He cries out, dropping to his knees with a hand clutching his chest, and a pang of fear ripples through me.
“Enzo?” I rush forward, but the darkness only stretches before me. It’s becoming a thick cloud of smoke, slowly inching up from the ground like it’s building a wall between us. I try again, but I can’t get through. The pull, the tug to the other world, it holds me back like firm hands planted on my shoulders.
Panic floods me, my mind spinning so fast it makes my vision blur. I can’t go to him. Can’t help him. I’m officially a slave to the darkness, the growing haze before me the equivalent of steel bars, my prison. As I squint through the fog to find him heaving, the cold seed of fear in my stomach shoots through my nerves until my entire body is tight with it.
“Enzo!”Talk to me. I need to know what’s happening.I need you to be okay. It isn’t until he brings his gaze to mine, full of pain and anguish, that I see it.
The red.
So much red.
Seeping out from beneath the hand that squeezes his chest. Sliding over his fingers, clinging to his T-shirt. It’s a gash. A hole. A wound. Just like the day of his car accident. The day he was on the brink of death.
Oh god. Enzo.
I did this to him. Singlehandedly.
And now, all I can do is watch him die.
Chapter 51
It’s quiet here. So quiet. Calm. Empty, like me. Like we’re meant to be. I can hardly feel the fiery layer beneath my skin anymore. This is good. I’m not meant to feel.
Feel.
Feel.
What is it about that word, nagging at me. I slap it away with my mind, but it only swims back.Feel something. It’s a small voice from deep within me, when all I want is silence.
Remember.
Remember.
I shake my head, blocking my ears with my hands. This isn’t right. It isn’t right. The sounds grate at me, scratching my brain relentlessly until I finally cave and let it in. And when I do, I stop hearing anything at all. Instead, Isee. And all I see is red. No, no. Red doesn’t belong here. Not in so much black. But it is here. So much red. It shakes. A tremble, a jolt. I come to realize there’s more than just the red. There’s the hand it oozes onto. The shirt it slowly soaks.
Something stirs in my gut, pulling against me. It’s heavy and commanding and forces me to look deeper into my mind. So I do. What I find is a head of dark hair as a man stares down at the wound. He’s on the ground, hunched over.
Should I know this person?
I concentrate harder, getting the image to look up, lift his head. Then I know. I know that face. Those eyes. The tick of that jaw.
The pain. Enzo. Enzo was in pain. He was in trouble.
My hands drop from my ears, my head whipping side to side. Searching for a way out. It’s all black, everywhere I turn. Up, down, left, right. Endless, eternal black.
No. I can’t be here.
I need to go back.
I need to fight.
The numbness tries to soothe my heart, trick me into complacency, but I refuse. When it claws at my throat, I claw right back. When it snakes around my skin, I stand tall and think only of him. The man who makes me feel everything the numbness is against. I will not forget again. I cannot forget again. And so I do the only thing I can do. I command my legs to function.
And I run.
I run, then I yell. The sound roars deep from within my throat, tendons straining against my neck as I unleash the blistering rage and heartbreak boiling inside me. Determined to disrupt the delicate shell around me until it cracks. I don’t know where it comes from, the wild urge to tear the silence to shreds. I pick it apart, daring it to shut me up. Screaming so hard my voice breaks.
“You can’t have me!” There’s no response, not even an echo. But the incredible fire coursing through me doesn’t waver as I scream. As I cry. As I finally release the fury of pent up emotions banging against my chest. As I defy the very rules of this world. I’m overcome with a strength I’ve never known. “You will never have me,” I whisper.
