Her pulse rattles against my grip. But I don’t know if I believe her. Because she already forgot me once. And I won’t let her forget me again. Not this time. Not ever.
Chapter 8
RAVEN
Idon’t fucking remember.
But my body does.
The trauma is a physical map, a geography of pain etched into the marrow of my bones.
My ribs still ache with a phantom pressure where he held me too tight in the dark of that chapel.
My throat still burns where his hands caged me, a ghost-grip that never quite released its hold.
My skin still hums where the chain slices in, the cold iron a familiar tether to a reality I’ve been running from for a decade.
I don’t remember the dates or the prayers or the exact shape of the fear, but the cells in my body are screaming that they’ve lived this before.
I don’t remember. I don’t remember.
But when he looks at me like that—with eyes that see every hidden, broken thing I’ve tried to bury—when he touches me like that, with a possessiveness that feels like home and a cage all atonce—when his breath cracks against my lips like he’s stitching me back into something I’m supposed to already be?—
Fuck, I want to stay.
I want to stay in the cage. I want to stay in the chain. I want to stay in his fucking lap until the world outside is nothing but static, until I can’t remember what it feels like to be anywhere else. Even if I don’t remember why. Even if the reason is a nightmare.
His thumb drags under my lip, pressing just hard enough to bruise, a dark, tactile signature. It’s the same pressure he used when we were small, a silent command to keep the secrets. It reminds me I promised him.
I promised to stay. I promised not to forget. I promised to keep him, even though I don’t remember making that promise.
His breath breaks against my temple, a humid, desperate sound. “You’ll stay this time.”
I nod, the movement frantic and sure. “I’ll stay.”
“You won’t fucking leave me again.” His voice is sharp, cracked, the sound of glass breaking under a heavy weight.
“I won’t leave.”
“You won’t forget me.” His grip on the chain bruises my ankle, metal biting into skin, anchoring me to his history.
“I won’t forget you.”
Even if I already did. Even if I don’t know what I forgot. Even if I don’t know what the fuck is real anymore in this room of monitors and ghosts. Because I want to stay. I want him to keep me. I want him to lock me down until I can’t think, until the memory of the “Quiet Place” is the only truth I have left.
“Say it again.”
“I won’t forget you.”
“Fucking louder.”
“I won’t forget you.”
His thumb presses harder under my lip, claiming the words as they leave my mouth. “You won’t fucking leave me.”
“I won’t fucking leave you.”
His pulse slams under his skin, a frantic rhythm against my spine. His breath shakes against mine, matching the uneven staccato of my heart. His lips drag across my jaw, down the column of my throat, over the scar on my ribs like it’s his fucking rosary—a holy, broken thing he needs to worship to stay sane.
