes, he remembered her. Beautiful, kind-hearted Clara. No matter how many days passed, he still felt her presence around him. Like she was haunting him. Only it wasn't in the same way other things followed him beneath his eyelids, it was more like, whenever he heard something funny or if he walked by her old locker. She was always, just, there.

Isaac shook his head, mumbling to himself to snap out of it.

Isaac knew why she died. He knew why Camden had chosen active duty over community college. He knew why his mom got sick. There was something wrong with him, something that made others get hurt.

That was the reason Isaac's dad treated him the way he did. Because his dad knew too. If his dad loved him, then he would be in danger. That's what his father said. It's Isaac's fault. It's all his fault.

The freezer kept him contained, so he couldn't hurt his father like he had hurt Clara. The freezer was because Isaac deserved it. Because there was something evil inside him, just like his dad said last month when he had read that letter. It was Isaac's fault that Camden joined the army, because Camden saw the evil too.

Houses don't just burn down, his father had said once. No one dies in house fires anymore.

It was his fault. Isaac didn't know how, but it had to be. Loving him was a disease. He was glad his father wasn't infected.

Most of all, he didn't deserve to think of Clara. He didn't deserve those memories. But the more he resolved to stop, the more frequently they came, and he hated himself a little more for it every time. It had been years since Isaac had fought back against his father, two years to be exact. After all, it was his fault.