Chapter 57 The Present
THE PRESENT
CAIDEN
The woods felt different after a cage.
We stumbled through undergrowth with the kind of urgency that wasn’t hope. It was flight. It was my nerves still convinced the cabin had hands reaching after us.
Amelia walked a few steps ahead, arms wrapped tight around herself. Her gait was uneven, stiff. Like her joints had forgotten how to exist without concrete under them.
I kept my face calm. I kept my shoulders loose, my pace steady, like I wasn’t shaking on the inside. Like my hands weren’t still remembering the feel of a handle in my grip. Like I hadn’t taken a life and felt it end.
Every time I blinked, I saw it.
Not the gore. Not the mess. The moment.
The split second where I crossed a line I couldn’t uncross and realized I didn’t feel regret first.
I felt relief. That was the part that made me sick.
I didn’t kill him because I’m a hero. I killed him because my storm finally found a target it could justify. He’d put his hands on her and he’d made her eyes go hollow, he’d turned us into entertainment. Something in me snapped and said enough.
The wilderness swallowed sound the way water swallowed bodies. It made our footsteps softer, our breathing loud.
We crested a ridge and the trees thinned for a bit, a ripple of sun turning her hair almost blue-black.
She hesitated, one hand wrapped around her skinny wrist like it was the only thing keeping her anchored. We hadn’t talked about what happened. Not really. I think both of us knew it would break us open if we did.
“Think we’re getting closer to the river?” She cleared her throat, eyes darting to my hands before she looked away.
“Looks like it,” I said. It was all I could manage. There are only so many words after you kill a man.
She nodded, picking at the blood under her nails. Wasn’t even her blood, mostly. I caught the tremor in her shoulders; she shoved it down like she always did.
We kept walking.
The undergrowth was thick, grabbing at our legs. Branches cracked under my boots and every so often, a crow called, like it couldn’t wait to pick apart what was left of us.
“Do you think…” She trailed off, hesitated, like maybe it was better to say nothing. Then: “Do you think it’s colder now, or is that just me?”
I almost laughed. Of course she was cold.
She’d lost weight since we first got locked in.
Cheekbones cutting sharp, wrists all bone, skin nearly translucent with shock and starvation.
The sun did nothing out here. It was always cold, always damp.
But more than that, I knew the kind of cold she was talking about.
I grunted. “Probably both.”
She looked at me sidelong. I could feel her staring at the blood on my hands, the way it had dried in the cracks. She shivered. “My fingers are freezing.”
It just happened.
I reached out and took her hand. Her fingers were icy, trembling. I pressed them between mine, trying to rub some heat back in. For a second, neither of us breathed.
I could feel her pulse in her knuckles, the faint twitch of her heartbeat. She blinked at me, eyes huge and wild, and I thought about kissing her just to see what would happen.
Instead, I let go like I’d been burned.
She jerked her hand back, hiding it in her sleeve.
We stood there in the silence, surrounded by the hush of the woods, and I could feel the tension spiking between us.
“Sorry,” I muttered, though I wasn’t sure what for. Touching her, or stopping. Or wanting to do it again.
She exhaled, a faint, shaky laugh. “No, it’s… Thank you.”
We didn’t move for a long second. I studied the ground. My hands twitched, remembering the knife, remembering skin parting and bone giving way and the weird relief of being able to do something—anything—to fight back.
“I keep thinking it’s over,” she said softly. “But it doesn’t feel over.”
“Yeah.” My voice was rough. “I know what you mean.”
We started walking again. Every time her shoulder brushed mine, a jolt went down my spine, as if the violence of the escape had rewired me and now even something gentle, something as simple as warming her hand, hurt more than the wounds I carried.
Time spun out, unspooling between us. The trees got denser, the ground dipped and rose. Once, when I lost my balance, she caught my arm without thinking, steadying me. Her hand was so small I almost laughed. She let go quick, like she’d remembered herself too late.
The ghosts followed us. Him, the bastard I killed, the basement, the bulb, the smile. My father, watching from somewhere in the rot beneath the earth, probably laughing that his son turned out just like him.
But she was here, alive, and so was I. Maybe that was the only reason I could stand the blood, the ache, the memory.
Amelia broke the silence again. “Do you think anyone’s looking for us yet?” Her voice was too loud in the hush, but it was better than the quiet.
“They’ll come,” I said, whether I believed it or not. “They have to.”
She nodded, but didn’t look convinced.
For a while, the only sound was our breathing and the squelch of mud under our shoes. She started humming to herself, a weird twitchy melody, probably just to prove she was still alive. I tried not to look at her lips.
She stumbled on a root and almost went down. I caught her elbow, steadied her. Held on a beat too long, then forced myself to let go.
The light faded, and the cold came up out of the ground, gnawing at the edges of us. Her lips turned pale. She wrapped her arms around herself, trying to steal warmth from her ribs.
“Langston,” I said.
She looked up. “Yeah?”
“If you’re cold, say something.”
She gave me a look. Half challenge, half something I couldn’t name. “You’ll just let me freeze?”
I wanted to say, I’d murder a thousand men to keep you warm. Instead, I swallowed and shrugged.
Her mouth twitched like she could hear the words I didn’t say.
For a while longer, we were silent. I kept my hands jammed in my pockets, afraid of what I’d do if I let them out again.
When the woods finally opened into a low dip that smelled faintly of water, I let out a slow breath. We were still lost. Still hunted by what we’d done. But the space between us was crackling, tense, alive.
I could still feel her pulse in my hands.
I wanted to scratch.
The river was less a destination and more a line we crossed, like some mythic boundary between then and now.
We stumbled through the brush until it opened up, and there it was: not wide, but fast, the current chewing up pebbles and broken twigs, spitting them out downstream. I crouched at the bank, the mud cold under my knees.
Amelia dropped beside me, her hair in her face, her breathing shallow. We didn’t say anything for a while. Just sat there, both pretending the river mattered more than the silence chewing at our guts.
I watched my hands as I cupped river water and drank.
The motion was automatic. Blood had gotten under my nails, dark and stubborn, and it wouldn’t scrub out, not even in this icy current.
I stared down at my own reflection, and for a second, I saw him.
The kidnapper, or maybe my father, or maybe just the version of myself I killed back in that cabin.
Haunted, hollowed, still hungry for something I couldn’t name.
The water shivered with every movement, distorting my face. I didn’t look away.
Amelia broke the silence. “You ever wonder if you’re a good person?”
I snorted into my hand, water dripping down my wrist. “No point. Never have been.”
She didn’t laugh. She was watching me, the way you look at a wild animal. “I mean. After… everything. Does it ever get to you? Do you feel—”
She couldn’t say it.
So I said it for her. “Guilty?”
She nodded, lips pressed thin, eyes fixed right on me.
I shrugged, kept watching my reflection ripple and come apart. “No.”
She waited. Let it hang. Wouldn’t let me have the lie.
Finally, I broke first. “That’s bullshit.
Of course I do. I feel—” Words caught. I wanted to punch something, or maybe just dig my hands raw in the gravel until I bled out all over again.
“I feel fucking sick. Not ’cause I did it, but ’cause I had to.
Or maybe ‘cause I’d do it again. Hell, maybe it’s ’cause I don’t regret any of it.
I’m guilty for not being guilty enough. Does that even make sense? ”
She blinked, slow, like she had to process it.
“It makes sense,” she said, quiet. “I think. You’re angry.”
“Yeah. I am.” My voice scraped against my teeth. “He touched you. He hurt you. I wanted him dead. I wanted to be the one who did it.” The confession was raw. My own words almost made me flinch.
Amelia didn’t flinch. She just pulled her knees to her chest and stared at the river, its relentless motion chewing at the edges of the bank.
“It doesn’t go away,” she said after a while. “The sick feeling. I thought if I ever got free, it would stop. But it’s still there. Like the air’s thinner now.”
I nodded. Couldn’t stand the idea of touching her, not right now, not with these hands.
“Do you think we’ll forget?” she asked.
“No.” I let the syllable drop into the water, let it get carried away. “We don’t get to forget.”
She shivered. The wind cut sideways, yanking at her hair. The urge to reach out again, to warm her up, hit so hard I had to clench my fists just to keep from moving.
I dunked my hands in the river, let the cold bite into my bones. Rubbed at my skin until it stung. It didn’t take the blood away, didn’t clean me up. Just made me remember. This was who I was, now. The cage, the kill, the girl beside me looking for a reason not to be afraid.
She drifted closer, almost leaning into my side, but not quite. The tension between us, as sharp as that knife in the dark.
“If you could go back,” she asked, “would you do it different?”
I thought about it. About letting him live, about walking away, about the look on Amelia’s face every time he touched her. Maybe there was a better version of me somewhere, but I’d never met him.
“No,” I said, meaning it. “I’d just do it faster.”
She let out a breath, shaky but edged with relief, and her hand brushed my arm. Light, careful, as if she needed to make sure I was real.
For a moment, all the violence and horror and guilt dissolved into something else. Something raw, dazzling, a cracked mercy.
I looked down at my hands again, the blood trapped under the nails, and wondered if it would ever come out.
“I don’t know what I feel,” she said, voice shaky. “I don’t know how I’m supposed to feel. I hate you. I hated you. Then you saved me. Then you…” Her throat worked. “Then you killed him.”
I swallowed hard.
Saved her.
Like I’d earned that word.
The truth was uglier. I hadn’t saved her because I’m good. I’d saved her because I couldn’t stand the idea of her breaking under someone else’s hands. Because something protective had snapped awake in me like a guard dog unchained.
Because craving wasn’t just lust. It was need. It was possession. It was fear.
Amelia stood too, wobbling slightly. She steadied herself on a rock, jaw clenched.
“We need to keep moving,” I said, afraid of what might come out if I said anything else.
She nodded. “Yeah.”
We moved deeper into the wilderness, away from the cabin, away from the road we still hadn’t found, away from everything that felt like safety. The forest was damp and shadowed.
As we walked, Amelia slowed more than once. She stumbled on a root, caught herself, then kept going like nothing happened.
I noticed. Of course I noticed.
I stayed close enough to catch her if she went down. I told myself it was practical. She was smaller. Weaker right now. Dehydrated. Running on fumes. I told myself it wasn’t because the thought of her falling made my chest constrict.
The wind shifted. Leaves rattled. Somewhere in the distance, a bird called. The forest didn’t care what we’d survived. It only cared what we could survive next.
My fear wasn’t the wilderness anymore.
It was the way my feelings for Amelia were rising like something undead. The way the protective instinct didn’t feel like a choice. The way guilt and shame sat heavy in my chest, mixing with something that looked too much like wanting.
I stared at her profile, the line of her cheek, the way she hugged herself like she was trying to keep the pieces in.
I hated that I wanted to be the one holding her instead.
I kept my eyes on the trees, on the darkening path ahead, on anything that wasn’t her face.
But my mind kept circling back to the cabin, the moment my hands moved. To the fact that I’d crossed a line for her.
A line I used to pretend I’d never cross for anyone. And now that I had, the terror wasn’t the killing.
It was what it revealed.
That the boy who hated her had been built out of someone else’s poison. And the man who protected her might be real. That possibility sat in my chest.
I stood there in the fading light, jaw clenched, hands still dirty with a past I couldn’t scrub off.
And when Amelia finally stood and started walking again, I fell into step behind her without a word.
Close enough to catch her if she fell. Far enough to pretend it meant nothing because pretending was the only thing keeping me from admitting the truth.
That I was afraid of the woods. And I was more afraid of her.