Page 858 of Coal Hearts

I COULDN’T SLEEP.

For two weeks, I couldn’t sleep.

In my old childhood bedroom, in my happy family home, I couldn’t sleep longer than an hour before the nightmares started.

The nightmares of serving so many Masters instead of only one. Nightmares where Roland and Ferdinand, Travis and Ian all took their turns because Henri wasn’t there to claim me.

I’d wake in a full-blown sweat.

I’d pace the garden with its veggie patch and windchimes and look at the moon as it cycled from crescent to half-full.

What if he’d never been there?

What if he’d never existed?

What if I’d never seen him at the club and spent six months being broken by others?

I thought I’d hated Henri for those initial pains. I thought I’d been strong surviving him when really...I’d never hated him because I felt him.

I’d always felt him.

Felt his loneliness, his longing, his love.

I’d felt him when he was only half alive—a man with nothing and no one. Would I feel him now if he died?

Would the flames between us turn to ash and cause my heart to crumble?

He’s alive.

He has to be.

I rubbed my chest, tracing the indentation in the centre of my sternum. The mark of death that’d been stopped thanks to Peter protecting me.

Two weeks since I’d been home.

All my belongings from my old apartment with Sam had been stacked in boxes in the corner of my childhood room. Apparently, he’d visited my parents a few weeks after he’d left me in Paris. He’d broken down and apologised for leaving me there. He’d shown he did have a sliver of a soul and had even sent a text to my new phone when the rumour got to him that I’d returned. His apology had been true, the guilt haunting him enough to make him a better person.

I’d texted back and said I forgave him.

My days were kept busy with aunts and uncles who popped by. My cousins—blood and non-blood—did what they thought was best and distracted me with presents, cakes, and conversation.

I found myself craving the same quiet that Krish held so dear.

We’d often lie on the lawn just staring at the sky. Occasionally, Tiger would hop onto our chests and nudge our chins with his exquisitely soft nose. Krish was right. That rabbit had some sort of magical calmness that fed into me the moment he was near.

If it wasn’t for my brother and his bunny, I might’ve gone screaming down the street.

I had so much inside me.

A churning mess that needed to be free.

I didn’t know if I wanted to sob or curse, screech or break.

By the end of the third week, my parents made noises of me speaking to someone. Dad ran a few tests on me at his hospital and thanks to regular home cooked meals, I put on the weight I’d lost. The cut on my neck and hole in my chest healed far too quickly, erasing what’d happened, making it seem as if none of it had been real.

The past eight months took on a strange sort of patina.

A dark haze that grew thicker and thicker, deleting the past until I clung with desperate fingers to memories.