I didn’t answer. I wouldn’t give him the pleasure.
He leaned closer, his lips brushing the mesh. “I like the way you look at him. Even after all this. Still think he’ll save you, do you?”
I looked past him, to Caiden’s face. Not for comfort, but for proof that I wasn’t just a figment in the man’s fever dream.
Caiden stared straight through us both, jaw clenched so tight a vein pulsed at his neck.
He circled the cage, slow at first, then faster. Like a coyote testing the perimeter of a campfire. He bared his teeth in a parody of a grin. “You’re just animals,” he spat, “and animals can be trained to do anything. Even love each other.”
He let the words hang. He wanted to see if they would ruin us.
The man left us with only our hunger and the memory of his words.
I hated that a part of me was still counting on Caiden. I hated more that the part was growing.
THE PRESENT
AMELIA
A tumultuous storm brewed inside of me, colors crashing and merging into a frenzied maelstrom.
My adolescent instinct screamed for flight, to break free from this raw moment of his unexpected vulnerability.
This was Caiden, tangled in the web of my longstanding resentments, struggling under the unanticipated weight of his candor.
Yet, beneath the layers of past grievances, a warmth simmered from his revelation, a shared darkness binding us. We were reflections of each other, shadows cloaked in trauma, anger, and guilt.
Our parents, lost to the relentless grip of addiction, had carved out destructive paths we seemed doomed to tread.
We faced each other stripped of defenses, laid bare in this icy prison of despair. Confronting our inner demons, we grappled with the cruel fate that had ensnared us.
But as the morbid darkness pressed in, my mind teetered on the brink of collapse. I clung desperately to a fragile glimmer of hope, flickering like a candle on the verge of extinction.
My thoughts ricocheted wildly around Caiden.
He’s deceiving me. He’s toying with my sanity. He’s vile. He’s my adversary. Don’t trust him.
The cacophony of frantic whispers assailed me, each one a merciless echo driving me ever closer to the precipice of madness.
“Caiden?” My voice trembled, a desperate plea for clarity amidst the chaos. I needed something to halt this insanity, to ground me back in reality.
“What?” His response fell flat, different from the raw openness that had engulfed him just moments before.
“Um, I was wondering about something you said before we were captured. Did you mean what you said about wishing you would have left me for dead?” I held my breath as I waited.
The silence stretched before his response, an agonizing wait that felt like stepping onto flaming coals. My heart pounded with each second that passed.
“No, I didn’t mean it. I was mad.” He confessed.
“Okay. That’s good,” I uttered pathetically, a fragile relief tinged with regret.
Here I was, longing for him to open his heart again, to wrap me in feathers of solace.
This weakened state had shifted my perception of Caiden, igniting a craving for his compassion and companionship.
Yet, his demeanor had hardened once more, the subtle shift in his posture and the tightening of his jaw betraying the internal struggle he battled.
It felt as though he read my mind with what he said next.
