When I’d woken up this morning, alone in the bed, I’d panicked.
Panic.
That had been the very first thing I felt. Why? Because I was afraid Cain had left me here. Abandoned me after everything he’d witnessed yesterday. After everything I’d put him through.
I wasn’t sure why I thought he’d leave his own house when it made more sense for him to take me out and abandon me somewhere. It wasn’t really a rational reaction. Just an all-consuming, visceral fear of losing something—someone—I actually…liked.
I’d scrambled out of the bed, getting twisted up in the covers and falling onto the floor. I cried out in pain because I landed on my bad shoulder. It throbbed and ached under the new bandage Cain had put on. I wanted to claw it off because it was so fucking tight that it was only adding to the agony.
But before I could, the door flew open and Cain stormed inside with a panicked expression.
“What happened? What’s?—”
He really was fast for his size. Before I could say or do anything, he’d scooped me up and was carrying me out of the room.
And I let him.
“You need to be careful with yourself,” he said. There was no anger in his words, on his face. Just…concern.
He was genuinely worried about me, and I had no idea how to handle that.
Go with it? Pretend it was real even if I couldn’t fully trust it?
I wanted to believe it was genuine—and that surprised me.
He brought me to the room with the couch and pillar—the living area, he called it—and set me gently on the couch. Luna was sleeping in the corner, as usual, and she lifted her head and wagged her tail when she saw me.
Cain asked me if I was hungry, then smiled wide when I told him I wanted apples. As if I hadn’t tried to hurt him. To kill him.
As if I wasn’t a monster.
As I ate, he started working on something at a table in the corner.
When I’d asked him what he was doing, he said, “Whittling.”
After he’d explained what that was, I let him work.
Everything was hazy. My mind, my vision. It was like I’d walked through a million spiderwebs that all stuck to me, slowly coiling tighter. I just felt…numb. Cold and numb.
I absently ate all the apples and flipped through the thin pages of one of the books with unseeing eyes.
I couldn’t read a single word on the page.
I wanted to read. I wished I could. He said he would teach me, but I doubted he would after what I’d done yesterday.
As soon as I finished eating, Cain set down his tools and cleared his throat.
“So…the wire that runs from the solar panels to the electrical grid got destroyed last night. I thought I had more wiring, but I don’t, so I’ll need to go out and find some to replace it.”
It didn’t go over my head that he hadn’t explicitly said I’d been the one who’d destroyed it.
But I had.
I did.
And I didn’t understand why he wasn’t kicking me out, telling me to go before I destroyed everything else—including him.
“The backup power won’t last more than a few days. I’ll need to go to the town nearby and see if I can find something. Otherwise…”
