She hurled another candle, then another. Her voice shredded, breaking into sobs that shook her entire body before her legs gave out, and she crumpled to the ground, the sheet pooling around her like fallen clouds, and I froze, stopping the car. Every instinct screamed at me to keep driving, to leave before I broke her more, leave before I broke myself. But hell, I didn’t move. I couldn’t, not from her. Not now, Jesus, maybe not ever, if she let me.
My hand slid from the gear shift, then I looked into the rearview mirror again, but this time, she wasn’t alone. A man stood beside her, pale and still. Watching her as she cried. He was trying to comfort her, but she wouldn’t feel him; she couldn’t. My pulse stopped, my brain stalled, and every part of me fought for logic, but logic drowned like a stone in deep water.
Then, slowly, I turned to the passenger seat, and a small boy sat there. The one ghost boy I hadn’t seen in years, the one ghost boy that was a fragment of my imagination. His legs dangled off the edge of the seat the way he used to swing his feet years ago. His eyes glowed faintly, not with malice, but with pleading.
“Don’t leave her,” he whispered. “She needs you. We both do.”My throat tightened.
His voice always shook something inside, something buried. I sucked in a sharp breath and opened the door. The air outside hit me like cold truth, and I began to walk toward her. Then, on my fourth step, a flash hit me.
Her voice…it wasn’t the same as this morning. It was sharp, pleading, breathless, and frightened. Then I took another step, and I heard it again. She called my name, whispered it like it was a prayer or a curse.
I staggered, but forced another step, and this time, images began to play in my head. The candles, the circle, the mirror, her scream. Oh, God, last night, the memory of last night began to flood into my head, but I didn’t stop moving to her.
More images slammed into me: her running, me chasing, the house shaking, her uneven breath, my hands on her skin, her whispering my name again and again like she couldn’t decide if she wanted to run or collapse into me. My head throbbed, and my stomach twisted, but I didn’t stop. I was close to her.
Then another.
The memories came faster now, her knees sinking into the circle, a voice, deep and not mine, speaking through my body. Her lips parting in fear and something that tasted like surrender, then the things we did, the things I did, the way she begged, looked, tasted, felt…And by the time I reached her, by the time I dropped to my knees in front of her trembling form, my entire body remembered everything.
Her cries had softened into broken sobs, her forehead pressed to the ground. She didn’t hear me approach. “Elena,” I breathed.
She jolted, lifting her tear-stained face to face me, and I cupped her cheeks before she could pull away. Without thinking, without planning, without breathing…I kissed her.
Her lips tasted like every memory from the night before. The taste of her mouth burst through the guilt, fear and the lingeringterror of what I’d been. The kiss clawed through both our anger and stitched something fierce and fragile together. Her hands clung to me, not in forgiveness, not yet, but in something different.Recognition. Of everything we had been through, everything we had seen, everything we might be again.
And the ghost of a man I didn’t know, and a boy I longed to see, watched in silence as I kissed this woman who had somehow consumed me in less than 24 hours.
Chapter Fifteen
Elena
I didn’t remember climbing intohis arms, but I did, and suddenly, Damian carried me through the hallway like the house had turned to smoke and only his body was solid. My fingers curled weakly at his shoulders, his chest rose and fell too fast, and neither of us spoke. Even the world around us didn’t dare move. He pushed my bedroom door open with his foot and laid me gently on my bed, like I was something fragile he was afraid to break any further. The sheet that wrapped around me slipped a little, and he adjusted it with a quiet care that made my throat hurt.
Silence stretched across the room, thin as glass, ready to shatter, but Damian stood over me, breathing like he’d run all the way through hell and back. His hair was a mess, his dirty escape from blonde and closer to brown long hair was almost as wild as mine. His honey-brown eyes still looked haunted, as if a piece of last night clung to him like smoke.
Then…his voice came out, calmer this time. Like the first timehe ever spoke to me, mixed with when he called my name last night.
“I’m sorry,” he said softly, his voice cracking. “Elena…I’m so damn sorry. For not remembering, for saying those things, for panicking, for hurting you.” He raked his fingers through his hair, like his brain and lips were fighting for the right words to use. “I never thought you were crazy, Elena. Not for a second. I believed you, every word that came out from your lips, but I couldn’t remember, I tried and I couldn’t and that made me angrier,” he explained, and I understood him, I did.
I shook my head before he could unravel anymore than he was already. “No. Stop.” My voice was thin but steady. “He…it told me to help you remember, but I forgot when I woke up, and I panicked. I…I only threw you off. I made everything worse.”
His jaw tightened with something fierce and aching, then he leaned down, cupped my face between his hands, and kissed me again. This was different from the one outside; it wasn’t desperate or wild, it was just quiet, and low, like words whispered through skin. He pulled back, and rested his forehead against mine.
“Don’t ever apologize to me,” he murmured. “Not for anything, not to me.” A shiver traveled through me. I swallowed and could only offer a nod in response.
He pulled away enough to take my wrist, the one that had snapped last night. His touch was gentle, slow, almost holy.
“How bad is it? Does it hurt?” he whispered.
“It’s not bad, but it hurts a little.” I swallowed. “He…it, fixed it. When you…when you were asleep for a moment.”
He studied my other hand too, noticing the first cut on my wrist, then the other on my palm. I had expected him to ask what happened, but somehow, he didn’t. He just looked at them like he was seeing a wonder, an artifact he dare not question its origin. Then…then he kissed them. First my almost healedwrist, the first kiss was like he was saying “thank you for fighting through death to be here.” Then the second kiss, gentle and slow, was like he was saying “thank you for giving life a second chance.” Then finally, he smiled and kissed my wrist, and I could almost feel him saying “thank you for choosing me, to do life with.”
Then his eyes flicked to mine. “I do not want to imagine a world without you breathing in it,” he whispered. A shadow crossed his expression, sharp and pained, like he couldn’t understand why he said that.
“Then don’t,” I replied, meaning every weight that reply carried.
“Why?” I asked quietly, bringing his gaze back to mine again. “Why’d you come back?”
