I pressed my fingers to the barrier, tracing the outline of his skull. “You always were such a goddamn coward,” I said. “Couldn’t let yourself be human, not even for one second.”
He nodded. “It’s easier that way. Being a heartless monster. Once you start caring, you start dying. That’s the law. You know it as well as I do.”
I watched his face, the way the cheekbones jutted out now, every edge sharpened by hunger and sleeplessness. He looked like a photograph that had been left inbleach.
All the color leached out. Only the shadow remained.
I said, “You could have at least pretended not to hate me. It would have made this a little easier.”
He shrugged. “Didn’t want to make it easier.”
I let my head fall against the divider. The glass was humid.
I wanted to punch through, but I wanted to curl up in the farthest corner and never hear his voice again. I hated how I needed him now, how I felt every flicker of his attention as if it were electricity through my bones.
I could hear his breath, faint on the other side. His lips parted like he might say something, but the words clotted behind his teeth. “Do you even know what I am?” I said, voice raw, straining to be heard through the glass. “I’m not what you think, not some fragile, broken—” The words jammed in my throat, and I didn’t finish.
Didn’t need to. He already knew. He’d always known.
He scraped a finger down the divider, a tiny shriek of plastic, then let his hand drop. “I know what you are, Amelia. You’re the only thing that’s ever made me want to be something different.”
I was boiling with the wish to reach him, to wring his neck or drag him close or just touch his skin. The urge was so wild it made me dizzy, nauseous. I thought about what the man upstairs wanted. That we break, that we give up.
But I didn’t want to give up. Not quite. Not if he was still breathing.
I curled up on my side, spine to the divider, and tried to think about anywhere but here: Lillian’s laugh, the way the tile in our kitchen always stayed cold even in summer, the ache of being fourteen and wanting to crawl out of my own skin.
Every memory was haunted by Caiden, a flicker at the edges, a shadow in the picture.
It was always him, even when I wanted it to be anyone else.
Caiden was picking at a scab on his elbow, eyes glassy, mouth half open like he’d been caught mid-curse and never got to finish.
He looked up, and I caught the flash of anger there, the old reflex, but then it dimmed to something worse. Pity.
I wanted to bite him for it.
“You keep staring,” he said. “Didn’t know you were so into horror shows.”
“I’m just waiting for you to finally decay into slime,” I said, not even looking away. “You’d be more pleasant company that way. Maybe I could use your corpse as a pillow.”
He shrugged, picking at a strip of peeling skin. “Go for it. Not like you ever wanted anything else from me.”
I rolled to my back. There were old water stains that looked like the silhouettes of bodies, or countries, or maybe just the last places people had been alive in this house.
“You think he’s coming back?” I asked, voice flat.
“He’s upstairs. I can hear him sometimes. Pacing. Or crying, maybe. He’s got problems.”
“Takes a psycho to know a psycho,” I said.
He rolled his eyes, but the lines in his face thawed a little. “You want to hear a joke?”
“No.”
He told it anyway: “What’s the difference between a basement and a coffin?”
I sighed. “Surprise me.”
