Chapter 9
AMELIA
Tonight, we all lost ourselves in the orbit of alcohol. The others were blasting music, mingling among themselves and making memories that they’d forget by morning.
I stood in the empty corridor, swaying, lost in the depths of the dark. I wondered if I walked out and left, would anybody notice? Would I float away and disappear? Or would my shadow spread and fill the space like fog?
The night was a blur, and the moon glared down from its position in the sky. I remembered being underneath that same moon with Caiden in Colorado. The fury in his stare, the heat of his breath, the strength of his arms as he held me after I nearly drowned in the river.
That moon witnessed our fury, our hunger, our terror, our trauma, our consuming desire for each other. I peered out the window and could almost see Blake’s shadow in the light of the moon, standing in the darkness of the sea, watching.
My breath picked up, and suddenly I couldn’t see straight. Chills lathered my skin. The walls felt too close, too suffocating. I needed out.
Not bothering with shoes, I flung the door open and disappeared into the dark.
The waves were black glass under the moon. Cold, endless, hungry. I wandered where the sand turned wet and hard, the wind flaying my bare arms, the taste of salt and something feral on my tongue.
I needed the night to swallow me whole, needed silence, but the world wouldn’t give it. Every step was a memory, a ghost, a bruise I pressed just to see if I could still feel pain.
Somewhere behind me, laughter spun out from the house, too bright, too alive. I walked faster. My feet left shallow prints, erased every time the water surged up, greedy and quick, swallowing the evidence. I wanted to be erased too.
The sea was a tyrant. Pulling, threatening. I thought about Colorado, about rivers that turned to traps, about cages and glass, terror and heat, and the way Caiden’s hands had bled for me, the way his eyes had promised pain and rescue all at once.
A crunch in the sand behind me. I froze, back prickling, pulse gone fast.
“Amelia.” His voice was low, ruined, smoke-rough from drinking and things he never said.
I didn’t turn. Didn’t need to. I felt him. His presence, his fury, his hunger. My body responded before my mind did: heart stuttering, heat pooling low, legs rooted.
He caught my arm hard enough to make me gasp, spinning me, dragging me into the shadow between the dunes. The moon set his features in silver: jaw clenched, eyes black and endless, mouth twisted in something like agony.
“Why are you following me?” I managed, but my voice was a lie. I knew why. I wanted him here as much as I wanted to run.
His grip was bruising. “You shouldn’t be out here alone. You don’t know what kind of monsters come out after midnight.”
He body caged mine, moonlight sliding over his shoulders. The ache inside me was an old wound reopening. Colorado and every night since. My fear and my need were the same thing. I hated him for it. I needed it.
“I’m not scared of monsters,” I whispered. My voice shook. Lie, lie, lie.
He laughed, low and broken. “You should be. Especially when I’m like this.” His hand slid to my throat, thumb under my jaw, holding my head steady so I couldn’t look away. “You have no fucking idea what you do to me, do you?”
I tried to jerk away, his grip tightened. My breath caught. “Caiden—”
He leaned in, his mouth barely above mine, his eyes wild. “I think about you. All the time. I can’t fucking sleep. I see you with him, and all I want to do is drag you away, mark you up, make you remember whose you are. I want to ruin you for anyone else. I want you obsessed. Like me.”
He was shaking, hands rough, voice raw. The wind howled. The sea bruised the shore.
“I dream about Colorado,” I said, voice small. “The cage. The river. You bleeding for me. You breaking for me. Sometimes I wake up wanting it all over again.”
He stilled. I saw the truth in his eyes. Terror, hunger, shame.
“You want the darkness,” he whispered.
He kissed me. Nothing gentle. His mouth crashed down, teeth, tongue, a violence I matched, opening for him, clawing at his shirt, needing him to hurt me, anchor me, make me real. His hands were everywhere–gripping, bruising, showing me I was his. That I’d never be anyone else's.
He pulled back, stared down at me, chest heaving. “I’d kill anyone who touched you. I’d burn this whole fucking world to keep you. I hate it. I hate you for making me want this.”
“I hate you too,” I whispered, voice trembling, but my body arched up for more.
The ocean raged onwards. The world could have ended right then, and I’d have thanked it. I was drowning again, but this time I wanted to go under, wanted to see what waited in the dark.
A lyric drifted up from the house, bass low, pulsing: “You’re my bad habit, my sweet disease…”
He kissed me again, bruising, desperate, like he could bite the need out of me. I let him. I needed it.
“We’re poison,” I breathed.
His hands fisted in my hair, yanking my head back so I had to look at him, darkness and moonlight and ruin in his stare. “That’s never stopped us before.”
I tried to catch my breath, head tipped back, chest heaving against his. Every nerve along my neck sang where his mouth had marked me. But under the rush, something colder threaded through me. The memory of that basement, the cage, Blake’s eyes staring through the glass.
Flat, inhuman. Starved for terror.
I blinked and for a heartbeat, it was Caiden’s face above me, not Blake’s. Those same eyes, but wilder, hotter, dangerous in a different way. Hungry not for pain, but for me. I flinched, old fear grinding up from somewhere deep.
He felt it, of course he did. His grip tightened on my jaw. “Don’t drift.”
I shoved at his chest, nails digging into muscle. "You scare me sometimes," I said, the words ripped out. Bare for him.
He didn't let go. "Good." A savage smile, the moon making his eyes glow, shadows cutting his cheekbones. "I want you scared. I want you to remember what I’m capable of. I want you to remember that cage. Remember me on the other side, going insane because I couldn’t get to you.”
My heart tripped, stuttering between horror and longing. "I do remember." The words came out broken. "Sometimes I wake up, and it's not Blake behind the glass, it’s you. You’re the one watching me. You’re the one who could hurt me."
His thumb slid over my lips, rough, a silent demand to surrender. Every part of me wanted to give in, to let him take me, but something fought back. Old terror, old rage. I shoved him again, harder.
He held me still, breathing ragged. "You think I don't know that? Every second, I remember. I remember wanting to kill for you. Wanting to tear the world apart. Wanting to tear you apart."
His words shivered down my spine. Truth and threat, desire and violence knotted together. The sea boomed, a dark chorus. Down the beach, laughter; up here, only the pulse of our ruin.
“You’re drunk,” I whispered, voice shaking. “You’ll hate yourself tomorrow.”
He leaned in, breath hot on my ear. “I hate myself now.” His hand slid down my waist, fingers digging in, bruising. “But I need you more than I need forgiveness.”
That ache, raw and dark, bloomed inside me. I remembered the cold of the cage, the taste of fear, the heat of his hands when he broke through to save me. I remembered wanting him, even then.
His mouth was on mine again, all teeth, tearing at me, desperate. I kissed him back, just as hungry, just as lost. I wanted to be good. But I wanted this more: his darkness, his violence, the way he looked at me like I was the only thing keeping him alive.
“All these voices in my head, I can’t escape…” The lyric drifted, low, dirty, from the house, an anthem for the monsters we’d become.
The tide licked at my ankles, cold and merciless, as if the dark water would swallow me whole if I just stepped in a little further. Part of me ached for it. To be washed clean, to disappear beneath the ink-black surface and let the ache in my chest dissolve with the moonlight.
I was nothing but nerves and need and bone-deep emptiness, the world muffled and distant, every sound blurred by the rush of blood in my ears.
Caiden’s hands still gripped me, bruising, grounding. I couldn’t tell if I wanted to scream or sob or just let him devour what was left.
His mouth crashed against mine again, sloppy and desperate. Whiskey and salt and something wild. I drank him in, needing to fill the hollow, needing to feel anything but this blankness gnawing at my insides.
He pulled back, breathing ragged, his forehead pressed to mine.
“You think you’re lost?” His voice was raw, dangerous.
“I wake up every night tasting you, needing you, and you’re never there.
I want to crawl inside your skin and never leave.
I want to ruin you so bad you forget who you are without me. ”
A shudder ran through me. The words should have scared me, but they felt like a lifeline. Proof that someone, somewhere, wanted me enough to break for it.
The sea crashed, harder now, a black fist pounding the shore. Numbness closed in, cold and safe.
I clung to him, fingers twisted in his shirt, my plea silent: don’t leave me alone inside this emptiness.
But suddenly, he did. He yanked away, stumbling back, eyes fever-bright and haunted. “Fuck,” he spat, voice cracking, and stared at me like I was a wound he’d made and couldn’t close.
For a moment, I thought he’d lunge again, pin me down, finish what we’d started. Instead, he staggered a step away, rage and longing rippling off him like heat.
“You’re my suicide, you’re my sin…” The lyric throbbed out from the house, echoing my own ruin.
He swore, fists clenched at his sides. “I can’t—” His voice broke, softer now, almost pleading. “If I stay, I’ll break you. I’ll break myself.”
And then, with the sand caving under his feet, he turned and walked into the darkness, leaving me trembling, mouth swollen, throat aching, aching everywhere. Empty and breathless and wanting, always wanting, with nothing left but the bruise of his hands and the echo of him in my blood.
I stood in the darkness, lost and vanishing, the sea roaring louder, as if it would take me too if I let it. The only proof I’d ever been touched at all was the ache he left behind.