Amelia broke the silence again. “Do you think anyone’s looking for us yet?” Her voice was too loud in the hush, but it was better than the quiet.
“They’ll come,” I said, whether I believed it or not. “They have to.”
She nodded, but didn’t look convinced.
For a while, the only sound was our breathing and the squelch of mud under our shoes. She started humming to herself, a weird twitchy melody, probably just to prove she was still alive. I tried not to look at her lips.
She stumbled on a root and almost wentdown. I caught her elbow, steadied her. Held on a beat too long, then forced myself to let go.
The light faded, and the cold came up out of the ground, gnawing at the edges of us. Her lips turned pale. She wrapped her arms around herself, trying to steal warmth from her ribs.
“Langston,” I said.
She looked up. “Yeah?”
“If you’re cold, say something.”
She gave me a look. Half challenge, half something I couldn’t name. “You’ll just let me freeze?”
I wanted to say, I’d murder a thousand men to keep you warm. Instead, I swallowed and shrugged.
Her mouth twitched like she could hear the words I didn’t say.
For a while longer, we were silent. I kept my hands jammed in my pockets, afraid of what I’d do if I let them out again.
When the woods finally opened into a low dip that smelled faintly of water, I let out a slow breath. We were still lost. Still hunted by what we’d done. But the space between us was crackling, tense, alive.
I could still feel her pulse in my hands.
I wanted to scratch.
The river was less a destination and more a line we crossed, like some mythic boundary between then and now.
We stumbled through the brush until it opened up, and there it was: not wide, but fast, the current chewing up pebbles and broken twigs, spitting them out downstream. I crouched at the bank, the mud cold under my knees.
Amelia dropped beside me, her hair in her face, her breathing shallow. We didn’t say anything for a while. Just sat there, both pretending the river mattered more than the silence chewing at our guts.
I watched my hands as I cupped river water and drank. The motion was automatic. Blood had gotten under my nails, dark and stubborn, and it wouldn’t scrub out, not even in this icy current. I stared down at myown reflection, and for a second, I saw him. The kidnapper, or maybe my father, or maybe just the version of myself I killed back in that cabin. Haunted, hollowed, still hungry for something I couldn’t name.
The water shivered with every movement, distorting my face. I didn’t look away.
Amelia broke the silence. “You ever wonder if you’re a good person?”
I snorted into my hand, water dripping down my wrist. “No point. Never have been.”
She didn’t laugh. She was watching me, the way you look at a wild animal. “I mean. After… everything. Does it ever get to you? Do you feel?—”
She couldn’t say it.
So I said it for her. “Guilty?”
She nodded, lips pressed thin, eyes fixed right on me.
I shrugged, kept watching my reflection ripple and come apart. “No.”
She waited. Let it hang. Wouldn’t let me have the lie.
Finally, I broke first. “That’s bullshit. Of course I do. I feel—” Words caught. I wanted to punch something, or maybe just dig my hands raw in the gravel until I bled out all over again. “I feel fucking sick. Not ’cause I did it, but ’cause I had to. Or maybe ‘cause I’d do it again. Hell, maybe it’s ’cause I don’t regret any of it. I’m guilty for not being guilty enough. Does that even make sense?”
