“Then give it to me.Give it all to me.Let me take it.I’m strong enough, little bird.I’m strong enough to carry it.”
Oh, how I want that.I want to give in to him fully.It’s so tempting.I could lay all my burdens on him and live freely in his dark control.
“You lived through it.”I squint at him.It’s dark, but I can see his aura, the infinite blackness like a midnight sky.“You know what it’s like.”I sense the truth he’s hiding, and it tumbles out of me like I’m an oracle channeling a message from the beyond.“You think it’s your fault your parents died.You think you could’ve stopped it.”
His silence tells me I’m correct.
“You were a little boy,” I tell him.
“You were a little girl,” he reminds me.
I have a flash of memory.The old journals in his room—the ones I found where he wrote about me.“Is this why you wanted to find me?”
He tilts his head up to the ceiling.What little light there is in the room caresses his handsome face.“You understand.”He blows out a breath.He doesn’t want to share the way I’m sharing, but his truth is the price for mine.“It started as a childhood obsession.I was caught in a world of pain and fear.I knew you’d understand my pain as I understood yours.”He cups my face.All my life, I’ve longed for someone to hold me just like this.And now he’s here, and my heart is cracking open.“I’m here for you, Inara.For your pleasure and your pain.I want it all.”
All those years he spent searching for me.It’s come to this moment.I believe everything he says.
But there’s more to tell him.
“I see death before it happens.”This is it, the moment we break from each other forever.“I saw my family’s death.My mother and father, my two brothers.But after...after...I also saw my grandmother’s death.I went to stay with her, and I saw her in a dream.One day, I went to school, and when I came home...she was there at the table, clutching her heart.”
“A heart attack.”
“That’s when I knew I was different.I saw death, and it happened.”
“You have a gift.”
“It’s a curse.I don’t just see death.I am death.”This is why I’ve built myself a fortress of solitude and hidden behind its walls.Why I’ve been careful not to allow anyone to touch me.Why I don’t let anyone in.I can’t allow anyone to see me or know me.
Rex opens his mouth, and I continue again in a rush.I need to get this out before I break down.“It happened again with my aunt.I saw the poisoned darkness spreading through her.I tried to tell her.”I shake my head.“She went to the doctor, and they found it.Cancer, spread everywhere.But it was already over.Again, I was too late.”I swallow around my shame.I’m that little girl again, trying to explain what her dreams impressed upon her.Trying and failing until the horror dawned, and it was always too late.
“After my aunt died, her husband didn’t want anything to do with me.‘You’re not mine,’ he said.‘Your family is all gone.’He told me I was cursed.”
Rex sucks in a breath, but I’m not seeing him.I’m seeing my uncle’s pain-stricken face.I smell my aunt, the jasmine she grew on a trellis off the back porch.The chance at love and a home ripped from me for the third time.
“He said I was meant to die that night with my family, but I didn’t, and now I was spreading the curse around.”My throat has closed, making it painful to speak.Tears fill my eyes, but I hold them back.I don’t deserve them.“He was right.”
Rex’s face comes into focus.I’m afraid to look at him in case he recoils from me, but I have to.He’s my lifeline to the present.I sink into his dark eyes.
“And then...I ran.I stole a coat that belonged to my aunt, stuffed my pockets with granola bars, and left.I had to.I was cursed.Death followed me.It would visit anyone I loved.”
“It wasn’t you.”Rex squeezes my hand.
“I would have a vision of someone dying, and then it would happen.What was I supposed to think?”
He squeezes my hand again, and it gives me the strength to continue.“I lived in a park.I found food in dumpsters.I was gone for weeks, even as the leaves turned and it got cold.”
“How old were you?”
I have to think.It was years after my parents died, during a dark time unmarred by holidays or birthdays.“Twelve.”
He sighs.“I was searching for you.”
I squint at him, unable to understand.Then it dawns on me—the journals in his childhood bedroom.The ones I didn’t get a chance to ask him about.It feels like I found them ages ago.
“I was trying to find you.The papers originally printed your name wrong.It took me weeks to work that out.Hamish didn’t understand.He resisted, but I kept going.Finally, he saw how much it meant to me and gave in.We could contact you.Help you.I just knew...you were like me.You would understand.”
“I wish you had found me.I was so alone.”I stare into the distance, remembering the dread that would fill me as the sunset crept over the park each night.I would retreat into the shadows of the trees, but not so far that the wild animals would find me.I stayed on the boundary between the woods and the lights and noise of humanity, but not so close that someone could see me.There was a bare sliver of space I could exist in.
