I was starving. Not just for food, though the ache in my belly was a black hole, gnawing at the integrity of my skin from the inside out. It was everything. The need to be seen, to be wanted, to be more than a discarded scab on the edge of the world.
And when I looked at Caiden, I recognized the same hunger, a shadow-self that stalked the edges of his body.
He was the only person alive who knew what the inside of that cage had done to me, who had seen the animal curled up in my spine and didn’t try to kill it.
Maybe because he’d had his own animal, and maybe because he wanted to see how long we’d last.
Caiden drifted back to where I sat, and the air between us was as dense as the day after a funeral. He dropped onto the log beside me, letting our knees touch, not by accident.
His thigh was warm through the shredded fabric, and the proximity made my skin prickle. He looked out over the basin, his hands twisting in his lap.
“We should figure out where to go next,” he said, but his voice was softer than I remembered, all the edges worn away. “We’re running out of food. And the bandage—” He made a vague gesture at my shoulder, the gesture useless and almost apologetic. “You’ll need antibiotics. Soon.”
I watched the ants migrate up the driftwood, all order and hunger and single-minded survival. “You think there’s anyone out here looking for us?”
His face went still. “No.” He shook his head. “There’s nobody. Not for a while, at least.”
He didn’t say what we both understood, that we weren’t the kind of kids anyone came looking for. Not quickly. Maybe not at all.
I picked at a splinter, tried to pluck a word or two from the mist in my head. “The freezer,” I said, and my voice came out thin, crimped. “Do you think he ate all of them?”
He stared at his hands, flexing the fingers. “He definitely ate some.” He didn’t elaborate. The silence made my teeth ache.
“Would you eat me?” I asked it like a joke, but my mouth was too dry, my tongue heavy as a stone.
“I’d eat the fuck out of you.”
The words hung in the air. My brain flared, then shorted out,unable to decide if I wanted to laugh or run or just lie down in the mud and let the ants do their work.
The way he said it, deadpan, but with a twist of heat behind it, forced my skin to erupt in goosebumps.
He met my eyes and didn’t look away.
“Was that a joke?” I managed, voice so dry it cracked.
He shrugged. “Depends if you want me to be serious.”
The way the wind sculpted his face, the wolfish cut of his jaw, made me want to bite something myself.
"You're disgusting," I said, but my voice was trembling, the words failing to land between us as anything but a dare.
He leaned closer, enough that I could smell the sweat and riverwater on his neck. “You’re the one who asked.”
For a beat we sat there, knees pressed together, the rest of the world narrowing to two sets of teeth and a single thumping pulse.
“You wouldn’t like it. I’m all gristle and spite.”
“I like gristle,” Caiden said, and his mouth tugged at one corner, almost a grin. “Spite’s the best flavor.”
His thigh pressed harder against mine, deliberate now. I didn’t flinch. I let the heat seep through, let my own hunger bloom behind the wall of my chest.
There was a gravity to the moment, a slow drift.
He looked at my mouth, then back to my eyes, and for the first time since childhood I understood what it meant to want something so badly you could almost feel the shape of it in your bones.
I should have been repulsed by him, but I wasn’t. The horror had torn everything else out of me, and in the riptide it left only want. Raw and simple.
I felt the want in my jaw, in the way my tongue pressed against my teeth, in the hard ache at the base of my skull.
