Stay.He signs, his voice breaking.
“I have to go tell Catherine and William I’m alive,” I say, lifting one shoulder. “They need to stop the hunt, if they even started it.”
He nods and takes my hands, tracing every scar I forget is there. His fingers move slowly, like he is reading a map of me. Somewhere along the way, he makes me forget the dark that lives under my skin. Around him, I feel lighter. Like my body remembers how to glow.
And still, it feels like the universe is pulling us apart. The thought of losing him again knots tight in my chest.
He chuckles and signs,They’re going crazy without you.
“Yeah, right,” I wipe my face.
He steps in, lifts me up, and carries me toward the living room.
“Judas, I can walk,” I say.
He ignores me.
He drops me onto the sofa. His forehead bumps against mine before he collapses beside me with his shoulder pressed to my side. He takes my hand and lifts it between us, studying my fingers like they hold an answer he can’t say out loud.
His eyes slide to his backpack. He stares at it long enough for the silence to thicken. Then he pushes up, crosses the room, and brings it back, setting it at my feet.
“What is it?” I ask.
He doesn’t look at me. He opens the zipper and pulls out a thick book, the kind you see in court offices. As he turns it, the red spine catches the light, and it reads2014.
“Judas?” I whisper.
He tilts the bag, and the rest spills out. Photos and folded papers slide across the floor, scattering at our knees.
For the first time in four years, I see my mom.
I drop to the carpet. He follows, kneeling close, our shoulders almost touching.
Sorry,he signs.
But I don’t answer. I pick up a photo and lean back against the sofa. It’s her and Sofia. She is holding Sofia and smiling, pretending to be a happy mother, as if the walls of that house had never held secrets or been broken.
Nothing was normal in that house.
To everyone else, she is the victim, a happy mother. And I’m the problem child who turned on her. They never saw what I saw. They never heard what I heard. They never felt what I felt.
My chest tightens. I want to see Sofia. I want to say goodbye.
“Judas,” I whisper, “two years ago, before I even met you, I had this plan. I wanted to disappear into a town where no one knows my name. Where no one looks twice at me and asks who I am, where no one can even judge me. I wanted to go the moment I turned eighteen.”
He lifts his hands and signs.Wherever you go, I go with you.
A sound breaks out of him, rough and crooked. “Fuck.” The word falls apart in his mouth.
He signs again.I don’t even need a map. If you ride ahead, I’ll follow you to the end.
Promise?I sign back.
He nods and hooks his pinky around mine.
Promise.
“I still want to go,” I say. A tear slips down my cheek and lands on my hand. “But first, I need to see Sofia. If we leave, I don’t want to come back here.”
