That ache, raw and dark, bloomed inside me. I remembered the cold of the cage, the taste of fear, the heat of his hands when he broke through to save me. I remembered wanting him, even then.
His mouth was on mine again, all teeth, tearing at me, desperate. I kissed him back, just as hungry, just as lost. I wanted to be good. But I wanted this more: his darkness, his violence, the way he looked at me like I was the only thing keeping him alive.
“All these voices in my head, I can’t escape…”The lyric drifted, low, dirty, from the house, an anthem for the monsters we’d become.
The tide licked at my ankles, cold and merciless, as if the dark water would swallow me whole if I just stepped in a little further. Part of me ached for it. To be washed clean, todisappear beneath the ink-black surface and let the ache in my chest dissolve with the moonlight.
I was nothing but nerves and need and bone-deep emptiness, the world muffled and distant, every sound blurred by the rush of blood in my ears.
Caiden’s hands still gripped me, bruising, grounding. I couldn’t tell if I wanted to scream or sob or just let him devour what was left.
His mouth crashed against mine again, sloppy and desperate. Whiskey and salt and something wild. I drank him in, needing to fill the hollow, needing to feel anything but this blankness gnawing at my insides.
He pulled back, breathing ragged, his forehead pressed to mine. “You think you’re lost?” His voice was raw, dangerous. “I wake up every night tasting you, needing you, and you’re never there. I want to crawl inside your skin and never leave. I want to ruin you so bad you forget who you are without me.”
A shudder ran through me. The words should have scared me, but they felt like a lifeline. Proof that someone, somewhere, wanted me enough to break for it.
The sea crashed, harder now, a black fist pounding the shore. Numbness closed in, cold and safe.
I clung to him, fingers twisted in his shirt, my plea silent: don’t leave me alone inside this emptiness.
But suddenly, he did. He yanked away, stumbling back, eyes fever-bright and haunted. “Fuck,” he spat, voice cracking, and stared at me like I was a wound he’d made and couldn’t close.
For a moment, I thought he’d lunge again, pin me down, finish what we’d started. Instead, he staggered a step away, rage and longing rippling off him like heat.
“You’re my suicide, you’re my sin…”The lyric throbbed out from the house, echoing my own ruin.
He swore, fists clenched at his sides. “I can’t—” His voice broke, softer now, almost pleading. “If I stay, I’ll break you. I’ll break myself.”
And then, with the sand caving under his feet, he turned and walked into the darkness, leaving me trembling, mouth swollen, throat aching, aching everywhere. Empty and breathless and wanting, always wanting, with nothing left but the bruise of his hands and the echo of him in my blood.
I stood in the darkness, lost and vanishing, the sea roaring louder, as if it would take me too if I let it. The only proof I’d ever been touched at all was the ache he left behind.
10
CAIDEN
I heardher laughter before I saw her, sweet as honey.
It was close to noon when I drifted into the kitchen. Amelia stood there in a bikini, chatting and laughing with Sabrina.
I watched from the kitchen entryway, arms folded and jaw locked, as Amelia stood by the open fridge, the straps of her bikini biting into her shoulders.
Amelia wore a blue bikini, a shade so deep it could have been dredged up from the bottom of the sea.
The top was tight and small, the triangles of fabric pushing her breasts together in a way that made my hands curl into fists. Her skin was flushed with sun.
She looked softer than usual, less haunted.
I remembered stalking after her in the dark the other night. Filled with alcohol. Filled with rage, need, desire, confusion, and a sickly aching obsessive need to possess her.
We were both drunk, but I remembered. And fuck, I wish I hadn’t walked away.
Sabrina leaned against the counter, popping grapes into her mouth while she flicked through a phone. "You seriously have to try the new sunscreen," she said, waving a bottle at Amelia."It smells like coconut instead of that toxic chemical stuff. Total game changer."
She laughed at something Sabrina said, and for a second, I was transported. Her cries echoing in the woods, in the cavernous dark, in the fucking pit where we'd clung to each other like animals.
My skin remembered before my mind did: the weight of her body, the tremble in her breath, the way she'd gone pliant under my hand when there were no other options left but to break or to fold.
