The silence between us was like the vacuum after an explosion, where the only thing left is the ringing in your ears and the pressure in your chest.
“You want to pretend?” he said, voice low and lethal, each word weighed out in ounces of venom. “Go ahead. Play house with him. See if it fixes anything.”
I tried to wrench my hand away again but he held me, thumb tracing the line of my pulse as if he could erase it, as if he could pull the blood right out of me. “Let go,” I said, but my voice was thin and unconvincing, a child’s voice, a ghost’s.
He made a sound. Half laugh, half snarl. “You don’t actually want me to let go.”
I hated that he was right.
Even as shame flushed through me, even as I imagined Alex waiting outside with his easy smile and his clean hands, I didn’t want to be free of Caiden’s grip.
I wanted him to pin me here, to force me to admit that nothing about me had changed except the cut of my scars. On some level, I wanted to be ruined all over again, but with intention this time, with a witness.
“Why are you doing this?” I whispered.
His breath was hot against my face, something dark and chemical, like gasoline on a summer sidewalk. “You know what I want. I want you to admit that nothing, nothing, will ever satisfy you except this.”
His hand on my wrist tightened, and I felt the bones in my arm grind together, but I didn’t make a sound.
The pain was a relief from the ache that gnawed at my insides every waking hour.
I had no answer.
All the words I’d ever stockpiled bled out of me at once, leaving only the hush of my own shallow breathing.
The truth was, even in my best moments I was half-invisible, a shadow stitched together from scraps of other people’s longing.
If Alex wanted to fuck a ghost, who was I to stop him?
If Caiden wanted to break me open just to see if anything was left inside, maybe that was the only thing I deserved.
He pressed me against the hallway wall, the drywall cool through my shirt, his hand still locked around my wrist.
His thighs caged mine, and I knew if I tried to run he’d let me, but he’d follow, and I’d let him catch me.
My pulse stuttered. From fear or want, I couldn’t tell. Maybe they were the same thing, in the end.
He brought my hand to his chest, where the beat of his heart was frantic as a sparrow’s wings. “You think Alex knows what you look like when you’re scared? When you’re starving? You could be anyone for him.”
His words thrummed through my bones; the truth in them hurt more than the grip that left bruises on my skin.
I finally wrenched myself free, but even then, the heat of his touch lingered like a chemical burn. “And for you?” I spat, my voice shaking. “What am I for you, Caiden? Just another thing to break?”
He shook his head, almost violently. “No. Never that.”
He reached out, and this time I let him, too numb or too desperate to resist. His hands settled on my hips, fingers biting through denim to the flesh beneath, anchoring me where I stood.
“I can’t stop thinking about you.” He said it like an accusation, as if I’d infected him somehow. “I hate you for it.”
I wanted to laugh, but my throat had closed around the sound. “So what now, Caiden?” I asked, voice cracked open. “You want to drag me into a room and prove you’re the only one who matters?”
He looked startled, then something like hunger flashed across his face. “I want you to stop lying to yourself, you’re not fooling me,” he said, and with no warning at all, he bent and kissed me.
It was greedy, filthy, ruthless. A claim staked with teeth. I couldfeel the anger in it, the months of wanting and not having, the years of training himself to hate what he could not have.
My hands clutched his shirt, either to push him off or pull him closer, but I didn’t know which, and when his tongue forced my mouth open, something inside me uncoiled in response.
There was nothing careful about it; this was not a kiss meant for healing. It was a cage with the door thrown open just so I could see what it meant to be trapped.
