Chapter 22
AMELIA
It was midday when Caiden texted me, asking where I was.
I replied and told him I am at Shane and Sabrina’s house, right where he left me. They were gone at work.
It wasn’t long before I heard the front door open, then shut. Footsteps approached the bedroom door, then a hesitant knock.
“Come in,” I mumbled, pulling the sheets further over me.
“Hey. Sorry to bother.” Caiden analyzed me as I laid there. Unwashed hair, curled into the sheets, a barren expression on my face.
“No worries. What is it?” Sighing, I sat up in bed, facing him.
He sat on the edge of the bed. “I thought about it, and I realized that you do need somebody with you, so I’ll come along when you go back to Pathosbury,” he hesitated before he spoke again. “I am here for you, believe it or not.”
I scoffed. “That’s ironic, coming from your mouth.”
He frowned. “What do you mean?”
“Nothing. Just that there was a time I couldn’t count on you for anything, except to torture me. Oh, how times have changed.” I know it was rude of me to throw that in his face, but I wasn’t exactly feeling like a pleasant person.
“Damn it, Amelia. I’m trying to be nice, but sometimes you make it so fucking hard.” His expression turned angry. It was terrifying sometimes to see how quickly he could switch.
“Maybe you should just forget about me, then. That’s what my mom did; she forgot about me and lost herself in drugs. Now she’s dead,” I snapped, the grief and rage invaded my head, making it impossible to think clearly, or act nicely.
He opened his mouth to say something, then stopped. He shut his eyes and began counting under his breath.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m grounding myself, so I don’t say something I’ll regret later.” His hands clenched at his sides as he counted and took deep breaths.
Instead of pushing him, I sat silently, waiting.
“I’m sorry about your mom. I know what it’s like to be forgotten.
But, I won’t forget about you anymore, or torture you, I’m trying to do good, so I’m coming with you whether you like it or not.
” He spoke in a determined way, anger still dancing like fire in his eyes, yet a softness overtook his demeanor.
Looking at him, I tried to remember that this is present Caiden, not past Caiden. I thought about his hands, how he touched me. I thought about how he kissed me. I thought about all the nice things he had said to me in the past weeks.
Why was it so hard to believe my own memory? Or to trust him? I wanted to so badly, but there was still a piece of me holding back.
“Okay, I suppose it would be better if you were there. I know I did ask you to come, so thank you.”
The thought of spending hours in a car with Caiden made my stomach twist. I had spent too many years being angry at him, too many years feeling his cruelty like a shadow hanging over me.
Now, here we were, about to embark on a road trip that would force us into close quarters, diving into shared memories I wasn't sure I was ready to face.
We had been lost in the wilderness together, but that was different. That was survival. We were exhausted, starved, traumatized, and hopeless. All we had was each other.
“Are you okay?” Caiden’s voice pulled me from my thoughts, and I realized I had been staring at the wall, lost in my own head.
“Yeah, just thinking.” I shrugged, trying to dismiss the turmoil. But the truth was, I was terrified. Terrified of facing my past, of my dead mother, of the memories that would flood back as soon as we hit the road. It had been seven years since I last saw her alive.
“Look, Amelia,” Caiden said, his voice softer now, his irritation gone. “I know this is hard for you. It’s a lot to process. But you don’t have to go through it alone.”
I felt the tears prickling at the corners of my eyes. “I don’t want to feel anything right now, Caiden. I just want to forget.”
“Well, we don’t have to talk about it. But, I understand what you mean.” He looked at me with that earnestness I had almost forgotten he could have. It made my heart ache in a way I didn’t want to acknowledge.
“Okay,” I replied, my voice barely above a whisper. “But I can’t promise I won’t lose my mind on you.”
“That’s the deal.” He cracked a small smile.
I pushed the sheets away and swung my legs over the side of the bed, feeling the cool air brush against my skin. It felt strange to be vulnerable with him, to allow him to see how broken I felt inside. “I don’t know how to do this. To face her corpse after everything.”
“I know,” Caiden said, his voice steady. “But you don’t have to have all the answers right now.”
I wanted to laugh at the absurdity of it all, driving back to bury my mother while trying to reconcile my feelings for the boy who had once been my enemy.
The memories of her flooded back. Her laughter, her anger, the times she’d promised she’d change, only to fall back into the darkness of her addiction.
“Do you think she even cared?” I asked, the words tumbling out before I could stop them. “I mean, she chose drugs over me. She left me alone.”
Caiden’s expression shifted as he tried to find the right words. “I think she cared in her own way. Addiction is a monster, Amelia. It takes people hostage. But it’s not your fault.”
I felt the familiar anger bubbling up. “But she chose to neglect me, she chose to hurt me. I keep thinking I was a bad daughter.”
“Maybe she was fighting her own battles. It doesn’t excuse her actions, but it might explain them, and you did your best, you did nothing wrong.
” He leaned closer, his eyes locked onto mine.
“You’re not alone in this. I had a parent with addiction too, except he was a piece of shit whether he was drunk or not. ”
I didn’t know how to respond. The truth was, I felt completely alone, even with him sitting right next to me. I was scared of how much I craved his presence, how much I needed someone to lean on in this moment. But I also feared how easily things could fall apart.
“Let’s just get this over with,” I stood, trying to mask the chaos inside me.
“Alright,” he said, standing up and stretching. “I’ll help.”
I gathered everything that I had unpacked and repacked it into my bags that I had from the beach trip.
I could feel Caiden's eyes on me, but I didn’t want to meet his gaze. I was too raw, too exposed, and I didn’t want him to see how fragile I felt.
I thought about my mother. About the years of neglect and disappointment, the hollow promises she made. I was angry and sad, confused about how I should feel. Should I be mourning her, or should I be relieved? I hated this whirlwind of emotions.
I took a deep breath, forcing myself to focus. I needed to push through this. I had to be strong. I couldn’t let my mother’s death define me.
But how could I not? She had been a part of my life, even with her addiction and the pain it brought.
I had a long way to go before I could be truly happy and at peace in life; the road stretched ahead like an uncharted territory. But this time, I wouldn’t be alone.
Finally.
The rest of the in-between time before I left passed in a haze.
The house was silent in the way only a house can be when all the living things inside it have gone slightly mad with sadness.
The TV ran, but with the volume down low, so whatever minor-key music played in the background just bled into the hum of the refrigerator and the soft, terminal cough of the HVAC.
I drifted between rooms, a sleepwalker, carrying the same mug of cold coffee through every permutation of the kitchen, the couch, the guest bed.
There was a sense of waiting, but for what, I never knew. I imagined myself a widow; I imagined myself a child again, waiting for judgment, for something heavy and inevitable to land.
Sabrina had tried to cheer me up by buying fresh flowers, which wilted almost instantly in their shallow vase. All the petals made a damp red circle on the countertop, like some minor crime scene.
I spent a whole hour one afternoon picking them up, petal by petal, and arranging them in the garbage for maximum neatness. It was a compulsion, a ritual of control. It didn’t help.
The first night after Caiden agreed to come home with me, I lay awake on top of the covers. I tried not to think about my mother’s body cooling on a slab or the long, silent drive that would carry us back toward everything I had run from.
I tried not to think about Caiden in the next room, folding and unfolding the same thoughts of violence and comfort, or about how he would never be mine in any way that made sense, a feral hunger braided with passion.
The next evening, I found myself trembling in the guest room, bare feet pressed to the cold planks, unsure whether my body or my mind was the lighter, more defective cage.
Grief had bled out of me in slow, viscous drips all day, soaking every pillow and windowpane, until I was nothing but a husk full of dread.
I waited until the house had gone silent except for the wind rattling the storm glass, then slipped from my room and padded down the stairs.
The basement door was closed, but I knew the exact sound it made when it opened: a soft, sucking whine, then a single shriek of the lowest stair.
I opened it and tiptoed down, gripping the rail with the desperation of a child. The air was colder here.
The lights were off, but the guest suite at the bottom of the stairs glowed faintly from the sliver of streetlamp that bled through a window.
I could see the faint shape of Caiden’s body curled on the mattress, his breathing so slow I suspected he might not be alive at all.
I stood just inside the door, frozen not by fear but by the conviction that if I made a noise, I’d shatter the spell that kept him here, in this house, in this bare, pitiful little bed at the end of the world.
I wanted to crawl in beside him and press my face into his back, to drink in the heat of his skin and let it convince me that some comfort still existed in the universe.
I wanted to be a child again, allowed to be needy, to be weak, to demand another human fill the void, even for a single hour.