That’s the only reason I’m being this honest with myself.
I reach for the bottle.
Tap tap.
I go completely still.
The bottle is in my hand.
My window is across the room.
And I wonder if I took much and now I’m hallucinating.
Tap tap.
• • •
I put the bottle down.
On the floor.
Carefully.
“Sorry, bottle.”
A little louder now.
Tap. Tap.
And something in my chest that has been locked up tight for two years just —
cracks open.
Relief.
Humiliating, total, complete relief.
The kind that makes your eyes sting before you’ve even moved.
I don’t have to do this alone.
I don’t remember crossing the room.
Everything is still soft and sideways.
But I’m at the window.
And then he’s there.
• • •
Cassian Vale.
Two years older.
Standing in the dark outside my window like he has a thousand times.
Like he never left.
