I make myself grab the sheet, but this time I pull it right up to his chin, settling a hand across his throat to hold it there. “I’m sorry.”
His face falls slowly as the realisation settles. He shuffles a little way up the bed to sit up as much as he can.
I hate this. I hate it so much.
I force out the words: “I’m leaving.”
“You’re not.” That simple denial of reality sums up our whole short relationship.
Impossible.
Not real.
Words that show he takes my full meaning, but refuses to believe it.
“I don’t want to go.”
“Then don’t.” His tone’s turned sharp, tipped with anger and fear, but not half so much as his eyes that I can’t bear to look into.
Dropping mine to the white sheets, I make my request softly. “Listen to me. I have things to tell you.”
“No.” I can hear the tears in his voice, and when I make myself look up, his cheeks are already wet, just the same as mine. I move a little closer to him, as close as I can be this last time, and hold his gaze. “I’ve been misleading you. This whole time. About everything.”
“Misleading me?” The words eke out of him with the clear stain of betrayal.
“Not about how much I want you. Or about how I want to be with you. August, you need to believe me, that’s the only truething in my life. In this world. In all the worlds, the way I feel about you is all that’s solid and true. Believe that. And know it’s why I’m doing this.”
“You don’t walk out on people you care about,” he whispers. “You know that. You know that better than anyone.”
The sting of abandonment redoubles on both of us.
It’s not as though our parents had any choice but to die. Yet we still feel it. The hopelessness of someone being ripped away. Gone forever, just like that. The way we put that blame onto their corpses and their memory, whether it’s logical or not.
I try to calm him, reframe it. “Do you remember when I got here? And I told you about the coffee? That it was overflowing?”
“Yes. But you said you would fix it.” The accusation sparks crystal clear in his tone.
“I tried to.”
“Try harder!” he shouts.
“I can’t. I’ve done everything. And the thing is… The thing that I didn’t want to tell you…” It’s a short moment of relative peace when my eyes close on the scene, before I force myself to meet his heartbreak head on. “August, you said last night you wouldn’t want to know if you were going to die.”
He stops fighting the cuffs, stares at me, wide-eyed.
“You’re not going to,” I tell him quickly. “Because I’m not going to let that happen. But as long as I’m here, your reality gets worse.”
“I know.” He yanks at the chains, curling his legs to face me. “You already told me that. And you were working on it—wewere working on it. Why is anything changing? Why today?”
“I lied.” There it is. Two small words, out in the open. A gateway to all the horror of the things I’ve done. The person I really am. “A portal will open for me, and I will move on. Only…” Here it comes. “The portal doesn’t open until I’m the last thing left alive.”
Horror dawns in his eyes, scanning me, as though desperate for a sign I’m lying.
“You’ve seen it happening around us. You’ve slipped through time with me, you’ve felt the fabric of this world pulling apart.”
“I haven’t. Not like you’re talking about.”
“It’s getting worse, and it’s happening fast, and you can see that.”
