Chapter 5
DAMIEN
She forgot me.
Again.
I feel it in the way she breathes—those shallow, panicked hitches that tell me she’s a stranger in her own skin. I feel it in the tension of her muscles, the way she reacts to my touch like it’s a brand and not a homecoming.
The way she says my name like it’s something new in her mouth. Like the syllables are jagged stones she’s never tasted before, instead of the prayer I’ve forced her to swallow every night in the dark of my own head.
The way she clings to me like she doesn’t know she already promised to stay. She holds on with the desperation of someone drowning, unaware that I am the anchor she tied to her own feet years ago.
She forgot me.
But that’s okay.
That’s okay.
That’s okay.
The words rhythm themselves against the back of my teeth. A mantra. A penance. I remember enough for both of us. My mind is a museum of things she’s discarded, a vault of every touch, every tear, every broken vow.
I remember the quiet place. I remember the way the air felt like it was made of lead, pressing into our lungs until we were nothing but shadows.
I remember the songs she used to hum. Low, vibrating melodies that lived in the hollow of her throat, meant to drown out the sound of the heavy footsteps in the hallway.
I remember her hands braided in my hair, telling me to stay still, stay quiet, stay good. Those small, trembling fingers weaving my hair into tight, neat rows while she whispered lies about safety into the shell of my ear.
She told me I’d be safe if I didn’t make a sound. She told me he’d take someone else if I was good enough. She told me she wouldn’t leave.
But she did.
The betrayal isn’t a sharp cut; it’s a slow rot. She left me in the quiet place. She walked out of the dark and left me to become a part of it. She forgot. She scrubbed the wax stains from her knees and the ash from her heart and left me to burn.
And now I have to keep her here.
Tight.
Caged.
Locked so deep she can’t crawl out of me again. I need her so close that our heartbeats lose their individual rhythm and become one singular, thundering pulse. I need her so trapped that her memories have nowhere to go but back to me.
The chain rattles when she shifts on my lap, a sharp, metallic bite that cuts through the hum of the surveillance monitors.
The sound is a symphony. The weight of it soothes the buzzing in my teeth, the itch in my spine, the ache in the place where she left me.
The cold iron is the only thing that feels solid in a world built on her amnesia.
I bury my hand in her hair, the strands catching against the callouses of my palms, and press my lips to her temple. My skin feels like fire against hers.
“You won’t forget me this time.”
She shudders in my arms, a violent, full-body tremor that travels from her shoulders down to the tips of her toes.
Good.
She should feel me there. She should feel the weight of every second I spent waiting. She should feel me like I feel her—splintered across my ribs, stitched under my skin, carved between the cracks of the place I never crawled out of. I am the scar she can’t see, the shadow she can’t outrun.
The quiet place.
I drag my fingers down the chain, the links clinking in a slow, rhythmic count. Cold metal coiling in my palm like a sleeping snake.
“You promised you’d save me.” Her breath stutters against my neck, a warm, moist puff of air that makes my vision blur. “You promised.”
The words loop. They’ve always looped. In the basement. In the chapel. In the years of silence that followed. They are the only record of the girl she used to be.
They’ve always looped.
I can’t remember the first time I said them. Maybe I never stopped. Maybe my entire life has just been one long, exhaled breath of that broken promise.
I press my mouth to her pulse, soft, careful, tasting the salt of her skin and the frantic echo of the promise she forgot. It beats against my lips—save me, save me, save me.
I close my eyes.
And I see it.
The chapel door. The heavy oak, scarred with age. The one that never shut. The one that stood ajar like a mouth waiting to swallow us whole. The one I thought would save me if I closed it hard enough, if I threw my weight against it until my bones cracked.
But it never did. It never stayed closed. The world always found its way back in.
I see her.
Little hands. Small, pale, and dirt-smudged. Braiding my hair. Counting my breaths—one, two, three. Telling me to stay still. Telling me to be quiet. Telling me that if I disappeared into the floorboards, I’d be invisible.
I see the priest.
His shoes. Polished black leather that reflected the candlelight. His rosary. The clicking of the beads like a countdown.
I hear his voice telling me I was good when I stayed. I hear the way he praised my silence, the way he treated my terror like a gift.
I hear her voice telling me I’d be safe if I didn’t scream. Her voice was the only thing that kept me from shattering, and it was the very thing that bound me to the altar.
I remember crying. I remember begging.
But I don’t know who I begged.
The memories are a shattered mirror, reflecting a thousand different versions of the same nightmare. I don’t know if I begged her. Or him. Or both. I don’t know if I was begging for mercy or for an end.
The memory glitches. Stutters. Fractures into a million jagged pieces of blue light and incense smoke.
Maybe I begged her not to leave me.
Maybe I begged him not to take me.
Maybe I begged myself to forget.
But only one of us succeeded in forgetting.
I press my lips to the scar on her ribs. My mouth finds the mark through the fabric of her shirt, a mapping of old pain.
The one I saw when we were little. The one I touched when we hid behind the altar, our shoulders touching, our breaths held in unison. The one I told her would keep her safe—a talisman, a secret, a brand of our shared survival.
She always forgot that part.
I didn’t. Every time I close my eyes, I see that scar. It’s the North Star of my madness.
My chest shudders. A violent, racking motion that makes the chain sing. My grip on the iron tightens until the links bite into my knuckles.
“You forgot me,” I whisper.
But it’s not angry. It’s not the roar of a monster. It’s not cruel. It’s not a weapon meant to draw blood.
It’s a bruise. It’s the ache of a ghost limb. It’s the soft part that never healed, the raw nerve that I’ve kept exposed for a decade just to make sure I was still alive.
I press my mouth to her throat, feeling the vibration of her terror.
Her breath catches.
“You won’t forget this time.” My voice cracks, the sound of old wood snapping under the weight of snow. “I won’t let you.”
Because if she forgets me again—if she manages to wash me away a second time—I’ll be nothing.
If she leaves me again—walking back into a world that doesn’t know the quiet place exists—I’ll be a ghost in an empty house.
If she lets him take me again—by forgetting the boy who stood in her place—I won’t survive it.
Not this time.
I drag my teeth across her pulse, biting down just hard enough to mark her. I want the sting to stay. I want her to feel the phantom of my teeth every time she turns her head. To keep her here. To keep her mine.
“You’ll stay,” I murmur, my breath shuddering against her skin, hot and desperate.
She nods. A small, frantic movement against my chest.
“I’ll stay.”
The words soothe the buzzing in my skull, momentarily silencing the static of the past. But they don’t settle the tremble in my ribs. They don’t stop the shaking in my hands.
Because I know her. I know the way her mind works—how it builds walls to hide the things that hurt. I know she forgets things. I know she promised before. I know she broke it before. She is a creature of escape, and I am a creature of the cage.
But I’ll keep her this time. I’ll be the walls she can’t build. I’ll cage her this time, so tight that there is no room for anything but us. I’ll lock her so deep even she won’t be able to forget, because her every breath will belong to me.
I don’t know how long I’ve been holding her like this.
Minutes? Hours? Days? Time has no meaning in the quiet place. The clocks stopped meaning anything when I locked her here. The only thing that matters is the friction of her skin against mine.
The chain drags when she moves, a low, grinding sound against the floorboards. The weight of it soothes me. It’s the anchor. It’s the truth.
It’s the sound of now. It’s the heavy, undeniable proof that she hasn’t vanished. It’s the sound of her still being here.
But sometimes when I blink, I see something else. The blue light of the monitors fades, and the chapel walls rise up around us.
Something older. Something smaller.
Her hands in my hair. I can feel the ghostly pull of her fingers. Braiding. Tight. Neat. She was always better at braiding—she had the patience for it, the steady hands I never possessed.
I see the dust on the chapel floor, dancing in the light of the stained glass. I see the wax stains on the pews, the dried tears of a thousand candles. I see the rosary tucked in the pocket of my uniform, the beads cold against my thigh.
I see her telling me to count.
Count the candles. Count the steps. Count the breaths. Stay still. Stay quiet. Be good.
I told her I didn’t want to stay. I remember the whining in my voice, the way I tugged at her sleeve.
But she told me I had to. She told me if I was good enough, he’d stop. He’d get bored of a boy who didn’t fight. He’d leave me alone.
She promised.
But he didn’t stop. The worship only grew more fervent. And she left me. She walked out into the sun and let the door latch behind her.
She left me there.
I drag my fingers down the chain until the metal cuts into my palm, the pain grounding me in the present. The weight keeps me here. Keeps me now. Keeps me from slipping too far into the memory that tastes too much like a lie.
Did she really leave me?