Chapter 46 The Present
THE PRESENT
AMELIA
Caiden was supposed to be my enemy, but in here, he felt like my lifeline.
I was sure we would both die, but at least we’d do it as one creature, not two halves left to rot. Instead I pressed my palm to the glass and mouthed his name.
His eyes flickered, followed my hand, the motion slow and underwater. He didn’t speak. I could tell his mouth was too dry.
We spent hours like that. Our bodies on either side of the sweating sheet, tracing each other’s outlines, inventing a language of gestures and sighs.
It was the closest I’d ever been to him, and the farthest.
I thought about other times we were close. Not like this, but back in school days. Times when he would shove me in the hallway, or watch me from the distance, a violent hunger whirling in his eyes.
One time he’d grabbed me by the wrist and yanked me into the locker room, slammed me against the cold blue metal and hissed in my ear that I was “already a ghost, just didn’t know it yet.”
At the time I’d thought he meant to kill me.
Now I wondered if he’d only meant to claim some piece of me, to see if he could draw blood with words alone.
There was nothing left to bleed now, but I felt myself craving any closeness, any friction.
He was the only heat in this world.
I watched as he slumped, legs sprawled. His face was ruinous, but I still recognized the old glint beneath the scum of exhaustion.
He caught me staring.
“What? You want something?” His voice was barely a whisper, husked and raw, but it curled around me like a ribbon, tight and mean.
I pressed my hand harder to the sheet of glass between us, willing it to shatter, or soften, or dissolve. “I never thought anything could be worse than you tormenting me,” I said, the words forming in my mouth before I could stop them. “Shows how stupid I was.”
He didn’t answer. Instead, he looked away, rolling his head into the crook of his arm as if he could hide inside himself and never come out. “What’s worse,” he said, finally, “me tormenting you, or me being the only thing left?”
His tone was colder than the glass between us. I had no answer.
He closed his eyes, lashes clumped and caked with sweat. “You’re the only one who doesn't let me forget who I am,” he muttered. “It’s fucked up, but it helps.”
A long pause, punctuated by the rasp of his breath. “That’s all I’ve got.”
“We should have let the river take us,” I said, and meant it, but my hand stayed pressed to the glass, unwilling to let go, to float away.
He opened one eye, bloodshot and yellow around the edges. “You were always the quitter,” he said. “I just finish things.”
I watched the ripple of his chest, the way his shoulders trembled under the thin skin. I tried to hate him for being right, for being the one who could hold on until the very end, but the feeling wouldn’t come.
It was burned out by fatigue, or maybe I’d just lost my taste for it. He was all I had, and in that deprivation, every cell in me bent toward his gravity, the way a plant will always strain toward the only source of light.
We didn’t touch, couldn’t, but the hunger for connection swelled with each hour alone together.
I whispered, “I used to wish you’d die. Really die, like in the woods, or a car crash, or some jail cell. Now I wish you’d just keep talking so I could remember what a voice sounded like.”
He didn’t open his eyes, just smiled, slack and mean. “You get sentimental in captivity, Langston?”
“Fuck you,” I said.
“You wish.”
That sparked something inside of me. I thought about the times he drunkenly kissed me. One time I kissed back, and other times I froze. Paralyzed by fear.
“Why did you kiss me those years ago? When you’d be drunk and angry. Why did you do it?”
His mouth curled, more snarl than smile. “I don’t remember half that shit.”
“I hated you for it.”
My voice cracked, but I steadied it on the next breath. “I hated you for making me want something I couldn’t even name yet.”
He pressed his forehead to the glass, and for a moment, I imagined the skin melting away, the bone beneath. “You think I wanted to want you?” he rasped. “You think that’s what I fucking wanted?”
The ache in my chest doubled. “Then why did you keep doing it?”
“Because,” he bit out, “it was the only thing that made me feel less than dead. That’s what you were.
A reminder I might still have a pulse. Even if I had to make you bleed to prove it.
And, maybe I liked how it affected you. Made me feel powerful.
I don’t fucking know. I don’t think when I drink, I just act. ”
He closed his eyes then, maybe ashamed, maybe just past caring.
I pressed my fingers to the barrier, tracing the outline of his skull. “You always were such a goddamn coward,” I said. “Couldn’t let yourself be human, not even for one second.”
He nodded. “It’s easier that way. Being a heartless monster. Once you start caring, you start dying. That’s the law. You know it as well as I do.”
I watched his face, the way the cheekbones jutted out now, every edge sharpened by hunger and sleeplessness. He looked like a photograph that had been left in bleach.
All the color leached out. Only the shadow remained.
I said, “You could have at least pretended not to hate me. It would have made this a little easier.”
He shrugged. “Didn’t want to make it easier.”
I let my head fall against the divider. The glass was humid.
I wanted to punch through, but I wanted to curl up in the farthest corner and never hear his voice again. I hated how I needed him now, how I felt every flicker of his attention as if it were electricity through my bones.
I could hear his breath, faint on the other side.
His lips parted like he might say something, but the words clotted behind his teeth.
“Do you even know what I am?” I said, voice raw, straining to be heard through the glass.
“I’m not what you think, not some fragile, broken—” The words jammed in my throat, and I didn’t finish.
Didn’t need to. He already knew. He’d always known.
He scraped a finger down the divider, a tiny shriek of plastic, then let his hand drop. “I know what you are, Amelia. You’re the only thing that’s ever made me want to be something different.”
I was boiling with the wish to reach him, to wring his neck or drag him close or just touch his skin. The urge was so wild it made me dizzy, nauseous. I thought about what the man upstairs wanted. That we break, that we give up.
But I didn’t want to give up. Not quite. Not if he was still breathing.
I curled up on my side, spine to the divider, and tried to think about anywhere but here: Lillian’s laugh, the way the tile in our kitchen always stayed cold even in summer, the ache of being fourteen and wanting to crawl out of my own skin.
Every memory was haunted by Caiden, a flicker at the edges, a shadow in the picture.
It was always him, even when I wanted it to be anyone else.
Caiden was picking at a scab on his elbow, eyes glassy, mouth half open like he’d been caught mid-curse and never got to finish.
He looked up, and I caught the flash of anger there, the old reflex, but then it dimmed to something worse. Pity.
I wanted to bite him for it.
“You keep staring,” he said. “Didn’t know you were so into horror shows.”
“I’m just waiting for you to finally decay into slime,” I said, not even looking away. “You’d be more pleasant company that way. Maybe I could use your corpse as a pillow.”
He shrugged, picking at a strip of peeling skin. “Go for it. Not like you ever wanted anything else from me.”
I rolled to my back. There were old water stains that looked like the silhouettes of bodies, or countries, or maybe just the last places people had been alive in this house.
“You think he’s coming back?” I asked, voice flat.
“He’s upstairs. I can hear him sometimes. Pacing. Or crying, maybe. He’s got problems.”
“Takes a psycho to know a psycho,” I said.
He rolled his eyes, but the lines in his face thawed a little. “You want to hear a joke?”
“No.”
He told it anyway: “What’s the difference between a basement and a coffin?”
I sighed. “Surprise me.”
“In a coffin, at least somebody gives you flowers when you finally shut up.”
I barked a laugh. “I could almost smother you if I could reach through the divider. You’re not funny, you know that, right?”
He grinned, or at least showed his teeth. “You keep saying that, but you keep listening.”
He was always better at making you want to die than at making you feel alive, but here, at the bottom of the food chain, maybe that was a kindness.
Maybe he was the closest thing to comfort I’d ever get.
I felt the panic rising, the urge to claw out of my skin.
I pressed my face to the divider, exhaling until the sweat on my upper lip fogged the spot, and watched him, blurry and distorted, on the other side.
He mimicked me, his breath the same, and for a moment our fog blots kissed, merged, evaporated.
I didn’t want to let go, but I wanted to run, to bash my head against the wall until there was nothing left to think or feel.
I wanted both. I wanted Caiden to crawl through the glass and smother me, to eat me alive if it meant I wouldn’t die alone.
Instead, he said, voice lower than before, “If you had to choose, would you rather starve to death or be shredded by that bastard upstairs?”
I thought about it. “Starvation is easier. You get to hallucinate a little before the end. Plus, your body eats itself. It’s poetic, in a way. The only time you’re truly self-sufficient.”
He snorted. “That’s the most you answer I ever heard.”
“And you?” I said, curious in spite of myself.
“I’d rather be eaten. At least there’s a fight. At least you don’t die for nothing.” His throat flexed. “My dad would respect that.”
I made a disgusted noise, deep in my chest, the way you do when you smell something rotten but are too tired to move away. “Don’t start talking about your dad like he’s a role model.”