I step closer, and against every better instinct, I lift my hand and place it on his cheek.
He goes still as a spooked horse.
His skin is warm. Feverish. It’s rougher than I remember around the beard line; his cheeks are hollow, his eyes too large. Beneath my palm, I can feel the flutter of his jaw, that stubborn muscle that clenches when he sleeps.
“I know you’re not untouched by it,” I say softly. For just a heartbeat, I let myself look at him the way I used to. Just for a moment, I turn into the ghost of who I was. “Somewhere inside you, there’s a part of you that haunts you for it. That’s why you have all those nightmares.”
He blinks, startled. “W–what?”
“What do you dream about?” I ask quietly. “I want to know what keeps you up at night.”
He swallows once. Twice. But he doesn’t answer.
“Don’t make me threaten it out of you,” I murmur. “Please. Just tell me.”
His breathing turns jagged. Panic first, then shame. He looks down at his hands.
“…The grave,” he says at last, voice trembling. “It always starts with your grave.”
I stay silent. Let him speak.
“There’s dirt under my fingernails,” he whispers. “And I know it’s yours. From when I—” His voice splinters. “And I’m standing there, watching myself do it again. Every night. I’m screaming at the version of me in the dream to stop, but I can’t move. I can’t stop it. I can only watch. Over and over.”
His lips press together; his breath comes shallow and sharp.
“And then I hear you,” he says. “Not like a ghost. Not far away. Close. Right behind me. Laughing. Sometimes crying. Sometimes just… breathing in my ear. I don’t turn around anymore. I can’t. Because I know you’re—” He swallows. “—waiting for me to look.”
Finally, he looks up at me, pupils blown wide.
“You never look at me in the dream,” he goes on. “You look past me. Like I’m already gone. And then the dirt starts pulling me down into the grave. And I know it’s my turn. So I go under. Every night. For five years. I wake up choking.” His voice cracks. “You were watching me all that time? You saw it all?”
I nod once.
“Yes,” I say. “I did.”
I smooth my hand down from his cheek to his jaw, to the pulse fluttering at his throat. It beats like a frightened rabbit beneath the skin.
A better woman might find that punishment enough.
But like we’ve already established, I’m not that woman.
I’m bad to the bone.
Bad and good, all tangled together.
That’s why it hurts so damn much, no matter what I do.
He leans into my palm, like the body remembers comfort even when the mind knows it’s over.
“Skye,” he whispers. “Please. Please, I’m—”
“I hear you,” I say, cutting him off. My hand slips away. The loss of it makes him shiver. “And I’m saying goodbye.”
Silence. The generator hums. The light hums. Something inside me hums with them.
“I’m going to do it now,” I tell him quietly. “And I’m going to try to do it kindly.”
A flicker of confusion crosses his face. “Kindly?”
