Chapter 35 Zane
ZANE
Recovery is a painful and slow thing, existing purely on spite and malice for sustenance.
It’s not so much the torture I endured at Cooper Grace’s hand or the nightmares stalking my dreams every night.
It’s that feeling. My feeling. Of helplessness and hopelessness.
Of struggling against orders you never had a say in only to obey despite yourself.
Our Lady of Sacred Redemption is barred to me now. I sit on the marble steps day and night, waiting for even a glimpse. Jaspar is the only one who takes pity on me.
“You have to leave, Zane,” he says through the crack in the door.
His dark eyes trail over my face. I know what he sees. Eyes bloodshot and ringed in purple, my chin dotted in stubble left so long it could almost be considered a beard. My rumpled, haggard clothes that I picked up off the floor after also wearing them yesterday. Maybe ever a day or two before.
“Let me see her,” I beg him. “I just want to talk to her.”
He shakes his head, his attention darting over his shoulder before landing on me again. “You know I can’t do that.”
“I need to tell her how sorry I am. Please. I fucked up so badly.”
His hand lands on my shoulder, warm and solid and comforting. “Go home, Zane. Get some rest. She’ll find you when she’s ready.”
Time is the only thing I have left to give her.
The manor is so quiet now, painfully so.
I long for the beat of her feet pacing the floor in her room, the way she’d almost skip down the last few stairs.
I miss the perfect sound of Apollo’s perky meow behind her door.
I walk into the kitchen and I see her there, destroying the tidiness with pancake batter or reading tarot cards with George, but it’s always another dream. Another punishment I deserve to endure.
I’ve been to mausoleums with fewer ghosts. My family used to be all I needed, but now I know what I’ve missed. My solitude was a lie I told myself to bandage what was far too painful for me to want to name.
I can’t escape her. Wouldn’t, even if I could.
I hear her soft whimpers in the wind blowing at night.
See the brilliance of her smile in the sun cresting the horizon at dawn.
I dream I am wrapped around her in the softness of my bed, her head cradled on my chest, our hands held tightly as we fall asleep. Then I wake, and my soul cracks in two.
I love her.
I love her, and now I’ve ruined the only good thing to come into my life since Moira.
I can’t wander those empty halls anymore. Can’t bear to see Edgar, Angela, and especially George, with their sad looks and pity, like I didn’t become the monster others had always claimed me to be. Instead, I prowl the streets of New Malcolm, climb the tallest skyscrapers, and just… watch.