4. Chapter 4- August #2
I should stop her. But I dig my fingertips into her scalp and down into her hair pulling at the seams.
“Did I touch you like this?”
“Sometimes.”
“Here?” Her thumb brushes my lower lip.
My breathing stops. “Yes.”
“Did you like it?”
“Lenora.”
“I’m curious.”
“You’re dangerous when you’re curious.”
“Apparently I’m dangerous all the time.”
She isn’t wrong.
Her finger traces the line of my mouth and every nerve in my body catches fire.
“Did you kiss me first?” she asks.
“Which time?”
“The first.”
“You did.”
She smiles. “Of course I did.”
“You were impatient.”
“Was I?”
I laugh.
She smiles.
And for a few seconds, we’re not cursed. We’re not dying. We’re not standing beside a tooth that crawled out of her hand. We’re simply a man and a woman standing too close in a bathroom at two in the morning.
Then her hand slides beneath the collar of my shirt.
Skin touches skin.
The memory hits. Hard.
Lenora gasps.
I see candlelight.
She sees it too.
A bedroom. 1897 her straddling my lap. My hands around her waist. Her forehead pressed to mine as she slowly rides my cock.
She whimpers as I thrust into her.
“Fuck Lenora, you’re always so goddamn tight.” I groan as her body shivers in my hold.
My fingers dig into her hips as she rolls them then tightens her cunt around my length.
“I’m going to cum, August.” She whines as I reach between us and pinch her clit.
Then the memory changes.
Me and her laying on a blanket in front of a fire place watching the flames curl up the chimney.
There’s no horror–no blood.
Just us.
“You’ll get tired of me,” she whispers.
“Never.”
“Everyone does.”
“I’m not everyone.”
“Promise?”
I kiss her. “I’ll love you until there’s nothing left of me.”
The memory shatters and we’re back in the present.
Neither of us speaks.
Lenora’s hand remains against my chest. Her eyes filled with tears. “You said that.”
I can’t breathe. I’ve missed her so fucking much and that memory took my breath away.
“August.”
“Take your hand off me.”
“You promised.”
“Lenora.”
“You promised you’d love me until there was nothing left of you.”
“Take your fucking hand off me.” I growl.
“Why?”
“Because I didn’t understand what I was promising.”
She looks down.
My shirt is moving. Not from breathing. Something beneath my skin shifts.
Her hand jerks away and pain rips through my chest.
I grab the counter.
“August!”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re not fucking fine.”
Another movement under my ribs.
I grit my teeth and she reaches for me.
“No!” I yell.
She freezes.
I breathe through the pain. Once. Twice. It passes slowly.
When I straighten, she’s staring at me horrified.
“What did I do?”
“Nothing.”
“I kissed you.”
“I kissed you back.”
“And now you’re...”
“I’m fine.”
“Stop saying that.” Her voice breaks. “I’m hurting you.”
“No.”
“You’re bleeding.”
I touch my nose.
Red.
Fuck.
She steps backward. This time, she’s the one putting distance between us.
Good.
This is what I wanted but why does it feel so unbearable?
“We can’t do that again.”
I nod.
Her eyes drop to my mouth.
Mine betray me and do the same.
“Ever?”
I should say yes. Instead…“Until we understand what’s different.”
Hope flickers across her face.
Fuck me. I am weak.
“Okay.”
“Okay.”
Neither of us moves.
Then she smiles. Small and sad. “That was a really good kiss.”
A laugh escapes me.
“Go to hell.”
“You first.”
“Been trying.”
She laughs.
God, I’ve missed that sound.
I look down at the tooth on the floor and reality returns. “Don’t touch that.”
“I wasn’t planning on making a necklace.”
I crouch and use a washcloth to pick it up. The drilled hole catches the bathroom light.
Something is inside it.
I bring it closer. A thread.
No.
Hair. A single strand has been fed through the hole and knotted.
Dark and long.
My stomach twists.
I know that hair.
“August?”
I don’t answer.
“What’s wrong?”
I unwrap the strand carefully. There’s something attached to it.
A tiny folded piece of paper. Old enough that it nearly disintegrates beneath my fingers.
Lenora moves closer. “Is that writing?”
“Yes.”
“What does it say?”
The ink has faded. But I can still read it. Because I’ve seen this handwriting before.
Not Lenora’s.
Mine.
My hands begin to shake.
“What?” she asks.
“I wrote this.”
Her face changes. “You said you’ve never seen the tooth.”
“I haven’t.”
“But you wrote the note?”
“Apparently.”
“Read it.”
I don’t want to.
“August.”
I unfold the paper.
Four words.
That’s all. Four fucking words.
DON’T LET HER FINISH.
Lenora reads over my shoulder and her breath catches. “What does that mean?”
I stare at my handwriting. Old. Older than anything in the apartment. And suddenly I know exactly why I don’t remember the tooth. Why I don’t remember the note. Why this cycle is different. Because maybe Lenora isn’t the only one who’s been forgetting.
My eyes lift to hers.
She sees the realization. “What?”
I look at the woman I’ve loved across more than a century. The woman who has killed me eight times. The woman I kissed less than a minute ago because apparently even death can’t teach me self-control.
And for the first time, I wonder if I’ve misunderstood what happened to us from the beginning.
“Lenora.”
“What?”
“I don’t think you’re the one doing this to me.”
Her face goes still. “Then who is?”
I look at the tooth. At the hair. At the warning written in my own hand. “I don’t know.”
A sound comes from upstairs.
My apartment. Glass breaking. We both look toward the ceiling.
Then another and another.
My blood goes cold.
The jars.
I run.
Lenora follows me.
“Stay here.”
“Absolutely fucking not.”
I don’t have time to argue.
We race into the hallway and up the stairs.
My apartment door is open. I know I closed it. Inside, the lights flicker. Glass covers the floor. Every jar from 1897 has shattered. Every single one.
Except Specimen 08.
It sits perfectly intact in the center of the floor.
Lenora stops beside me. “What the fuck?”
Something is different about the jar.
The label.
There is writing beneath the date that wasn’t there before. Fresh black ink bleeding slowly through old paper.
I step closer and she grips my arm. Neither of us acknowledges it.
We read the words together.
YOU FOUND HER TOO EARLY.
Lenora’s fingers tighten around me. “August?”
I stare at the message. At the impossible fresh ink. At the preserved piece of her body floating behind the glass.
Then the specimen moves.
Once. A tiny twitch.
Lenora screams.
The skin inside the jar unfolds slowly. Like something waking from a very long sleep. And pressed into the preserved flesh, where no mark existed before, is the faint shape of a mouth…smiling at us.