His thumb brushes a line across my hipbone, a slow, absent stroke that feels too intimate to be an accident.
“Because you didn’t remember,” he says. “And if you didn’t remember, then you were safe from it.”
I choke on a laugh that isn’t really a laugh. “Safe?”
He leans in until his forehead almost touches mine, his breath a shudder against my lips. “Safer than me,” he whispers.
The room tilts. I want to ask what he means. I want to ask what he did. But the look in his eyes stops me. It’s not just hunger. It’s history. It’s something feral that’s been starving for years and finally found food. He strokes a thumb along my throat and I hate that my body still arches into it, still opens for him, still responds even as my brain flashes with images I can’t quite place.
“I used to watch you hum,” he murmurs. “You were so small you couldn’t even reach the candle wicks but you still tried to light them. You didn’t know it, but the sound kept me from…from breaking.” He swallows hard. “I was already gone,” he says. “But you made me wait to disappear.”
My chest tightens until it hurts. I press my hands against his shoulders but don’t push him away.
“I don’t remember,” I whisper.
“I know,” he says, and there’s no triumph in it. Only a low, aching resignation. “But your body does.”
The words land like a slap. Because it’s true. Every time he touches me, something in me reacts before I think. I close my eyes. Images flicker—dusty stained glass, moth wings beating against old wood, a hand reaching through a hole in the wall, a breath on the back of my neck. But the faces stay blank. Always blank.
When I open my eyes, Damien’s still watching me. “You’re not crazy,” he says softly. “You just don’t remember what we crawled out of.”
My heart stutters. “What did we crawl out of?”
He doesn’t answer. He just looks at me like the question is a blade pressed to his tongue. And for the first time since I met him, I think I see the boy again. Not the man. Not the monster. Just the boy. The one who watched me hum to keep himself alive.
I reach up, fingertips grazing his jaw. He flinches. Not away. Just a twitch, like a reflex he can’t suppress.
“You don’t have to be him anymore,” I whisper.
His eyes close. “I don’t know how to stop,” he says, voice raw. “I don’t know who I am without it.”
The admission cuts through me deeper than any threat. And in the silence that follows, I realise something else: The real danger isn’t just the man at our door. It’s the past Damien dragged inside with him.
“Why did you come back for me?”
The question slips out like a secret, too quiet, too slow, like I’m afraid of what it might open. He stills. Completely. His hand pauses mid-stroke against my waist, breath caught, shoulderstensed like I just asked him to dig up a body he swore he’d buried.
I don’t fill the silence. I let it stretch—taut, electric, unbearable—until it hurts to breathe. Because I need to know. Because I have to know. Because I can’t keep letting him touch me like I belong to him if I don’t understand why the fuck he came back to ruin me.
“Damien.” My voice cracks. “Why now?”
He lifts his head, and something in his eyes fractures. Not a crack. A shatter.
“I didn’t come back for you,” he says hoarsely. “I never left.”
My stomach drops. “What?”
“I watched you graduate. I followed you when you moved. I’ve been in every city. Every street. I stood across the road while you kissed men who didn’t know your name, who didn’t deserve to fucking breathe the same air as you.”
I go cold. My lips part—but no sound comes out.
“I waited,” he says, the words grinding from his throat like they cost blood. “I waited until you smiled without looking over your shoulder. Until you slept without locking the closet door. Until I thought maybe you’d forgotten what it felt like to be hunted.” He leans closer. His voice drops to a growl. “But you were still humming.”
The back of my neck prickles.
“I heard it,” he breathes. “In a video. In the background, barely audible. The same tune. Same cadence. You didn’t even know you were doing it.” His voice lowers like he’s ashamed of what he’s about to admit. “That’s when I knew you weren’t safe. Because you only ever hummed like that when you were trying to drown something out.”
My throat tightens.
