That made me whirl, and my eyes instantly landed on the golden halo of his gaze, nearly shining in the dark. He wasn’treal. He didn’t look like any person I’d ever seen. The glowing eyes? The black veins? He was some fucked-up figment of my imagination, or…
“Are you a demon?”
It wouldn’t surprise me if something had attached itself to me, like my own personal punishment for leaving Caiden alone the day he’d died, but…
“There are no demons.” He answered simply, and he lifted his hand between us, offering me back the petal I’d nearly dropped. I eyed it, my fingers twitching to reach out and take it even though I didn’t want to accidentally touch him. Therewas something almost ethereal about him in the moonlight. Something terrifying.
“Then what are you?”
He just stared at me, his mouth opening like he wanted to say something before his brows drew together.
“It doesn’t matter.” He finally settled on purebullshit. It was obvious there was so much more trapped just behind that expression. I shook my head, taking a step back from him, from the offered petal… from the impossibility of everything happening.
“You aren’t real.” I turned my back on him and walked across the bridge. I’d wanted to stay, maybe make my way down to the edge of the water where he’d pulled me out to begin with. I wanted to prove to myself that I’d just imagined him, that I’d swum to shore on my own.
I wanted a lot of things, but the sound of his footsteps silently following along behind me told me I wasn’t going to get any of them.
“I’m sorry.” He said it again, and I whirled around without thinking. My voice was a shout when I spoke, anger I couldn’t quite contain welling in my chest and painting white-hot fury across my tone.
“For what? For being in the room with my brother? For killing him?” The man in front of me didn’t recoil at my temper, but his hand clenched around the petal he still held. It wasn’t exactly an admission of guilt, but it was close enough that I couldn’t stop myself. “Or are you sorry because for some reason you’re still in my head now? I feel like I’m going crazy. I thought you were some fucked-up thing in my imagination, some weird manifestation of guilt because I wasn’t there when… when he…”
“It wasn’t your fault.” For someone who was being yelled at, his voice was still so calm, a gentle rumble that sent vibrations straight to my bones.
“No, it was yours. You were there. And now you’re here?” I couldn’t stop myself when I raised a hand and shoved him, but the place where I touched his skin felt like I’d grabbed an electrical wire. It tingled, burned white hot and freezing cold all at once. My palm stayed glued to the front of his dark sweater like he was magnetized. “Why didn’t you just let me die in the water?”
The last question came out tinged with the aching agony I felt beating down on me every day before I put on my mask to go into the world… every night before I went to bed.
His eyes softened, his lips turning up in a smile that seemed as melancholy as the question I’d just asked.
“I can’t.”
When his fingers skated across the back of my hand in a featherlight touch that made me shudder, and the moonlight caught black veins nearly shimmering beneath his skin, I asked again.
“What are you?”
“Yours,” he said simply, almost helplessly, like it was the only answer he could give.
The strange flurry of emotions that ripped through me at the word were too much. I shoved away from him and started walking, stuffing my hands into my pockets again so I didn’t do something ridiculous. Like touch him.
Or hit him.
“My delusion. Right. Whatever. Can you just fuck off?” The demand came out hard and a little bitter, but that didn’t stop the sound of his footsteps whispering behind me. “Why are you even here? Unless I’m right and I’m still dead in the water…”
“I can’t seem to stay away.” He still sounded helpless, almost as lost as I was, and his long legs brought him to my side before I could get far enough ahead of him to lose him. I wasn’tshort, buthe was making me feel every centimeter of height between us. I’d always said five feet, ten inches was tall enough.
Not when you were being stalked by some six-foot-five shadow.
“You’ve been doing a great job so far. Just…” There was something nearly frantic building up in my chest. I’d spent a year convincing myself he wasn’t real, a year being sure he was some fucked-up illusion my mind had given me so I’d have someone other than myself to blame for what had happened to Caiden—but now he was here.
Physical.
Tangible.
Talking to me.
My world felt like it was upside down, and I wasn’t sure what to do about it.
“Up until now, I’ve only been concerned when you sleep.” The confession came so easily, like it wasn’t fucked up that he’d been watching me. “But I felt how much you wanted to let go earlier… Cole, this isn’t what your brother wanted.”
