“Don’tfucking touch me!”I screamed, unable to get a grip on myself.
I was replaying every interaction over the last few months in my head.
When Blake had first mentioned those guys in her car, she’d said Jake and Riddick separately, and I’d assumed they were two different dudes… but no, she was just calling him by his nickname…
At the beach party… could no one else see him? Was that why everyone had been looking at me so strangely? Was that why Quinn had been treating me like some kind of rabid animal after?
I must have lookedinsaneyelling at nothing on the beach like that…
His flirty answers to where he lived before he moved in here with me…
‘Was living in purgatory ‘till I met you, baby boy.’
‘What do you mean? I’ve always been here, waiting for you.’
This washisshack. Jake’s shack. He’d always been here… fuckinghauntingit!
Then, the thing that sent me screaming over the edge of my own sanity was the memory of what he’d told me on the anniversary of my mom’s death.
‘You made me feel when I thought I would never feel again. You saw me when I thought no one would everseeme again, and I just… I’m so grateful for you, Finn. You’ve given me something that’s worth looking forward to when, for a long time, all that stood before me were endless, empty days filled with nothing but bad memories and regrets.’
An inhuman wail escaped me, and I collapsed into a boneless mass of grief on the floor.
Riddick didn’t try to speak. He dropped to his knees and crawled to me. Gathering me up in his big, firm,veryrealarms, he tugged me into his lap.
“I’m so sorry, Finn,” he whispered as he held me, rocking me back and forth as I sobbed wordlessly into his chest.
“I’mso,fucking sorry…”
Finn cried himself to sleep in my arms. I knew there was nothing I could say to make the reality of our situation okay. I was probably the last person he wanted to be holding him in that moment, but there was no one else.
Just me.
The dead man that’d been haunting the beach that had killed him.
Once Finn had passed out, I carried him to bed and tucked him in. His cheeks were puffy, and his eyes were swollen from all the tears, and my heartbrokeseeing him like this.
On reflex, I moved to take his clothes off but stopped myself.
‘Don’t you baby me!’
‘Don’t fucking touch me!’
I winced. The privilege of seeing Finn’s body had been revoked. Even if he would sleep more comfortably in his boxers, I didn’t think he would want me to be the one to strip him down.
Not anymore.
A painful lump formed in my throat, and I forced back tears as I tucked him in, fully clothed, before wandering outside to get some fresh air.
Not that I needed air to exist, but breathing had been a tough habit to crack. I found the act of it still relaxed me.
It gave me the illusion that I was still alive, and it was a small comfort in the endless, lonely existence that is death.
I wasn’t quite sure why I was stuck here, but after I drowned, something prevented me from following the light that had been calling my name.
I’d had this overwhelming feeling of regret and an insanely strong need to stay and ensure that the beach that had killed me didn’t take any more lives, and I think for that reason, I missed my one-way ticket to wherever I had been supposed to go.
Instead, I found myself bound to my property, unable to move on, but also unable to exist.
