Chapter 43 The Present
THE PRESENT
CAIDEN
There was nothing left except the dark.
It pressed up against my skin, breathing with me, getting in the cracks between my ribs and winding tighter with every exhale.
Maybe it had always been there, even before this place. Before Colorado, before the glass, before the bastard who called himself our keeper. Maybe the darkness was waiting for someone like me. Someone who deserved a cage.
But there were worse things than dark. Like the way the cold worked into your bones so deep you forgot what it meant to be warm.
Or the way the glass between me and Amelia caught the light, turned her face into a ghost in the reflection if you looked at it just so.
Or the way the bastard upstairs could come down at any moment, split the silence wide open with his voice, his boots, whatever sick game he had that day.
Tonight, even the shadows felt brittle. Like they’d break if you moved too fast.
My hands wouldn’t stop shaking. The urge was always the same. Put my fist through the glass, bleed out if I had to, just as long as I could reach her. But the cage was smarter than I was. The cage always won.
Stomp. Stomp. Stomp.
His boots on the stairs. He wanted us to hear. Wanted the panic to settle in before he even hit the basement floor. I pressed my spine into the concrete behind me, fists curled in my lap, watching the door at the top of the stairs.
I counted the seconds. Sometimes it was five. Sometimes ten. Tonight, it took longer. Maybe he wanted to make sure we knew who owned the time down here.
The door burst open, light spilling down the steps and cutting stripes into the dark. He filled the doorway. A bear of a man, face cold and blank, mouth twisted into something that might’ve been a smile if you squinted.
He took his time coming down the stairs. I thought about what I’d do if he opened my cage first. Break his knees, bite his throat out if I had to. But he never did. He always saved me for last.
He carried something in his hand. Metal, glinting. Knife? Crowbar? I didn’t care. I wanted him to try it.
He stopped at the glass, looking from me to her, back to me again. Slowly, he set the tool down on top of the metal feeding slot in the glass. Then he crouched, peering through at me like a scientist with a rat.
“My favorite time of day,” he said. “Playtime time for the pets. Have you two learned anything since our last conversation?” He rapped his knuckles on the divider, ignoring the way I bared my teeth.
I spat at the glass. “Come closer. Let’s see who eats who.”
He laughed, it echoed off the walls. “Still so much fight.” He glanced to Amelia, eyes raking over her tiny frame. “This one’s more interesting. You’re so quiet, dear. You don’t even whimper.” He faked a pout, eyes dead as stone. “We might have to fix that tonight.”
Amelia shrank further against the wall. I wanted to rip the glass out of its fucking tracks. My pulse thundered in my head, louder than his footsteps, louder than anything. I slammed my fist into the barrier, hard enough to jar my shoulder. “Touch her and I’ll—”
He rose, slow and deliberate, like a curtain coming up on an act he’s played a hundred times.
“You’ll what?” He cocked his head, pitying. “You’re behind glass. You’re less than a pet. You’re a curiosity. You exist because I allow it, boy.”
He turned his back on me. Dismissed me, like I was nothing. Then he stalked to the door of Amelia’s cage, unlocking it with a casual twist of his wrist, the heavy iron swinging open with a groan so loud it hurt.
Amelia didn’t scream. Not even when he grabbed her by the shoulder and hauled her up. She fought him—shoulder twisting, feet kicking—but it was useless. He was built to break things, and she felt so small I thought he might snap her bones just for the thrill.
I shoved both fists against the glass, yelling her name, my voice breaking raw. It didn’t matter. The sound died in the blackness between us.
He shoved her to her knees in the middle of the cage, yanking her head up by her hair until her throat was exposed. I could see the fine tremor running through her. Fear, maybe, or something worse. But her eyes stayed on mine. Locked in, like a lifeline.
He crouched beside her, face inches away, hand curling around the back of her neck. The show was for me, I understood that now. Everything was for an audience.
“See, this one’s perfect. Submissive, but stubborn.
She’s not like you, she knows her place.
” He pressed a gloved hand to the side of her face, thumb stroking her cheek.
“Still pretty. Even after all this.” He pinched her chin, turning her face toward the glass, letting me see the way her lips trembled.
I wanted to break every tooth in his head.
“I could make her scream. Would you like that?” he asked, not looking at me. “Would it make you feel alive, to see her cry?”
“Go to hell,” I whispered, voice shaking. “You sick freak.”
He smiled, all teeth and emptiness. “Already there, pet. And you brought her with you.”
His hand fisted in her hair, yanking it back until she gasped, a sound so small it barely made it through the glass. He brought the knife to her throat, letting the edge skate up over her skin. Not cutting, just reminding her (and me) how easy it would be.
I slammed my fists into the barrier again, throat raw. “Let her go! You want pain? Come here. Don’t hide behind her.”
He ignored me. He always did.
He leaned in, mouth beside her ear, whispering things I couldn’t hear. Whatever he said, it made her flinch. Then he let her go, shoving her to the ground.
She didn’t make a sound. Not once. Not even when she hit the floor.
“You see?” He turned to me, triumphant. “You could learn from her. You scream, you threaten, you rattle your cage. It’s pathetic.”
I panted, hands aching. I wanted to tear his spine out.
“What do you want from us?” I spat. “We’re not fucking pets!”
He laughed again, a low, wet sound. “You’re whatever I need you to be. Creatures in a box. Born to be watched. Born to suffer.”
He lingered in the doorway, backlit by the sick yellow light from the stairs. Then, the door slammed shut. His boots retreated, up and up and up until even the sound died. The bulb overhead buzzed, throwing weird shadows on the walls.
She lay where he’d left her, hair spilled over her face like blood. I pressed my forehead to the glass, hating myself for not being enough. Hating him more.
Sometimes I wished I’d never come out of the cage my father made for me. Sometimes I wished I’d stayed an animal.
But I couldn’t stop watching her. Couldn’t stop wanting to pull her onto my side of the world, where no one could touch her. Couldn’t stop wanting to hurt him, in ways that would make even hell look like a holiday.
I slid down the glass until I was sitting, breathing in the dark. My hands shook. My knees ached. Every inch of me wanted violence.
We were pets. We were prey. And until I broke this cage, I was nothing.
I watched her for a long time, cataloging every inch, every tremor. Waiting for her to move, waiting for the next storm.
When the echoes finally died, all that was left was the scrape of my own breathing and the faint, humiliating buzz of the basement bulb. I could smell metal. Blood, maybe, or maybe just the memory of it.
She didn’t move. Not at first.
I pressed two fingers to my temple, grinding them into the bone, like I could push out the headache that had been burning there for hours. It never worked. I looked at her through the glass, watched the way her shoulders shook, just once, before she forced them still again.
The urge to smash the barrier ripped through me. A violence I didn’t recognize, bigger than anything my old man had ever managed to make me feel. I wanted to kill. Wanted to gut him, paint the walls with his insides. Not just for me. Not this time.
For her.
Which was fucked up. Because I didn’t care. Not about her, not really. She was baggage, leftover from a life that didn’t want either of us. I told myself that every hour. But right then, I wanted him dead so hard my teeth ached.
I couldn’t say any of that. Couldn’t say anything, not at first.
“Amelia.” The word almost caught in my throat, like a bone. I coughed it out, bitter. “He didn’t cut you bad, did he?”
A long pause. Her head still stayed down, hair hiding everything.
“Hey.” I tried again, rougher. “You alive over there or do I gotta start talking to myself?”
Nothing. Not even a twitch.
I glared at the ceiling. Typical. She’d rather freeze herself solid than let anyone see her bleed.
The darkness crawled closer, licking at the edges of my vision. My pulse was sick and slow.
I leaned my head back against the concrete and let the words fall out before I could stop myself.
“Remember that winter around second grade?” My voice sounded all wrong. Too soft, like I’d borrowed it from someone weaker. “The one where your mom left you in the freezing rain? I guess she was too fucked up on drugs to pick you up.”
I could feel the ghost of a laugh, somewhere in the back of my chest. It hurt.
“I saw you. I did. I’m the one who left the jacket by the school doors so you would see it when you went to go sit on the steps like a sad little puppy.”
A faint sound. Could’ve been a laugh, could’ve been a sob. I didn’t dare look too close.
I kept going, needing the noise.
“I even followed you home. Just to make sure you made it there. You never knew that the jacket belonged to me, so I didn’t ask for it back.”
Silence again.
I wanted to bite the words out of my mouth. Why the fuck was I talking about this? The past was a wound. The past didn’t heal.
I slammed the brakes on that train of thought, voice sharpening.
“Anyway. Don’t get any ideas. Just bored as hell and needed to kill the silence.”
I risked a glance at her. She’d lifted her face just enough that I could see the shine on her cheek, maybe a tear, maybe just sweat. She wiped it away with the back of her hand. Her wrist was shaking.
“You don’t have to…” she started, voice ragged. She cleared her throat, tried again. “You don’t have to pretend.”
That stung. Deep.
“Pretend what?” My words snapped like bone. “That there’s any point to this? That we’re getting out?”
Her jaw tightened. I recognized that set to her mouth.
“You…you didn’t have to say that stuff,” she mumbled at last.
I grinned, humorless. “Why not? You said it yourself once. We’re both just bad memories in the making. No point fighting it.”
She huffed out an unsteady breath. I could see goosebumps on her arms, even from this distance. The cold sank in, deep as marrow.
I pressed my palm to the glass, the way you might press a hand to a grave.
“You ever wonder if people like us are just born wrong?” The words came out bleak, a flat fact. “Like, maybe there’s a glitch in the code. Some people get love and safety. Some get cages. Some get glass walls and freaks with knives.”
She didn’t answer. But I knew she was listening.
The quiet swelled. Thickened. It was almost comforting, in a sick way.
“I don’t know,” she said at last. “Maybe it’s just…bad luck. Maybe we both just got unlucky.”
For some reason, I wanted to laugh. I wanted to break something. Instead, I slumped against the far wall, exhaustion stretching me thin.
I said: “When we get out of here, we should wreck his goddamn house.”
She startled, a reluctant smile tugging at the edge of her mouth. “You think we’re getting out?”
I bared my teeth, all challenge. “We’re not dying down here. Not without turning the tables first.”
That felt like a promise. I hated the hope in it.
I forced myself to look at her, even with all the bruises she was still here. Still fighting. Not dead yet.
“We’ll make it hurt,” I murmured. “For everything he did to us.”
For what he did to you, I almost added. But that would have been too much. Too fucking sentimental.
I let the silence fill back in.
Eventually, she whispered, “You think we’ll remember all this? After?”
I considered that. Rolled it around in my head.
“The bad shit, yeah,” I said. “Never goes away. But maybe the rest, too.” My voice got softer, more dangerous: “The parts where we kept each other sane, even for a second.”
I regretted it as soon as it left my mouth.
I threw a punch at the air, tried to kill the softness before it grew mold.
“Don’t read into it,” I warned. “You know me.”
She nodded, hair hiding her again.
But I could see her hands. Splayed out on the floor, reaching for the warmth that wasn’t coming.
Goosebumps danced up my own arms.
The silence turned unbearable. Coiled like an animal in the dark.
I wanted to protect her. I wanted to destroy the world. I wanted to shatter the glass and crawl through, just to feel something that wasn’t helplessness. Just to fucking mean something.
But I sat in my cage, counting the seconds, talking to a girl I once hated, a girl I still hated, a girl I would kill for if someone gave me the chance.
That was the truth. The only one that mattered now.
In the end, we curled into the silence. Two ghosts in a basement, alive because neither of us knew how to die.
I closed my eyes and let the dark settle in.