He dragged me onto a rock shelf, half-hauling, half-flinging my body onto the moss. I convulsed, retching river and black spit, my vision flecked with static. His mouth was near my ear, voice a snarl: “What the fuck is wrong with you? I told you not to overthink it!”
He slammed his palm into my back, forcing the water out of me in a series of wet, wracking coughs. Each convulsion sent shards of pain up my throat; I tasted iron and moss and the raw bile of humiliation.
“Jesus, Amelia, you want to die out here? Because you’re doing a hell of a job.” His face hovered inches from mine, a mask of fury and fear. I could see the pulse hammering in his neck, the quiver in his jaw.
“No! I don’t want to die. I’m weak and it all happened too fast. You could have just let me drown.”
For a second, I thought he might hit me, or kiss me, or kill me just to be done with it. Instead, he just stared, eyes so alive with contempt that I flinched away.
“I couldn’t do that.”
I didn’t meet his eyes. “How heroic of you. Well… thank you. For pulling me out.”
He huffed in response.
I tried to stand but my knees buckled, sending me slumping tothe wet stone. I tucked my hands under my ribs, hugging the ache, refusing to let him see how close I was to breaking.
He climbed up the bank, mud streaking his calves, and turned to watch my struggle.
I tried to follow, hands clawing at grass, legs trembling, nails splitting, until I finally crested beside him, lungs on fire, river water oozing from my nose and ears and every raw seam in my head.
When I collapsed on the mud, he didn’t offer a hand. He just watched, silent, his face a sculpture of judgment and exhaustion.
Above us, the clouds had gone pale, drained of all color, a sky made of dead skin.
I lay there, cheek pressed to the muck, and tried to remember a time before this. Before the hunger, the endless walking, before the river and the pain and Caiden’s voice chiseling at the inside of my skull.
I couldn’t. There was only now, only the cold ache in my ribs and the taste of rot in my mouth and the crawling shame of his eyes on me.
“Get up,” he said, the words flat and empty.
I didn’t move.
He squatted beside me, knees popping in protest, and for a second I thought I saw something like pity in his face. Not true pity, not the soft, saintly stuff for orphans and dogs, but a rougher version, the kind that’s just a few molecules away from disgust.
“You break your head?” he asked. “Or are you just going to lie there until you drown in air?”
I rolled onto my back, blinking at the trees that swayed and smeared overhead, and let the silence hang between us. If I answered, I would cry, and I would rather die than let him see that.
I’d rather rot here in the moss and be eaten by foxes, let my bones melt into dust, let the blackness eat me from the inside out.
The only thing keeping me tethered was the hiss of his breath, the dull thump of his heart, or maybe it was just the echo of my own, too stubborn to quit.
He hovered at my shoulder, watching the microquakes in my chest, tracking the tremor in my jaw. I heard his breath, slow and almost thoughtful, as if he were letting the moment settle in beforepicking at it.
Then, almost gently, he wiped a smear of mud off my temple with his thumb. The motion was so alien it stunned me into stillness.
His touch lingered a fraction of a second too long, as if he didn’t trust his own hands to let go.
Then he stood, hauled me roughly by the elbow, and set me upright. I wobbled, but stayed vertical. “Don’t die. Not yet,” he said, his voice low, almost a growl. “It’s too much work to drag a corpse through the woods.”
He looked away, jaw tight, and strode off the bank, leaving me alone with the echo of his touch and the cold shudder rippling down my spine.
I hated him for it. More than words, more than silence, I hated him for reminding me I was still alive enough to feel.
That night, the cold chill was still in my bones. The clattering of my teeth and the shivers in my body was enough to keep him awake.
I curled around the last embers of the fire, but nothing in this world could coax the warmth back into my body. Not the feeble flames, not the smothering layers of damp clothing that clung to me like a second, sodden skin.
