I’m safe here.Rex is here.His presence makes the darkness a gentle comfort.
“I need to tell you something.Something I’ve never told anyone.”There are so many reasons I’ve hidden this part of myself.It’s a curse and makes me feel like a freak.“But I don’t want to burden you.”
“I want it all.”He means it.
There’s a long silence, but I don’t feel afraid.Telling him everything feels right, like everything’s sliding into place.“Okay.I’ll tell you.But I have to start at the beginning.”
I shift in his arms, turning to face him.He rests his hands on my back.“I see things.Visions.I told you I have...instincts, but it’s more than that.I get glimpses of what happened at a crime scene.But not only that.”I’ve spent so long keeping this secret locked away.It’s hard to continue, but his quiet attention compels me.“I’ll see visions of the future sometimes.The way a crime will unfold.It’s almost like I’m being given the vision so I can stop it from happening.”
“That’s incredible.”
“No, it’s not.Because I can’t.I fail.”I clench my teeth.
“Shhh,” he brushes a hand over my hair.“It’s all right.”
“No, it’s not.It’s not.They started the night...”I can’t say it.
“Thenight,” he says for me.He knows the night I’m referring to.
“Yes.The night...he came.”Shards of glass line my throat, but I make myself say it.“The night my family died.”
19
Inara
Rexand I stare at each other.Our faces are inches away.I’ve told him a secret I’ve carried for years, one he seems to know.“How did you know?”
“Because.”He toys with my hair, slow to answer.I sense this is as hard for him to share as it is for me.“I know what it’s like to look in the face of evil.To have it change the course of your life.To unlock something inside of you, something you have to keep hidden because no one else will understand.”
I understand him perfectly.Our families’ deaths broke something.Our lives continued but were forever changed.
“You have a gift.”
I shake my head.“A curse.”
“It’s a gift,” he insists.
“No, you don’t understand.”I fight to sit up.He rises with me but doesn’t let me out of the circle of his arms.“It was my fault.I dreamed their deaths.”I’ve opened the well of secrets, and now the poison bubbles out.“He killed them as I lay there.I did nothing!”
“You were a child?—”
“I knew.”I thump his chest with my fists.“I knew, and I did nothing.”
“You did.You survived.It was all you could do.”
I’m back there, in my ten-year-old bedroom, hearing the creak of the floorboards.Watching the blood drip from the knife.
“Inara,” Rex calls me back to him.“It was his fault.He’s the monster who came for your family?—”
“I could’ve stopped it.I was supposed to stop it.”I bury my face in my hands.“I saw the Green Street Murders before they happened.The same with Emily Rodriguez.I’ve dreamed of all the victims.It’s my fault that they’re dead.My fault.”Telling this to Rex feels like carving open my chest with a knife.There’s nothing but air between him and my beating heart.All he has to do is reach out and crush it in his fist.
But he doesn’t.He closes his fingers around my wrists and draws my hands down.“No, little bird.It was him.It was not you.It was never you.You have nothing to apologize for.Whatever younger Inara did, it was what she needed to do.Whatever she said, whatever she did or didn’t do, it was right.”
I answer with a sob.
“Feel your pulse.”He guides my fingers to a spot under my jaw.“Feel that?That means you won.”
I let my hand slip away.“I don’t want to feel this way anymore.”
