Chapter 33 The Present
THE PRESENT
CAIDEN
The morning was gray. Not fog exactly, more like the air had given up on being clear.
The trees stood around us in a tight circle, tall pines and aspen, their trunks straight and unforgiving, their branches whispering to each other like they were laughing at us.
Amelia lay a few feet away, curled on her side, arms tight around her ribs. Her brown hair had come loose from whatever half-ass attempt she’d made to keep it back, strands stuck to her cheek.
I stared at her longer than I should have.
That was the problem out here. There was nothing to do but stare at the truth. Nothing to distract me from the way she existed in the same space as me, breathing, living, surviving. And every time she inhaled, it scraped something inside my chest I didn’t want scraped.
I pushed myself up, slow, because my body screamed if I moved too fast. My joints cracked. My muscles felt like they’d been wrung out and hung to dry. I flexed my fingers and watched them shake.
My hands were split open in a dozen places, the skin torn from climbing, from grabbing, from pulling her up when she slipped. Blood had dried in the creases like rust.
I clenched my fists until the tremor eased.
I scanned the tree line, forcing my eyes to focus. Hunger made everything swim. It turned shadows into movement. It turned every rustle into teeth.
I hated that part. I hated how my brain, starving and desperate, reverted to pure animal.
I stood, swayed, and steadied myself by pressing my palm against a tree. The bark scraped into my wounds. Pain flared, and for a second it cut through the haze.
My eyes snagged on a patch of red berries near a bush, low to the ground.
My stomach lurched with want so violent I almost doubled over.
Berries meant food. Food meant not dying. Berries also meant poison, if you were unlucky or stupid. And out here, luck and stupidity were basically the same thing.
I crouched, ignoring how my knees protested, and leaned closer. The berries were small, clustered, glossy. Pretty in a way that felt like a trap.
I stared hard, trying to summon whatever survival training I had left in my skull. The military taught you a lot of things. It did not teach you how to identify every deadly thing nature could hide behind a shiny skin.
My mouth watered anyway. My body didn’t care if it killed me. It just wanted something inside it that wasn’t emptiness.
Behind me, Amelia shifted. A soft sound, like a swallowed groan.
I didn’t look back. If I looked back, I’d see her eyes. Green and exhausted. I’d see the accusation living behind them. The question she never stopped asking, even when she didn’t speak it.
Why did you always ruin everything you touched?
I plucked one berry and rolled it between my fingers. The skin felt too smooth. Too perfect. Like it was waiting.
Footsteps crunched softly.
“Don’t,” Amelia rasped.
Her voice was wrecked. Like she’d screamed herself raw and the sound had never come back.
I turned my head slightly. She was pushing up onto her elbows, face pale beneath the grime. Her eyes were bloodshot, framed by dark circles that made her look hollow. Like the forest had been taking pieces of her while she slept.
“Don’t what?” I asked, though I already knew.
“Don’t eat that.” She swallowed, winced. “You don’t know what it is.”
My jaw tightened. “I’m aware.”
She dragged herself upright, slow and stiff. “You’re going to poison yourself.”
“And what?” I snapped before I could stop it. “Then you’ll have the woods to yourself? Is that the goal?”
Her eyes flashed. Even half-dead, she still had fight. Still had that bite.
“I don’t want you to die,” she said, voice shaking with anger, like admitting it cost her something.
That hit me harder than it should have.
I hated that it did.
I scoffed, because I didn’t know what else to do with something that felt like kindness. “Yeah, well, that makes one of us.”
Her lips pressed into a thin line. “Stop being an asshole.”
“Stop telling me what to do.”
She took a step toward me and her knees almost buckled. She caught herself on a tree, breathing hard. Pride kept her upright more than muscle.
I stood and shoved the berries back into the bush like they offended me. “Fine. No berries. You got any better ideas, princess?”
The word came out automatic. A habit from being sixteen and cruel and trained to aim for soft spots.
Her flinch was small, but I saw it. I always saw it.
Her gaze hardened. “No, I just don’t trust anything anymore.”
“Not even me?”
“Especially not you.”
Fucking bitch. I looked away first, because if I kept looking at her face I’d see things I didn’t want to see. Not out here. Not when we were this close to the edge.
I turned and started walking.
Behind me, she muttered, “Of course you’re walking. You always just… go.”
I kept my pace steady. “If we stop, we die.”
“We might die anyway,” she shot back, and her footsteps stumbled after mine. “You could at least admit that.”
“I don’t have time to admit things.”
“Right. God forbid you feel something.”
That made my hands curl into fists again. Heat rose in my chest.
“You want to talk about feelings?” I snapped, turning on her. “Out here? While we’re starving? You want me to sit down and unpack my trauma for you like we’re at a fucking therapy retreat?”
Her chin lifted. Stubborn. Defensive. The same damn posture she’d had in high school when she’d glare at me like I was dirt under her shoe.
“Yes,” she said. “Actually. I want you to admit you’re scared.”
I laughed, bitter. “I’m not scared.”
Her eyes narrowed. “That’s a lie.”
I stepped closer until we were too close, our breaths tangling.
“I’m not scared,” I repeated, lower.
Her voice dropped too. “Then why do you keep looking over your shoulder like something’s coming?”
I froze.
Because something was coming.
Not a bear. Not a mountain lion. Not even some backwoods stranger with a cabin and a shotgun. Something worse.
My own head.
I forced my face into blankness. “I’m checking our surroundings.”
“No,” she said softly. “You’re paranoid.”
I wanted to tell her to shut up. I wanted to tell her she didn’t know anything about me, didn’t get to name what lived inside my bones.
But my mouth didn’t move. Because she was right.
The forest had started doing things. Little things at first. A shadow shaped like a person that vanished when I blinked. A laugh I swore I heard in the wind. A voice that sounded like my father’s, low and taunting, calling me worthless from behind the trees.
At night I dreamed I was back in that house in Pathosbury, the walls sweating with old anger, my father’s boots heavy on the stairs. I’d wake up with my heart trying to break my ribs and my fists raised like I was ready to fight a ghost.
I told myself it was hunger. Lack of sleep. Dehydration.
But there was a darker part of me that wondered if the wilderness wasn’t creating the hallucinations, only revealing what I’d always been.
Amelia exhaled, shaky. “I saw her again.”
My stomach sank. “Who?”
“You know who.”
I stared at her, jaw tight.
Lillian.
Her sister. The one I’d tangled with in the ugliest chapter of my life. The one who’d died and left a crater behind that swallowed Amelia whole.
The one whose name still felt like a blade.
Something hot and violent tore through me. Not at her. At myself. Because I had done that. In a way. I had helped make her sister into a ghost that followed her.
I dragged a hand down my face, smearing dirt and sweat. “It’s hunger. That’s all.”
She laughed. “You keep telling yourself that.”
I glared. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
“It means you look like you’re seeing things too,” she said. “Your eyes keep… flicking. Like you’re tracking something I can’t see.”
My throat tightened.
I forced a shrug. “It’s nothing.”
She stared at me for a long moment, and I hated how much she could read when she stopped yelling and started watching.
“Who are you seeing?” she asked quietly.
My father’s face flashed in my mind, clear as day. The way his mouth twisted when he drank. The way his eyes would go flat before he hit me. The way he’d grip my shoulder hard enough to bruise and tell me who I was allowed to hate.
I swallowed hard. “No one.”
Amelia’s gaze softened just a fraction. “Caiden.”
Hearing my name from her mouth did something to me. It always had. Even when we were kids. Even when we were enemies.
“Stop,” I warned.
She took a step closer. “I’m not your enemy out here. I don’t trust you, but I’m not your enemy.”
“Yes, you are,” I snapped, because it was easier than admitting the truth.
Her face hardened again. “Fine. Keep being alone in your head. See how that goes.”
She turned away and started walking again, shoulders hunched, jaw set, like she was daring the world to break her.
I followed, because I didn’t have a choice.
Because as much as I wanted to hate her, I couldn’t let her walk off alone. Not out here. Not when she was hallucinating. Not when I could barely trust my own eyes.
The forest swallowed us.
We moved through brush and fallen branches, crunching over dead leaves. The ground sloped upward, then flattened, then dipped again. Every ridge looked like the last ridge. Every clearing felt like a trick.
Time out here didn’t move normally. It stretched and warped. Minutes felt like hours. Hours disappeared entirely.
My stomach cramped so hard I had to stop and press a fist into my abdomen, breathing through it. Hunger was a living thing inside me, gnawing and snarling. It made my vision tunnel. It made my hands shake.
Amelia stopped a few paces ahead and looked back, irritation flaring. “What now?”
“Nothing,” I lied.
She rolled her eyes. “You’re going to collapse.”
“I’m not.”
“You’re not special,” she snapped. “You can’t just will your body into working.”
I laughed under my breath. “Watch me.”
She stared at me like she wanted to hate me but didn’t have the energy.
We kept moving. At some point, the wind shifted, and I heard it.