Chapter 34 Into The Dark
Into The Dark
Mateo’s gaze locked on mine, too steady, too knowing for an eleven-year-old. I felt the weight of it. His pupils dilated, swirling with a ring of molten gold that flickered like firelight in the dark. Beautiful. Terrifying.
But just as quickly as it had come, the brilliance snuffed out.
His head tipped forward, his weight sagging hard against me. He was all elbows and knees now, too long to cradle the way I used to, but I caught him anyway.
My hands shook so hard I could barely hold him.
“No, no, no…” My voice splintered, the words falling out of my mouth with nothing to anchor them. “Mateo, stay with me, baby, please…”
I pressed my ear to his chest, desperate for the flutter of his heart. I found it, faint but steady, and I wept with relief as much as terror.
His fingers twitched, then tightened around my wrist. Not weak, not comfort-seeking. It was pure instinct.
I gasped.
His touch was an electric shock, slicing into my palm and racing up my arm.
It carved a path through muscle and bone, a heat that seared my veins and hammered against the inside of my skull.
My vision swirled in a chaotic blend of colors colliding and merging into a dizzying blur.
I sank lower to the ground, cradling Mateo against my chest. His weight pressed into me: solid, real, heavier than I remembered, anchoring my spiraling thoughts.
For a moment, I thought I had blacked out.
The forest, the clearing, the small town down the mountain crumbled away. I couldn’t even hear my own breath. My mind was a flock of scattered birds, every thought scattering in terror.
But then, something opened.
Not a door, more like a dam, one that had been buckling under pressure for years and years, and now finally let go. Memories came rushing in, all at once. Flashes of color, taste, pain. A voice hissing in my ear. The perfume of cut grass and blood. The color of the sky right before a summer storm.
The force of it doubled me over. I clung to Mateo, but my arms were numb and useless. My body was still in the clearing, but my mind was hurtling backward, through years, through layers of memory I’d buried so deep I’d convinced myself they were never mine.
It was like being dragged under to where the real secrets rot.
I saw my hands, younger, unscarred, just beginning to tremble with a fear I didn’t yet know how to name.
I felt the crush of bodies around me, the demented heat of a bonfire roaring too close.
The thud of a bass line, the sting of cheap vodka, the weight of a gaze hungrily fixed on me from the darkness between the trees.
And then I was there: in the same clearing, just over a decade before.
I was seventeen again.
The night pressed close around us, the air thick with woodsmoke and damp earth.
The bonfire clawed sparks into the sky, the flames licking higher each time someone tossed another log into the pit.
Music rattled from a tinny speaker balanced on the hood of a car, too loud for the trees, too thin to fill the clearing.
Laughter carried over it anyway. Boys shoved each other near the fire, showing off with cans of beer held high.
Girls draped over tailgates and tree stumps, tossing back their heads so their hair caught the firelight.
The smell of cheap alcohol and sweat tangled with the smoke until it made my stomach flutter.
I stood just outside the circle, hugging my arms to myself, part of it but not. Always not. My sneakers sank into the damp earth. My jacket smelled faintly of detergent, too clean for this place. I felt like I was glowing neon with my inexperience, a flashing sign that read “don’t belong.”
After the stupid challenge the football guys dared me into, “chug it, Mae, unless you’re scared,” I ended up gulping half a lukewarm beer while they howled like they’d discovered fire. Before I could recover from that humiliating experience, a shadow fell over us.
Ethan stepped forward, Ethan Cooper, the team’s golden boy, everyone’s favorite son, the guy coaches basically prayed to, and my best friend’s sweetheart. He wasn’t smiling. In fact, the whole locker-room-smirk thing he usually had going was gone, replaced by a sharp enough expression to cut glass.
“Knock it off,” he said, voice low but carrying. “She’s done. And if any of you geniuses decide to pull this crap again, you’ll be running suicides until your legs fall off.”
The guys froze. One by one, they backed down, muttering excuses. Ethan didn’t look at them again. His attention slid to me.
“You okay?” he asked, softer now, but his jaw was still tight.
I nodded, maybe too quickly. “Yeah. Just… beer’s not my thing.”
Something flickered in his expression, amusement, maybe, or relief.
“Yeah,” he said, “that wasn’t beer. That was basically carbonated dumpster water.”
A laugh slipped out of me before I could stop it. He gave a tiny, crooked smirk, and for a moment, the chaos around us faded. Then he stepped aside, creating a path like some kind of inconveniently handsome bodyguard.
“Come on,” he said. “Let’s get you out of here. I’m sure Ems is looking for you.”
Now, Emily and Ethan spun near the fire, hands clasped, laughter bubbling louder than the music.
Emily’s shoulder-length chestnut hair caught the firelight, glowing warm as she twirled.
Her hazel eyes shone, soft with that look she reserved only for Ethan, the one that made you feel like nothing else existed.
She was petite, delicate almost, but carried herself with a quiet strength I’d always admired, and envied.
Ethan’s hands gripped hers, steadying her, pulling her close again with a grin that made her laugh so hard she tipped her head back, hazel eyes glowing with something I swore I’d never be worthy of.
They were whole together, like every song, every joke, every whisper made sense between them.
Ethan’s grin was wide as he pulled her close, his chocolate gaze locked only on her.
The two of them looked like something out of a story, the kind that had a clear beginning, middle, and happy ending.
I hugged my arms, swallowing the sharp pinch in my chest. Watching them together made something inside me ache.
Not jealousy, not exactly. More like being the ghost hovering at the edge of their picture.
I told myself I was used to it, that I didn’t mind.
But God, in moments like this, standing there in the shadows while their laughter tangled with the music, it was hard to pretend I didn’t feel small. Invisible.
And then, his eyes found me.
Kyle Grey leaned against a log just outside the circle of light, cup in hand. Even in the flicker of shadows, his gaze was clear, sharp, deliberate. He didn’t look past me the way others did.
He saw me.
His smile unfurled slowly, the kind that said, “You matter, you’re wanted.” And I wanted so badly to believe it.
He crossed the distance without hurry, like he knew I wouldn’t move. His voice slid smoothly and coaxingly as he held out his cup.
“Try it,” he murmured, close enough that his breath brushed my ear. “Loosens you up. You’ll like it, Josie.”
I blinked at him. “You…you know my name?”
His grin spread slowly, smug. “Of course I do. You think someone like you just…goes unnoticed?” He tipped the cup toward me. “Besides, you stand out.”
I gave a small, nervous laugh, trying to play it off. “Yeah, right. I’m about as exciting as cafeteria mashed potatoes.”
Kyle leaned in, voice dipping lower, darker. “Don’t sell yourself short. I’ve seen the way you watch people, like you’re on the outside looking in. Makes you… different.”
Different. The word stuck in me like a hook.
Behind his shoulder, Emily and Ethan were wrapped up in each other, her laughter breaking over the firelight like glass.
I almost stepped closer to their orbit, but my feet rooted where I stood.
I felt that old pinch in my chest, the one that said I didn’t belong to their world.
“I don’t drink much,” I said, fingers twitching at my sleeves.
“Then start now.” His tone carried that smug certainty. “One sip won’t kill you.”
I tilted my chin, trying to be sassy. “You always this pushy with girls, or am I just lucky tonight?”
He smirked, leaning back a little. “Only the ones worth my time.”
The fire popped, sparks lifting into the night. Ethan spun Emily into his arms again, her chestnut hair catching gold, and I felt the hollow stretch between their laughter and the space where I stood.
So I took the cup.
The first sip burned down my throat, sharp and bitter, a fierce warmth that spread like wildfire. I coughed, embarrassed, but Kyle only smiled, eyes glinting as if my reaction pleased him.
Emily’s laughter pierced the air, bright and carefree, while the second sip blurred the edges of my reality.
My tongue went numb. Laughter echoed strangely in my ears.
The firelight smeared when I blinked. I watched as Ethan swept her off her feet, their silhouettes illuminated by the crackling flames, both of them radiant in the flickering glow.
By the third, the ground felt unsteady, the world began to sway, shadows creeping in like a thick fog, swallowing the bonfire’s light. My body was too light, too heavy, all at once. The trees bent inward, shadows breathing against my skin.
I was falling out of my friends’ light, straight into his.
And then everything tilted sideways.
The firelight collapsed into darkness, and the shadows came for me.
Sound dulled, muffled like I was underwater. Emily’s laugh, sharp and bright a moment ago, reached me broken into pieces that didn’t quite fit together. Ethan’s voice was nothing but a memory already fading.
My arms wouldn’t lift. My fingers twitched uselessly at my sides. My legs were stone, heavy and numb, and when I tried to step back, the earth itself seemed to suck me down.