My thoughts drifted, webbing out across the parking lot, and I almost didn’t notice when a person sat next to me.
I looked to see Caiden, his rigid frame so sudden and large.
The air tightened between us as he sprawled, elbows wide, thigh pressed hard against the outer edge of my jeans.
I looked around helplessly to see all other seats were filled.
Caiden didn’t say a word at first. He just let his gaze burn a hole in the back of the vinyl seat in front of us, jaw flexing, fists opening and closing on his knees.
I used all my willpower not to flinch when his hand twitched within inches of mine, fingers curling as if about to break the seat in half.
I mustered my voice, brittle with effort. “You planning to murder me in a bathroom, or just maul me before we get to the next stoplight?”
He snorted, eyes not moving. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”
I could have laughed, then. I almost did. But the sound stuck dry in my throat, a piece of brittle straw that wouldn’t dislodge.
I narrowed my eyes at the window, refusing to let his stupid, smug words find their mark.
“Your obsession with me is getting embarrassing,” I said. “Maybe try therapy instead of homicide.”
That got a reaction. His hand twitched again, and then he forceda little noise. A chuckle. “You’re so full of yourself. You really think I spend my nights plotting ways to ruin you?”
“You already ruined me,” I said. The words slipped out before I could choke them back. I could feel his gaze then, pinning me to the grimy glass, as if he’d pressed my skull to the window and peeled back my scalp to see the softest bits inside.
“Listen, Amelia,” he spat. “You keep pushing, and you’re gonna find out exactly how much worse it can get.”
I turned, finally meeting his eyes. They were black holes, the kind that devour everything and spit it back as ice.
“I’m not scared of you,” I lied, my lips wearing a smile I’d never felt.
“You should be.” The words hung between us, and he must have caught my body shrinking away from him, a reflex of terror.
“Relax,” he muttered after a minute, voice lower than I’d ever heard it. “I’m not going to touch you.”
I squeezed my fists. “You already did,” I said, too quiet for anyone but him to hear.
He rolled his head against the seat, eyes boring into me, black and bottomless. “Don’t flatter yourself. I was drunk and angry at the world.”
A bitter laugh twisted through me. “Right. Because you only bother with the ones you think matter.”
His jaw worked, and for the first time, I saw the tiniest crack in his mask. “Whatever.”
We rode in silence. The bus rattled over frost-heaved roads, windows fogged with ghosts of breath and the lowing of other people’s easy laughter.
I pressed my forehead to the glass and watched the trees blur, bare as bones, their shadows a tangle of accusations over the dead fields.
At the front, Mrs. Grant’s voice wheeled above us, something about colonial history, about how the field trip would “bring the past alive.” Her words snagged in the thick air, but never made it past the bubble of us in the back row. We were going to some old, historic battlefield with a museum.
Beneath the roar of voices and the hollow laughter, I caught hisbreathing, just a little too loud, like he had to prove he was still alive.
“You know,” he said, after a mile of silence, “it’s funny how all those times you talk back, stand your ground. You think you’re righteous.”
I didn’t answer.
He leaned closer, his mouth almost at my ear, his words were molten. “But no matter what you do, your mom’s still a junkie, and your sister’s still a fuck-up, and you’re still the trash everyone steps over on their way to something better.”
The words should have gutted me, but I’d heard them all before. In my own voice, in the cracked mirror above the bathroom sink.
