Chapter 7
Cole
What the fuck did he mean? I knew who he was.
Up until that moment, I’d been trying to convince myself I’d imagined him, that he wasn’t real, as much as I’d wanted him to be. But I couldn’t write it off, even though no one I asked said they saw the man who pulled me from the water.
No one saw him. No one but me…
And hours later, when I was finally released from the hospital with nothing more than a few stitches above my brow and one very surprised doctor who told me I was lucky to be alive when he heard the details of what had happened… I still couldn’t get the image of that soft expression out of my mind.
He’d looked like that before, when he’d been hovering over Caiden.
He’d looked like that when I’d dropped the vase.
And the single red petal I still had clutched in my hand existed like strange proof that I hadn’t imagined anything.
Whoever he was, he’d pulled me from the water. He’d saved me when I didn’t want to be saved.
Whoever he was, he seemed determined to make sure I lived my life in torment, with half of me gone, all the best pieces of me nothing more than ash I’d scattered in the ocean after Caiden’s funeral.
“Jesus.” My voice came out in a low rumble as I took off at a walk.
The asshole hadn’t even managed to save my bike from the water, and I was pretty sure insurance was going to dick me around for months.
I could probably borrow something from the shop—my boss had sounded worried enough about me when I called to let him know I wasn’t going to be able to come in today. Honestly, I could have…
I should have felt like shit. I probably should still have been in the hospital, but I felt fine.
A little empty.
A little confused.
But I felt physically fine.
My brain kept catching on the man with the golden eyes and what he’d said. My body felt loose… almost like I was walking through a dream. I definitely wasn’t as sore as I should have been for someone who’d been in a wreck.
I was pretty sure in the morning, when all the confusion wore off and the fact that I’d almost died really hit me, my muscles would remember that they needed to protest.
Either that or I’d died in the water and now I was in some kind of limbo where I couldn’t erase the restless feeling pouring through me.
I stopped at my apartment, taking a shower and putting on clean clothes.
A part of me hoped the familiar actions would let me settle down.
I was still waiting to go into shock, waiting for it to catch up in my mind that something terrible had nearly happened.
Instead, I looked at the red petal I’d set on my kitchen table and frowned, grabbing it and my still-damp wallet before heading out.
Maybe I couldn’t go far without a vehicle, but I could at least walk a few blocks down the street so I could get something to eat.
My stomach lurched at the thought of putting food into it, but I knew I needed to anyway. Just because I’d nearly died didn’t mean I got to passively carry on with what had almost happened.
My fingers dove into the pockets of my jacket and I blew out a breath, catching sight of it misting into a soft fog in front of me.
You know who I am.
Why were those words playing like a fucking broken record in my head?
“I don’t.” I said it aloud, like it would somehow find him, somehow force him to show up again and answer me. “I don’t even know if you’re real. I just know you’ve been fucking with my life for a year now, and I’m tired.” I shivered at the way my voice broke on the last word.
I was so tired.
My footsteps carried me in the opposite direction from the busy hustle and bustle that would take me somewhere warm.
Instead, I twisted into an alley, skirting along the edge of the road.
I knew where I was going before I actually made it there, and the sound of the rushing water was like a siren call I couldn’t quite ignore.
There was a smaller bridge that crossed the river a half mile down from where I’d gone in, made for people to walk across.
That was where I ended up stopping. I leaned against the railing and stuck my hand into my pocket.
My fingers came out with the red petal in the center of my palm, and I closed my eyes.
Sometimes I wondered if the reason Caiden had died without me was because I’d been too busy working that day.
It was why I’d ended up getting him the flowers, to make up for it.
He’d been out for a while, and the doctors had whispered about comas, and exhaustion, and bodies giving up.
I’d… been afraid then. I didn’t want to see him lying there with his eyes closed.
It broke my heart to think that he’d never open them again.
So I’d worked late, and I’d felt guilty about it… and I’d stopped to get him flowers.
And…
“Some might say it’s foolish to come back to the same place you almost died.” The smooth voice beside me made me jump, and the petal in my hand fluttered into the air. A pale hand stretched out, carefully plucking it before it had a chance to fall down into the water.
I forced my jaw to clench, swallowing down a dozen questions that tried to burn their way from my lungs. Instead, I kept my eyes forward on the rushing water and spoke in a soft voice.
“Did I die when I fell into the river earlier? Is this some kind of fucked-up hell I’m in now?”
The sound of a soft laugh beside me, laced with a mixture of amusement and pain, almost made me turn to look.
“Whether you died or not doesn’t matter. Hell doesn’t exist, Cole. You’re just… waiting.”
Waiting.
Waiting?
That made me whirl, and my eyes instantly landed on the golden halo of his gaze, nearly shining in the dark. He wasn’t real. He didn’t look like any person I’d ever seen. The glowing eyes? The black veins? He was some fucked-up figment of my imagination, or…
“Are you a demon?”
It wouldn’t surprise me if something had attached itself to me, like my own personal punishment for leaving Caiden alone the day he’d died, but…
“There are no demons.” He answered simply, and he lifted his hand between us, offering me back the petal I’d nearly dropped.
I eyed it, my fingers twitching to reach out and take it even though I didn’t want to accidentally touch him.
There was something almost ethereal about him in the moonlight. Something terrifying.
“Then what are you?”
He just stared at me, his mouth opening like he wanted to say something before his brows drew together.
“It doesn’t matter.” He finally settled on pure bullshit. It was obvious there was so much more trapped just behind that expression. I shook my head, taking a step back from him, from the offered petal… from the impossibility of everything happening.
“You aren’t real.” I turned my back on him and walked across the bridge. I’d wanted to stay, maybe make my way down to the edge of the water where he’d pulled me out to begin with. I wanted to prove to myself that I’d just imagined him, that I’d swum to shore on my own.
I wanted a lot of things, but the sound of his footsteps silently following along behind me told me I wasn’t going to get any of them.
“I’m sorry.” He said it again, and I whirled around without thinking. My voice was a shout when I spoke, anger I couldn’t quite contain welling in my chest and painting white-hot fury across my tone.
“For what? For being in the room with my brother? For killing him?” The man in front of me didn’t recoil at my temper, but his hand clenched around the petal he still held.
It wasn’t exactly an admission of guilt, but it was close enough that I couldn’t stop myself.
“Or are you sorry because for some reason you’re still in my head now?
I feel like I’m going crazy. I thought you were some fucked-up thing in my imagination, some weird manifestation of guilt because I wasn’t there when… when he…”
“It wasn’t your fault.” For someone who was being yelled at, his voice was still so calm, a gentle rumble that sent vibrations straight to my bones.
“No, it was yours. You were there. And now you’re here?
” I couldn’t stop myself when I raised a hand and shoved him, but the place where I touched his skin felt like I’d grabbed an electrical wire.
It tingled, burned white hot and freezing cold all at once.
My palm stayed glued to the front of his dark sweater like he was magnetized.
“Why didn’t you just let me die in the water? ”
The last question came out tinged with the aching agony I felt beating down on me every day before I put on my mask to go into the world… every night before I went to bed.
His eyes softened, his lips turning up in a smile that seemed as melancholy as the question I’d just asked.
“I can’t.”
When his fingers skated across the back of my hand in a featherlight touch that made me shudder, and the moonlight caught black veins nearly shimmering beneath his skin, I asked again.
“What are you?”
“Yours,” he said simply, almost helplessly, like it was the only answer he could give.
The strange flurry of emotions that ripped through me at the word were too much. I shoved away from him and started walking, stuffing my hands into my pockets again so I didn’t do something ridiculous. Like touch him.
Or hit him.
“My delusion. Right. Whatever. Can you just fuck off?” The demand came out hard and a little bitter, but that didn’t stop the sound of his footsteps whispering behind me. “Why are you even here? Unless I’m right and I’m still dead in the water…”
“I can’t seem to stay away.” He still sounded helpless, almost as lost as I was, and his long legs brought him to my side before I could get far enough ahead of him to lose him.
I wasn’t short, but he was making me feel every centimeter of height between us.
I’d always said five feet, ten inches was tall enough.
Not when you were being stalked by some six-foot-five shadow.