Chapter 117
Damien
Play - Glass Eyes by Radiohead
Please don’t leave
I wait until I’m outside then call Kyle. The fundraiser is still wrapping up behind me. People are beginning to leave the building and move toward the parking lot, talking in small groups.
I stay near the side entrance, where it’s quieter, and lit a cigarette while I dial his number.
“You’re calling again,” Kyle says. “Did you find something new?”
“I went into the physical archives, and checked the registry myself,” I replied quickly.
“Is that allowed?”
I take a long drag of the cigarette and continue, “It wasn’t exactly authorized.”
He sighs. “What did you find?”
“There are thirty expected affiliations for that graduating class, right,” I reply looking around. “I only found twenty-nine.”
“You’re sure about that?” He asks, confused.
“Positive. I checked twice. The physical records match the digital ones.”
“So one is missing.”
“Yes, one is missing,” I confirm.
“Missing how?”
“The record was removed entirely, there is no trace of it in either system,” I replied before letting out a long exhale. “This is really well thought, Kyle.”
“Clean deletion?”
“Yes,” I say. “Single record; everything else is intact. It was moved deliberately.” I take another drag and look toward the parking lot. “I also checked the remaining affiliations more closely. Out of twenty-nine, only two have been sent to the US, but they were women.”
“The killer profile doesn’t match them, we’re sure it’s a male,” he says.
I exhale the smoke slowly. We’ve never been this close to find him in twenty years of research. “Someone made sure that he wasn’t in the system anymore.”
“Do you think that’s him?”
“I think it’s the only explanation that fits what we’re seeing. If we have a full cohort and one record is intentionally erased, then that individual either matters more than the rest or is being protected.”
“I’ll run deeper cross-references,” he finally says. “Look for name changes, identity shifts, anything that could indicate someone was removed from official records after graduation.”
“Do it, yeah.”
“Be careful, Damien, you’ve been in Seraphin bay for months now and if he’s still active, he might come for you, or Mireya now that she’s on it too,” he says.
“Then I’ll welcome him like I should.”
“Alright, take care, I’ll call you back if anything appears,” Kyle says before ending the call.
For a moment I stay where I am, finishing my cigarette and watching the last of the guests leave the building. Mireya is walking out of the building, Hayzel is hugging her from behind and Bennett is somehow still fucking there. I thought he was avoiding her.
I start walking toward them and Hayzel notices me first and immediately looks amused, like she already expected me to show up. She pushes Ethan away to give me some privacy and I smile at the situation.
I finally reach Mireya, grabbing her hand before she could say anything and pull her toward the back of the building. Ocean blue eyes meet me and my heart tightens. She became a kind of withdrawal I never try to recover from and I strangely love the sensation of it. “Come with me,” I say.
She looks at me for a second and her eyes sparkle again, “Did you find anything in the archives?”
I nod once. “I did.”
“And?”
“There are thirty expected affiliations for that class,” I say. “I found twenty-nine.”
Her expression shifts immediately. “One is missing,” she says.
“Yes.”
“How?”
“It was removed from the records. Cleanly. Only one file is gone.”
She doesn’t speak right away. I can see her mind already starting to move through it, building connections I don’t want her building tonight.
I step closer before she can go further. “I don’t want to talk about this tonight,” I say. “I’m taking you to the beach house.”
She studies me for a moment longer, then exhales slightly, like she understands what I’m not saying as much as what I am. “Okay,” she says.
I take her hand, and we start walking toward the car, away from the noise of the fundraiser and into the quieter part of the parking lot.
After a few steps, she speaks again, “We need to bring Blue!”
I smile faintly. “Anything you want.”
“That’s dangerous to say.”
“I know.”
We keep walking, her fingers stay around mine, until we reach the car. She pauses before getting in and I turn toward her. For a second, I just look at her. Then I lean in and kiss her.
Her lips meet mine and everything goes quiet in me.
I feel it in the smallest parts of me first, like something finally seeing the sun after staying too long in the dark. She does that to me. Her breath catches softly against my mouth and I lean into it because there is nowhere else I want to be, not tonight, not in whatever comes after this.
Don’t go, please, don’t ever go.
When she presses closer again, I kiss her harder. Maybe she’ll feel my love then, and maybe it will make her fight for herself even more. I think I am learning what it means to miss someone who is still standing right in front of you.
When I pull back, she doesn’t move immediately, and neither do I.
“I don’t want you to disappear in your head tonight,” I say. “No thinking.”
“And what do I think about instead?” she asks.
Her. Me. Us.
“Nothing,” I say. “I want you to let go.”
Her expression softens slightly, then she nods once. “I can do that,” she says.
I open the car door for her as she gets in, and close it, exhaling a long breath. I stay there for a second longer than I need to, then walk around to my side.
“Stay with me tonight. Don’t turn into thought again,” I say, meeting her eyes.
She smiles, and I take it as a yes.
Play - Heal by Tom Odell
An hour later, we’re at the beach house. Blue has been observing the world sitting on her lap during the whole ride.
“He really loves being here,” she says, pointing at him exploring the house.
She had changed into one of my shirts and was sitting on the couch with her legs tucked under her.
“Bigger house for him to hide and run everywhere,” I reply sitting next to her, taking her hand in mine.
The ocean is crashing violently behind the window. She focuses on it for a while and I notice how quiet she had gone since we sat here.
It’s strange, carrying her absence in advance, even when she is right in front of me.
“You’re tired,” I said.
“I’m okay, don’t worry,” she replies without looking at me.
“No, you’re not.”
She finally turns her head toward me. “You really don’t know how to stop, do you?”
“Every time you’re quiet, I feel sick that I can’t just get inside your head and fight whatever demon you’re fighting alone in there.”
She looks down at her hands, at the scars on her wrists, then I feel her reaching for mine, using my fingers as if they were the pen she uses when she draws her thoughts onto paper.
It feels like her first kind of art. And with every movement it’s as if her memories are seeping through me, like I am suddenly standing inside everything that made her think about punishing herself for things she was never supposed to go through.
“I used to think,” she says finally. “If my mother could do it, then maybe it was something I already had in me too.”
I don’t interrupt her but I want to, I do. Because I know what that means, how scary it is.
“It wasn’t even scary at some point,” she continues.
“That’s the part that still messes with me.
It just started feeling… familiar. Like it was always going to be there.
It kept showing up when things got too loud in my head.
” She swallows, eyes still down. “And then it turns into this idea that leaving would make things easier, for everyone. That thought that I’d be doing something quiet and clean instead of…
this.” Her voice tightens slightly. “I don’t always want it, it’s not like that all the time.
It just comes and goes like it knows where I am even if I hide and always finds me. ”
I reach for her hand before she can disappear too far into her own words, and hold on a little tighter than I mean to.
Then she speaks again, “I don’t know how to stop either.”
“Then use the lighter,” I say. “You know, it was my mother’s lighter.”
She tilts her head, curious about the rest of the story, and I let it out, hoping she’ll understand why I’m worried.
“My dad left when I was born, and I grew up with this idea that leaving was normal. That when things got heavy, you just…go. And I hated him for it. I still do.” My thumb moves once against her hand.
“But I also spent a long time thinking I might end up the same way if I wasn’t careful enough.
Like it was something you either fought or inherited without meaning to. ”
She watches me, eyes soft as the rain.
“But it destroyed my mother. She fought against addiction but never won that battle and the lighter is the last thing connecting me to both of them,” I add.
“I don’t want to be that kind of person.
The kind that leaves when someone needs them most. Or the one who loses someone else because of the same battles.
So please, if it gets too dark in your head, use it and find me. ”
Her grip tightens slightly. “I don’t think you are,” she says as she exhales, shifting a little closer, head on my shoulder, and looking out of the window.
“I’m never leaving you. Even if you leave me every time you feel too sad,” I say, caressing her hair.
Then she speaks again, softer. “You’re right. When it gets too much,” she says, “I go somewhere else in my head. I meet my younger self there. She’s always waiting in the same place.”
“Where?” I ask, quieter than I mean to.
She hesitates. “On the cliff, it’s always the same one. I don’t know why it’s always there. She’s just there, waiting, and smiling with bruises all over her.”
Something in my chest tightens, but I keep my voice steady. “And you go there a lot?”
“More when I’m tired,” she admits. “Less when I’m okay.”
I squeeze her hand once, and say, “I don’t like that place.”
She almost smiles, but it doesn’t fully form. “It’s not like I choose it,” she says.
“Where do you come back to?”
She finally meets my eyes again. “This,” she replies simply. “You, looking at me with eyes begging for me to keep fighting.”
The room feels quieter after that as I pull her a little closer.
“Promise me something,” she says quietly. “If I ever start fading away, if I feel far away… don’t let me go there alone again.”
Her fingers tighten slightly around mine.
“I will always find you,” I whisper. “Even when you’re in your own head, or when you close the door on me before I can reach you. Just don’t stop letting me try.”
And a while later, she leans into me like, and I stay awake long after she falls quiet against me, thinking not about where she goes when she disappears into her head, but about how easily she still comes back.
And how much I need her to keep doing that, until she doesn’t need to.