“I used to think I was crazy,” I say, my voice rough now, dragging itself out of my throat like it’s been buried under ten years of silence. “I used to see things. Hear things. I thought they were dreams. Nightmares. I thought I was broken.”
Damien’s knuckles are bloodless on the steering wheel.
“They weren’t dreams, were they?” I ask. “They were him.”
“Yes.”
That one word sinks into me like a needle. Sharp and clean and irreversible. I turn in my seat and look at him.
“He said I left him.”
Damien nods once, like he’s been bracing for that. “And he meant it.”
My heartbeat feels like it’s punching through my skin. “Did I?”
“I don’t know.”
My head is starting to throb. I press my palms to my eyes, but there’s too much flashing behind them. Too much noise. Too many memories clawing at the edges and not enough space for all of them to fit at once.
“I remember moths,” I whisper.
Damien tenses.
“I remember them crawling up the window. I remember one landing on the back of my hand and just staying. Not flying away. Like it was watching me.” I drop my hands from my face. “And I remember the boy behind the glass.”
Damien’s whole body stills. My voice shatters. “I thought it was you.”
He doesn’t speak. Doesn’t even blink. The trees outside whisper things I don’t want to hear.
“I thought that memory belonged to you, Damien. I thought you were the one who found me in the dark.”
He exhales. Barely. “And now?”
Now? Now, everything hurts. Now, there’s a crack running through me so deep I’m afraid if I look down, I’ll see the past staring up at me like it never left.
“I don’t know who I am without that memory belonging to you.”
Damien’s voice is a ghost when he finally speaks again. “Then we take it back.”
I blink. “What?”
He turns to face me fully now, eyes wild, jaw clenched like the words he’s about to say might kill him. “If he’s stealing your memories—your story—then we take it the fuck back.”
The headlights bathe the road ahead in yellowed light, but Damien is all shadow and sharpness beside me, like he was carved to survive the night. Like he belongs to it.
“I don’t care if he was there first,” he says, his voice dropping lower. “I don’t care if he held your hand in the dark or left you flowers in the fucking dirt. I’m the one you belong to now.”
It shouldn’t make my chest ache the way it does. But it does. God, it does.
“Then find him,” I whisper. “Find the boy who wants to take me apart.”
Damien’s mouth curves into something that doesn’t look human. “I will.”
The ignition turns. The wheels move. And the road doesn’t blur this time. It sharpens. Because we’re not running anymore.
We’re going hunting.
Chapter 35
