Silence. The kind that stretches until the air in the cabin feels thin. The kind that presses against your eardrums. Then, finally, “I knew there was someone else.”
The car hums beneath us. Steady. Indifferent. Like the world doesn’t care that something fundamental just cracked open inside me.
“There was always a gap,” he continues, his voice low and controlled in a way that feels rehearsed, as if he’s been saying it to himself in the dark for years. “A place the story didn’t fit. I told myself it was trauma. Repression. Anything that didn’t require me to admit I might’ve missed him.”
Him.My stomach twists into a cold, hard knot.
“I didn’t remember him,” I whisper. “I swear I didn’t.”
“I know.” The way he says it isn’t accusatory. It’s… careful. Like he’s handling a live wire. “But your body did,” he adds.
My fingers curl into the fabric of my coat. Because that’s the part I can’t stop thinking about. The way my chest reacted before my head did. The way my breath hitched when he stepped into the light. The way something in me leaned forward even while fear screamed no. I hate that part. I hate that it exists.
“I keep seeing pieces,” I admit. “Not full memories. Just sensations. Smells. A sound. The feeling of being watched and… not hating it.”
Damien exhales slowly through his nose, a jagged, weary sound. “That’s how it starts.”
I turn to him, my pulse skidding. “What?”
“That’s how he gets inside,” he says. “Not with violence. Not first. With attention. With being there when no one else is.”
Suddenly I’m not in the car anymore. I’m small again. I’m sitting on cold tile with my knees pulled to my chest, counting my breaths because someone told me once that if I stayed quiet enough, I’d disappear. And there’s a shadow near the door. Not touching. Just… staying.
My nails bite into my palm. “I don’t know what he was to me,” I say. “And that scares me.”
Damien finally looks at me. Really looks. His eyes aren’t burning now; they’re terrified.
“That’s because whatever he was,” he says carefully, “he was formed in the same place as the worst parts of you. And those don’t come back gently.”
The car slows. Not stopping, just easing, like even the road knows we’re approaching something dangerous. I hug myself, the chill of the memory seeped into my skin.
“What if remembering him means losing myself?”
Damien’s voice drops, thick with a promise that feels like a threat to the rest of the world. “Then I won’t let you remember alone.”
Something inside me shifts at that. Not relief. Not comfort. Resolve. Because this isn’t about choosing between monsters. It’s about surviving the truth. And somewhere out there, River knows that. He knows exactly what he set in motion.
The road stretches on. And I realise, with a sick certainty settling in my chest—this wasn’t him taking something from me.This was him giving it back. And whatever he gave? It’s going to hurt like hell.
I don’t realise I’ve started shaking until Damien pulls the car over.
Not abruptly. Not with sirens in his blood. Just a slow drag of rubber to gravel on the shoulder, his fingers still wrapped tight around the wheel like he doesn’t trust himself to let go. Or maybe like if he lets go, something worse will take the wheel instead.
The silence inside the car thickens. No radio. No breath. No lies. Just the weight of what we saw. Of who we saw. I’m still staring out the windshield when I say it.
“He was there before you.”
The words land like a stone on glass. Damien doesn’t respond. So I say it again, softer this time, like maybe the truth will hurt less if I whisper it.
“He was there before you, Damien. That’s why it feels like this. That’s why it hurts like this.”
Damien’s voice is sanded down when it finally comes. “Tell me.”
I shake my head. “I don’t know how.”
“Try.”
My throat closes. Because I can’t tell him. Not without sounding insane. Not without confessing that there’s a boy in my memories with a shadow for a face and moths on his fingertips. That there’s a silence I remember curling up inside, and someone was always watching from the other side. Not hurting me. Not touching me. Just there. Waiting. Like a promise I didn’t know I’d made.
