I blink, the forest coming back into focus. “You weren’t the first one to watch me.”
Damien stills. His fingers tighten on my arms like he’s bracing for an earthquake.
“I remember…” My voice catches. “There was a boy. I don’t know his name. I didn’t see his face. But I was in a place that smelled like mould and bleach. My feet were always cold.”
Damien’s pupils dilate. I know that look. It’s the flicker of knowing exactly what I’m talking about—and wishing I didn’t.
“Was it you?” I ask, grabbing his shirt. “Damien, was it you?”
His mouth opens, but no truth comes out. Whatever he’s hiding, it’s about him, too. He looks past my shoulder at a ghost with teeth.
“I don’t know,” he says hoarsely.
“You don’t know?”
“I don’t know which version of me you remember.”
The wind stops. Even my thoughts go silent. He says it as if it’s normal to have multiple selves trading stolen memories.
“You were there,” he says quietly. “But you weren’t supposed to be.Hewasn’t supposed to touch you.”
“Who?”
“The priest.”
I flinch. Not because I didn’t know, but because hearing it feels like a physical blow.
“He wanted you,” Damien says, his voice cracking. “He watched you for weeks. But I—I told him to stop. I told him you were mine. I thought if I claimed you, he wouldn’t touch you.”
“But he did, didn’t he?” My voice trembles. “He hurt me anyway.”
Damien doesn’t answer. He sinks to his knees on the gravel, shattered. “I should’ve burned him then. I should’ve ripped his fucking throat out.”
I stare at him, torn between touching him or running for my life. And then, behind the wind—a sound. A low, electronic hum.
Damien’s burner phone is lit up on the car seat. A message.
He reaches for it, his voice dead. “Don’t open it yet.”
But I already have. The screen says:
Tell her what she did.
The words burn into my retinas.
Damien rips the phone from my hand, snarling, and hurls it into the trees. It crashes through the brush and vanishes into the dark.
“What the fuck does it mean?” I demand.
“You think I haven’t been trying to figure that out every day since I found you?” he explodes, his body a loaded spring. “This obsession… it drags me back to you like there’s no air outside your name. I didn’t come back to finish what he started. I came back because I couldn’t fucking breathe without you!”
He steps into me, pressing his forehead against mine. “I swear I will never let him touch you again.”
The rage in him is vibrating, a storm leashed only by my presence.
“I need to remember,” I whisper.
“You will.” He kisses my temple, his hand cupping the back of my head like I’m made of glass.
