If only I hadn’t been so goddamn scared.
If only I hadn’t just sat there while she made her move.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Drugged and Needy
Everything beneath me was weightless. It felt like I was floating through it like mist… unanchored and completely undone.
“Mama…”
The strange thing about this… I could see my mother. Either it was a dream of some kind, or reality, I couldn’t tell. There was darkness, and a ray of light at the far end, coffins and gritty sand under my hands. My head throbbed, and I felt like choking.
Strangely, I was looking right at the very woman I was here for. My mother, her back was to me, and the familiar slope of her shoulders, the rustle of the hem of her dress as she walked away like she always did. Her hands were wrapped in someone else’s. And my mind reeled like a movie… as I recognised it instantly. Adrian. My dead fiancé. My ghost.
But he wasn’t looking at me either.
They weren’t stopping.
“Wait… please! I… I miss you…” The words tumbled through my mouth as I tried to fight the invisible force holding me. “Why didn’t you come back?”
They kept moving further, and further till the white of her dress flickered in and out of the dark like the moon behind clouds. In my head, I was chasing her into the silence and darkness. The force holding me down suddenly vanished, and I stood up on my shaky legs. I ran until my legs forgot how to carry grief.
The sky turned ink. The stars vanished, and everything became cold and biting. My fingertips were pale and trembling, and my cheeks were wet. I touched my face. Tears. Or rain. Or both. My hands weren’t mine anymore. They felt foreign as they clawed at the emptiness in front of me, reaching for something I couldn’t name.
But there was warmth too. Somewhere, somewhere behind me.
“Dolcezza…”
I turned sharply as the voice melted into my spine.
“Dolcezza… F...” Suddenly, there was a breath against my temple, but there was no one. I looked at where Mama and Adrian went, and that place was empty. The horizon shifted, and the ink became red.
I panicked, paranoid that this was my end. I supposed this was what real hell looked like. I stumbled and fell on my knees, clutching onto the sand under me as I closed my eyes and felt invisible hands cradling me.
And I instantly knew who it belonged to.
His warmth touched my skin before his hands did. I didn’t see him, but I felt him like the heat of a fire behind closed eyes. I reached blindly, fingers curling into a chest I couldn’t see. My body burned, and it was a strange kind of heat. I felt the sudden ache of need. To be held and seen. To be kept.
And he was there.
I clawed at him needily and desperately, nails scraping fabric, and my wrist was caught. My thumb circled the soft skin there, anchoring me as if I was a ship caught amidst a storm.
“I’m here, shhh,” he murmured, and the darkness in his voice was welcoming. “Stop running.”
“But they left me…” my voice cracked and I didn’t know who I was muttering this to. Him or me. “They didn’t look back.”
“I did…”
His words slid down my spine along with his hands. My mouth opened and I sobbed, but it wasn’t pretty. Nothing about this was. I curled into him as if I belonged there, and I felt him tremble. He smelt like smoke and something expensive.
“I’ll never let you be invisible again,” he whispered near my temple. “Even if I have to burn down every god.”
His hands were angry, but he touched me in the most gentle way. It was foreign to me. He cursed lowly and gathered me in his embrace. And suddenly the sand under me started moving, and I opened my eyes to see metal. Raising my head, I was met with the deepest blue eyes I’d ever seen, adorned with a scar.
And I was in his arms. Almost on his lap, my body burning, and we were moving in a car. I didn’t remember what happened or how we got here. I couldn’t even recall my own name. All I knew was him. Not even me.
I sighed into him. Relieved, I was no longer surrounded by those coffins and sea and sand. Warmth filled my chest, between my thighs. A throbbing ache I didn’t understand pulse softly like a yearning that wasn’t entirely physical, but something deeper. It wasn’t lustful. It was what? It didn’t need any names or reasons. Just presence and breath.
