Sun.
“This poem … is it about me?” I ask, and I hold up the page.
He licks his lips, stuttering, “Y-yes.”
He’s never stuttered before.
“All of them are.”
Holy shit.
I flip through the notebook again, page after page, an unending stream of consciousness about violence, bloodshed, pain, and … adoration. And I pause when there’s that same poem I heard last year, when he read it aloud to Ivy and her friends.
Oh, gentle verdant storm
Whisked away by madness
All that dares
Wilts and wanes
Shredded and torn
Leaves dance in tune
Spinning the world on its axis
Leaving a heart in ruin
My finger tracesthe words he wrote by hand. I left his heart in ruin because I ignored him.
I look up into his luscious green eyes, feeling so exposed that I forget how to breathe.
I was so full of anger whenever he spoke to me, I didn’t understand why, until now.
Death.
I hate the idea that it will one day happen to me, and it’s why I hate every birthday that I pass.
But he douses himself in the idea willingly, and it pissed me off … because how could anyonewantto die?
It made no sense in my mind, until I actually got to know him, and the depth of the darkness that his soul succumbed to. Somehow, someway, I was able to pull him back from the nether with my wicked ways. I can’t let him slip back in.
“I understand now,” I mutter. “You’re in love with me.”
“You’ve been my muse for a very long time,” he says, running his fingers through his blond curls. “What I feel for you is far more than love. I cannot write without you, breathe without you … exist without you.” He swallows. “You are there in my mind with every waking thought and it consumes me to the point where I don’t want to live a life if it cannot be spent near you.”
I clutch the notebook close to my chest.
A languished sigh follows. “But I knew deep down you would never see me the way I see you, and that made me want to destroy myself.”
So that’s why he drank so much and asked me to make him my next victim.
“Nothing felt worth living for. Until you,” he says.
“I’m sorry I didn’t see you.” I grab his face and make him look at me. “I want you here. Alive.”
He leans into my palm. “I could … for you.” He swallows. “I can’t bear to lose you.”
