24. Sawyer
Sawyer
This isn’t right. I’m back at Wonder World and everything is normal. Giggles thrusts his hand out, holding a red string, and when I look up it’s attached to a circular mylar balloon with my face on it. Except, I look all wrong. My eyes…they’re…red. And my smile, it’s uncanny.
He chuckles, nudging his hand, insisting I take it. So I do, just so I can get away from him as fast as possible. His eyes follow me as I step back, those spiraling irises like something out of a horror movie.
How did I get here? I’d never come back willingly.
Popcorn crackles beside me, bells ring, announcing game winners, and rides whir, their circus music playing extra slow somehow. Calliopes and organs bleeding into one another in a way that makes the hair on the back of my neck stand on end.
I look around, searching for someone I recognize, anyone who can tell me how I got here.
But now that I’m paying attention, I realize I’m alone. The sights, the smells, the sounds are all here, but the people are gone.
I let the balloon fly up into the crystal blue sky, happy to be rid of it, and run toward the exit. A path I know all too well.
Breathing hard, my feet pound pavement. I’m close now.
When I finally stop, too out of breath to keep going, I’ve landed in the one place I’d never choose.
Velocity towers in front of me, shiny and new. There’s no sign of the accident. No sign that anything horrific happened here.
I turn to run away, pumping my arms this time, but when I stop again, I’m back in front of Velocity.
Tears form in the corner of my eyes. No. No. No.
I have to get the hell out of here.
“Hello!” I yell. “I need help!”
A twisted voice blares like it’s being delivered in a bullhorn. A chuckle, deep and menacing. Giggles.
“You’re home now.”
“No!”
I suck in a breath, and gear up to break into a run again, but when I look down the ground is slick and dark and wet. And then I see them. Bodies surrounding me. Carnage. Parts and blood. I’m in the center of a massacre.
“Oh my God,” I cry out, backing away.
Then I see something that makes bile rise up in my throat.
Owen’s head, his eyes wide open, staring at me.
I’m shaking now. Hiding my eyes with my hands. But it’s no use. He’s watching me. He knows I betrayed him. I failed him. I never deserved him.
Then Ella’s there in her white dress, except now it’s covered in gore. She picks up his head and cradles it tenderly in her arms, pressing her lips to his temple.
“I’ve got you,” she whispers. “I’d never let you fall.”
“Stop! Please,” I sob, falling to the ground, splattering blood all over my bare legs. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
The sound that tears out of me as I wake up is somewhere between a gasp and a scream, like something dragged up from the bottom of my soul. I shoot upright in the dark, heart slamming, hands fisted in the sheets.
It takes a second, then another. I blink and force air in through my nose and out through my mouth.
You’re okay. You’re in your apartment. You’re okay.
But my hands are still shaking when I reach for my phone.
I find his contact, squinting against the bright light. There’s a heartbeat where I consider what I’m about to do, but it passes and I click.
It rings once. Twice.
My breath comes out ragged, and my pulse won’t calm down. Please pick up. I don’t deserve comfort. But please.
On the third ring, my hands are trembling so hard I almost drop the phone. But then his voice comes through the line, deep and rough.
“Sawyer? What happened? What’s wrong?”
Tears stream down my face. All those bodies…the blood. It was so real. And Owen.
“Knox,” I say, between sobs. “I need you.”
“I’m already on my way.”
The call ends and I sit in the dark, phone pressed against my chest like it can offer comfort somehow.
Knox is coming.
I don’t know if that’s what I wanted but the waiting keeps my mind occupied. I’m still shaking, still half trapped in that horrible nightmare. Owen’s eyes, the gore, Ella’s accusatory look.
I pull my knees to my chest and try to breathe.
Twelve minutes later—I know because I watched every one of them tick by—I hear a car pull into the lot below. Stepping out of bed, I walk to the door, waiting, pulse still pounding out of control. When I hear three quiet knocks, I suppress a sob. He’s actually here.
I open the door, anticipation coursing through me, and find him standing there against the night sky.
He’s wearing his glasses, something he only does at home, a sleeveless undershirt and gray sweats, hair a mess, scruff around his jaw.
He takes one look at me and I resist the urge to hide my face in my hands. His gaze is too intense, too knowing.
He doesn’t say anything, just follows me inside. I don’t think I’m ready to talk. Not yet. If I open my mouth, I can’t keep pretending I don’t know why I called him.
Because I know exactly why. That’s the problem.
With the door closed, my place feels so much smaller. It’s Knox. He always takes up space, sometimes in ways I don’t appreciate, but tonight, having him here feels like a lifeline. He’s oxygen and I can finally breathe.
“Sawyer,” he says, his voice still hoarse from sleep. He reaches out and tucks a piece of hair back from my face. I stay completely still, breathing, listening to the click of the air conditioning kicking on, and the humming from my dishwasher.
This is the part where I should be careful.
Guard my heart and back away. I know that.
I know what it means, him being here in the dark, touching me, and I know I should say something to put distance between us because I have exactly zero defenses left at three in the morning after dreaming about blood and Owen’s eyes and everything we lost.
“I’m sorry,” I finally say.
“Don’t.” His hand moves lower until he’s cupping my cheek. “Don’t ever apologize.”
I swallow hard, not knowing what to do with that response. There’s only one other time in recent years Knox has looked at me this way, soft and reverent. The day of the accident.
“I had a nightmare,” I say, because I need to say something. The silence between us is getting too heavy and I’m afraid of what I’ll do if I let it sit.
“I know.” His thumb traces along my cheekbone. “You don’t have to tell me.”
“It was about Owen.” My voice falters on his name. “And Ella. And…” I stop and swallow. “There was so much blood, Knox.”
The muscles in his jaw tic, and he pulls me into his arms. There’s no words between us, just his hand tangled in my hair, pressing my face gently into his chest. He’s so warm and solid, and his heartbeat thumps against my cheek, reassuring me that this is real. He’s alive, and steady, and in my arms.
One second turns into two and before I know it, I lose count entirely. I need this. I want this. I’ll take this.
His scruffy chin rests on top of my head and his hand moves in slow circles against my back. This feeling I’ve been choking on since I woke up screaming starts to come loose, the way a tight knot does when you finally stop pulling against it and just let it go slack.
I cry fat, hot tears. I don’t mean to, but it comes out anyway, soaking into the fabric of his shirt while he holds me wordlessly. He keeps his arms around me and lets me fall apart.
I’ve had so many chances to be comforted over the last few weeks.
Like I told him the other night, everyone wants to be involved in my grief.
But every time someone looked at me with that soft, careful pity in their eyes, I felt like a fraud.
Like I was stealing something that didn’t belong to me.
I was letting good people pour their hearts out, fawning and fussing over someone who kissed her boyfriend’s brother before he was even six feet under.
I never deserved their comfort. Still don’t.
But with Knox, it’s not like that.
He’s not here because he pities me. He’s here because he’s the only other person on earth who understands exactly what it is to grieve Owen the wrong way. To love him and fail him and survive him all at once.
We’re the same, Knox and I. Down here in the wreckage together, equally guilty, equally undeserving.
His arms are the only place I’ve felt anything close to honest in weeks.
When my tears finally slow, I stay where I am. I know I should move, but I don’t. I keep my cheek pressed to his chest, his heartbeat in my ear. The air conditioning clicks off and the apartment goes quiet.
“I keep seeing the bodies,” I whisper. “Even when I’m awake. I’ll be doing something completely normal and then the images pop into my head.”
His hand stills, and his chest expands with a slow breath. “I see them too. Every time I close my eyes.”
I pull back just enough to look up at him. There are shadows under his eyes I didn’t notice last time I saw him. They’re deep and tinged with purple. He’s not sleeping either. Of course he’s not.
“Do you think it’ll stop?” I ask, even though I’m not sure I want the truth.
He blows out a warm sigh. “I don’t know.”
“I saw Owen,” I say quietly. “In the nightmare. Not the way I want to remember him…He was—He was gone and…” My throat tightens. “He was looking at me like he knew.”
Knox holds me tighter, letting me go on.
“I know it’s not real. I know it’s just my brain being fucked up. But it felt so real. It felt like he was right there and I had to look at him and there was nothing I could do and I couldn’t stop seeing his eyes…”
“Hey.” His hand moves up to the back of my head, pressing gently. “You’re here. You’re out of it now.”
“I know.” I squeeze my eyes shut. “I just can’t turn it off.”
“I understand.”
Those two words mean more to me than he’ll ever know.
He’s not saying them to comfort me, I can tell.
He’s saying them because it’s true for him too.
And I’m not sure how I feel knowing that somewhere behind those exhausted eyes, he’s carrying the same images, the same carnage on a loop, and he’s kept it bottled inside.
How in the hell are we both just walking around like this? Pretending to function?