Chapter 11 #2
I stare at him, heart hammering against my ribs, because I don’t even know who he is but I know exactly who Damien means.
The man with the shoes. The one from the chapel.
The one who left the rosary. Damien cups the side of my face, his thumb brushing just under my eye, and his touch is too gentle for someone who’s done the things he’s confessed.
“I didn’t find you again,” he murmurs. “I never fucking let you go.”
The breath leaves me in a shudder. “You sound insane.”
“I am insane,” he whispers, pressing his forehead to mine. “You’re the only thing that ever made it bearable.”
I hate the way my heart clenches. Hate the way I want to believe it. Hate the part of me that does. Because the way he says it doesn’t sound like manipulation. It sounds like mourning.
“I would’ve let you live your life,” he whispers. “But he came back. And I couldn’t watch him touch what I bled to protect.” He swallows. “I couldn’t watch him take you.”
I don’t know what’s worse—his obsession or his grief. Or the terrifying realisation that the two have always been the same thing.
The way he’s looking at me now isn’t just hunger. It’s ruin. It’s every year he spent in the dark folding itself into a single moment and pressing against my skin.
“I don’t understand,” I whisper, my voice shaking. “If you were there… if you saw… why didn’t you stop him then?”
Damien closes his eyes, exhales through his teeth like he’s holding back a scream.
“I was a kid,” he says. “A fucking scared kid hiding behind a wall. The first time I tried, he caught me. He made me watch. He made me promise to stay quiet or he’d drag you out of that pew and—” He cuts himself off, jaw locking. “I wanted to kill him then. I tried. I wasn’t strong enough.”
He looks at me again, eyes blazing, not with rage but with something worse—a self-loathing so deep it makes my ribs ache. “I couldn’t save myself,” he murmurs. “But I could keep him from you. And I did. I got him away from you every time I could. You don’t even know how close it was.”
My stomach knots. Images flash—a hand on my shoulder, a sudden noise down the hall, the priest vanishing from the room. All the times I thought it was luck. All the times a boy with moths might have been standing in the dark making it happen.
“You’re lying,” I whisper, but it sounds weak even to me.
“I don’t lie to you,” Damien says. “Not about this. I’ve lied about who I am, what I do, where I go.
But not about this.” He steps closer. His voice drops, hoarse and viciously soft.
“You think you’re the only one with scars?
I have your screams memorised. I know the weight of your breath when you were scared.
I know how your humming changed when you were trying not to cry.
That’s what I listened to every night. That’s what kept me from putting a blade in my throat. ”
Tears sting my eyes. “Why me?” I choke. “Why couldn’t you just… leave it? Why find me again?”
His fingers frame my jaw, trembling, like he’s holding a relic instead of a face.
“Because I’m not finished,” he whispers.
“Because every night I left you there, I promised myself if you made it out, I’d find you and make sure nobody ever touched you again.
Because I’d rather be your monster than watch you burn. ”
His forehead rests against mine, his breath a tremor. “You were the only light in that place,” he says. “And I don’t give a fuck if I have to drag you into my darkness to keep you alive. I’ll do it. I’ll do it again. I’ll do it until you hate me.”
My hands are on his chest, fists curled, but I don’t push him away.
His voice drops lower, rougher, breaking.
“I came back because I’m selfish,” he says.
“Because I can’t watch him take you. Because I can’t watch him finish what he started.
Because even if you don’t remember, I do, and it kills me every time I close my eyes. ”
He tilts his head, eyes locked to mine, and the next words come out like a vow carved into bone. “You’re the only thing I’ve ever done right,” he breathes. “And I’ll burn for you before I let anyone else touch you.”
The room tilts around us. The chain on my ankle rattles when I shift, and the sound feels like a heartbeat echoing off the walls.
I want to tell him to stop. I want to tell him to keep going.
I want to tell him I remember. But I don’t.
I just stare at him, shaking, while the boy with the moths and the man with the spider voice blur into one shadow in front of me.
And for the first time, I’m not sure if I’m terrified of him—or of what I’m starting to feel.
His thumb still traces my jaw, but the look in his eyes changes; darker, softer, something like a wound opening under the skin.
“You said…” My voice trembles. “Before. In the kitchen. You said I left you there.”
His breath catches. “You did,” he murmurs.
“I didn’t,” I whisper back. “I didn’t even know you were there.”
His hand slides from my jaw to the back of my neck, holding me gently but firmly, like he’s trying to stop me from slipping out of his hands the way he thinks I slipped out of his life.
“You went home,” he says, eyes burning into mine. “They took you away. I stayed. You didn’t come back.”
“I was a child,” I breathe. “I didn’t know—”
“I know.” His voice cracks. “I know. But it didn’t feel like that. It felt like you left me there to rot while you got saved.”
My heart clenches until it hurts. “I didn’t even know your name,” I whisper.
He laughs once—a sound with no joy in it. “I didn’t have one you could say out loud. I was just the boy behind the wall. The one who watched you hum while he tried not to scream.”
My knees go weak. The room blurs. “I thought you were imaginary,” I choke. “I thought you were a dream I made up to survive.”
His grip tightens just enough to anchor me.
“I was real,” he says, low and wrecked. “And every time you hummed, it was the only thing that made me believe I wasn’t.
” He leans closer, voice hoarse. “You didn’t mean to leave me,” he whispers.
“But I watched you walk out of that place and I stayed. And in my head, it became you leaving me. It became you walking away.”
The ache in his voice is worse than any threat. “And when I found you again,” he says, “I swore you’d never walk away again.”
I swallow hard, the weight of his confession heavy in my chest. “You think that’s what you’re doing now? Keeping me from walking away?” I whisper.
His lips hover by my ear, his breath a tremor. “I think I’m trying to put us back where we should’ve been before the world fucked it up,” he says. “And I don’t know how to do it without breaking you.”
The chain rattles when I shift, metal against skin, and the sound fills the silence between us. “I didn’t leave you,” I say again, softer this time, like I’m trying to give the words back to the boy he used to be. “I didn’t know you were there.”
His eyes close. His forehead presses to mine. His fingers tremble against my neck. “I know,” he whispers. “I just didn’t know how to stop blaming you.”
And for the first time, I feel him crack. Not rage. Not dominance. Just a boy still trapped in the chapel, finally telling the truth.
He doesn’t pull away. Not all the way. His mouth is still close enough to ruin me, his breath warm on my skin, but there’s something raw bleeding out of him now—something unguarded.
“I used to wonder,” he murmurs, “if you forgot me… or if forgetting was how you survived.”
My chest tightens. “Damien—”
He pulls back just enough to look at me. And then he says it. The words that split something open inside me. “You used to count the cracks in the ceiling. Said it helped when the priest came in.”
My blood runs cold. I blink. But the room tilts. Because I know that voice. Not Damien’s. The other one. The one I used to hear before the footsteps stopped outside the door. Before the air got still. Before my fingers clutched the sheets so hard I thought I’d disappear into them.
“If you count to thirty, he won’t last past fifteen.”
I stagger backward, the memory slamming into me like a fist. A fragment.
A whisper. A voice I shouldn’t remember.
My knees give. I fall against the wall, sliding down, hands to my ears even though there’s no sound anymore, just silence and numbers and the dull throb of something I buried too deep to name.
“Raven?” Damien’s voice is sharp now—panicked.
But I can’t look at him. Because the numbers won’t stop. One. Two. Three. Cracks in the ceiling. My voice, small. Shaky. Another voice behind the wall, whispering numbers with me. A boy. A boy who counted the seconds so I didn’t count the pain. Twelve. Thirteen. Fourteen.
He was real. He was real. He was real.
“Fuck,” I gasp. My hands claw at the collar around my throat, like it’s what’s keeping the memory inside. “No, no, no—”
He’s beside me in an instant, gripping my arms. “What did you remember?” His voice is low, urgent. “Tell me what you saw.”
“I—” My breath catches. “I didn’t see anything.”
He stills. “But you heard something,” he says. And I realise what he’s doing. He’s not asking me to remember for me. He’s trying to confirm if I remember him.
I lift my head slowly. Look him in the eye. “You were there,” I whisper.
He doesn’t answer. But I see it in the way his pupils dilate. In the way his grip tightens. In the way his breath comes harder, sharper, as if just being seen is enough to shake him.
“You counted with me,” I say, voice cracking. “You were the one who whispered through the wall.”
Damien’s jaw clenches. But he doesn’t deny it. He just says: “I counted because I knew if I heard you counting back… you were still alive.”
His words don’t echo—they settle. They seep into the cracks inside me like water through stone until the weight of them is heavier than air.
I can still hear the numbers. I can still feel the dust on my knees.
I can still taste the metal in my mouth from biting down on fear.
And the boy. Not just a shadow. Not just a trick of survival. He was real. He was here. He’s him.
I don’t know if I want to throw up or hold him.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” My voice is raw, small. “Why didn’t you tell me it was you?”
Damien’s hands are still on my arms. His thumb rubs slow circles against my skin, almost absent, like he’s calming me or himself. His eyes are dark, unreadable, but I can see the tremor at the corner of his mouth.
“I wanted to,” he says softly. “A thousand times. Every time you walked past me. Every time you smiled at someone else. Every time you forgot.” His breath catches. “But you looked free. And I was still chained to it. I didn’t want to drag you back.”
I swallow hard. My pulse is loud in my ears. “You dragged me back anyway,” I whisper.
His jaw tenses. “Because he’s not done,” he says. “Because the man who left that rosary isn’t going to stop with gifts.”
A shiver runs through me. “You know who he is,” I say. It’s not a question.
“I don’t have a face yet.” He releases my arms, moves back a step, runs a hand through his hair. His other hand is still clenched in a fist like he’s holding something invisible. “I’ve been waiting for him to surface,” he says. “Watching. Setting traps. But he’s always one move ahead.”
He looks at me again—and there’s something manic behind the softness now, a sharp edge glinting under velvet. “You’re not bait,” he says, almost to himself. “You’re not bait. You’re mine.”
The words hit me like a punch and a caress all at once. I should hate it. I should run. But my body’s already shaking in a way that feels like recognition.
“I’m scared,” I whisper. It’s the first time I’ve said it out loud.
His gaze softens, but his voice stays lethal. “Good,” he murmurs. “Stay scared of him. Stay close to me. Let me be the monster between you and the dark.”
He moves closer, lowers his voice until it’s almost a growl against my ear. “You have no idea what I’m willing to do to keep him from touching you again.”
A tremor crawls down my spine. My breath shudders. The memory of numbers is still there, counting down in the back of my skull.
“What are you going to do?” I ask.
His eyes flick to the black monitor, then back to me. “Whatever it takes,” he says. “I’m going to finish what I started.”
I open my mouth to ask what that means—but the monitor flickers. Not static. Not noise. A single image, crisp and clear:
The chapel. Tonight. Lit by candles that shouldn’t be burning.
Beneath the image, a message:
COME ALONE.
My stomach knots. Damien’s hand slams down on the table hard enough to rattle the monitor. He doesn’t look at me when he speaks.
“He’s calling us back,” he says quietly.
No. Not us.
“Calling you,” I whisper.
His eyes lift to mine—and there’s nothing left of softness now. Only the boy behind the wall, the man with the spider voice, the shadow that’s been waiting in the dark.
“I’m not letting you out of my sight,” he says.
And for the first time since this started, I don’t know if that’s a promise or a threat.