So I said nothing and watched as it broke him apart.
“What did you do?” he asked.
His voice was quiet, which was worse than screaming. Screaming would have been simpler, because panic had direction and hysteria could be managed, but quiet devastation demanded something I had no talent for giving.
Comfort.
Ben said my name from behind me, low and warning, “Tobias.”
I did not look at him.
Cove was backing away now, one shaky step at a time, as though any sudden movement might trigger a pursuit.
It would.
If he ran, he would try to leave the house. If he left the house, he would call someone—police, a neighbor, his parents,someone from the aquarium. The person did not matter. The result would be the same—exposure, investigation, and the contamination of every controlled aspect of my life.
But even that was not what concerned me most.
If Cove left now, he would not come back.
Not willingly.
Perhaps not ever.
The thought was intolerable.
I released the dead man’s leg and stepped down from the platform as Ben swore at the added weight he was now left supporting.
“Cove,” I called.
“I left my phone,” he whispered devastatingly.
“Cove.”
He looked at me as if he wanted my voice to become a rope and hated himself for wishing to reach for it.
“What did you do?” he repeated, begging me for an answer.
But I couldn’t give him one. I couldn’t lie to him when he was looking at me like that. I couldn’t.
“Tobias,” Ben warned again, his tone becoming increasingly distraught.
I didn’t know what he was trying so hard to say, but it didn’t matter. Nothing mattered in that moment aside from Cove and the fact that I could not let him leave.
Killing him was not an option. The thought did not even present itself. Cove was not a witness in the ordinary sense, not a loose end, and not an inconvenience to be removed, no matter what simplicity might have demanded from anyone else standing in his place.
He wasCove.
He was the one thing in this house I had not meant to frighten.
The one thing I had wanted to choose me.
And because I had failed to keep this part of myself from him, his choice would now have to be removed.
“I need you to stay calm,” I said, taking another step down.
The moment the words left me, I knew they were wrong.
