Chapter 21
Callan
She’s fragile. She’s a bird with its wings clipped, and my brothers are too busy stroking the feathers to notice she’s still bleeding.
The heat of another person is a tether I’ve never wanted, but when I look at her, when I remember how it felt to touch her, how she smiled at me, I want to try it again.
I want to see if it is the situation or if something fundamental has shifted inside me.
“Get out,” I say to Ethan and Aidan, not turning from the window. “I’ll stay with her. You two are smothering her.”
“And you won’t give her the comfort she needs,” Ethan says.
“Go. I’ll give her whatever she wants.”
“Really?” Aidan asks, but it’s not the usual sarcastic drawl I expect from him. It’s a genuinely confused question.
“Yes, really. Now fuck off.” I keep my focus on the glass, watching the reflection of the city lights shimmering against the dark sky.
Ethan sighs, a sound of reluctant surrender, before I hear him moving toward the door.
Aidan follows, though he lingers for a second at the threshold. I feel his concern, but I ignore it.
It’s not necessary.
The door clicks shut. The silence that follows is thick.
I turn to the bed. Annabelle is a small, crumpled shape under the duvet.
Her breathing is shallow, hitching every few seconds as she clings to the edge of sleep.
My skin itches with the proximity of her, with the mere thought of closing the gap between us.
Physical contact. It’s a messy, intrusive thing that usually makes my stomach turn, but she’s different. She’s a puzzle I haven’t solved yet.
Moving to the side of the bed, I sit. I don’t touch her. She looks broken. It’s a beautiful, tragic sight. To own a person like Annabelle, you have to own the parts of her that she hates the most. You have to be the mirror that shows her exactly who she’s becoming. I’m going to be that mirror.
“I know you’re awake,” I state.
Her eyes snap open, blue and wide with a fresh spike of terror. “Why did you stay?”
“Because they don’t understand you,” I say. I reach out, my hand hovering inches from her face. My heart hammers against my ribs, a warning I ignore. “But I do.”
“You don’t understand anything,” she whispers. Her voice is a jagged shard of glass. “You just watch. You’re a voyeur, Callan. You like the view of a wreckage.”
I don’t flinch. I let my fingers bridge the final gap, brushing against the hollow of her cheek. The spark of contact sends a jolt through my system, a frantic signal to retreat, but I force myself to stay. I have to know the texture of her grief.
“I like the truth,” I counter, sliding my hand down to her throat, feeling the rapid, terrified thrum of her life force. “I want to see you exist.”
She tries to pull away, but there is nowhere for her to go. I’m the boundary of her world right now. My skin burns where it meets hers, a low-grade fever that makes my vision blur.
“You’re the worst one,” she grits out, her eyes search mine for a mercy I don’t possess. “Because you don’t even pretend to care.”
“Care is a word for people who have something to lose. I have you now. There’s nothing left to lose.”
I move closer. My body does it before I can decide whether I want it to. The air between us thins, and I feel the old revulsion, the familiar alarm, but underneath both of those, something I don’t have a clean word for. I don’t want to hold her. I want to consume the silence she carries.
“Stop looking at me like that,” she says, her breath hitching.
“Like what?”
“Like I’m a specimen.”
I lean in until my forehead rests against hers. The intimacy is a poison I’m willing to swallow. “You are, Annabelle. You are the only creature in this entire world I can stand to be this close to. That makes you an anomaly.”
“Is that supposed to make me feel special?” Her words are a bite, but her body remains still. She doesn’t have the strength to push me away, and I don’t have the willpower to let her go.
The heat of her skin is a sensory assault. Every nerve ending in my hand that usually screams at me to withdraw is nothing but a whisper now. I lock my fingers around the back of her neck. I need to feel the precise moment her resistance snaps.
“Special isn’t the word,” I murmur. My lips are so close to hers I can taste the salt of her tears in the air. “You’re a necessity. Like air.”
“You’re fucking crazy.”
“Yes, but I’m finally starting to feel sane.”
Her hand comes up to push me away, but it falters as soon as she touches me. She feels it too. She knows this is everything for me. I’m trusting her with this, and she knows the weight of that.
It tells me all I need to know. “You want this,” I murmur.
“I want you all to leave me alone.”
“No, if that were the case, you’d be pushing me away.”
“I won’t be your experiment, Callan.”
“No one is asking you to be. You are more than that. You feel it.”
Her lips part, and I drop my mouth to hers. The shock of it nearly makes me baulk. I don’t know what to do with it for a second.
“Kiss me, Callan,” she says against my mouth. “Or are you too much of a coward?”
The word hits me like a bullet. My hand grips her throat, squeezing tighter than I have a right to and I take the plunge, driving my tongue into her mouth as she pulls me closer, her hand on the back of my neck.
This is not the first time I’ve kissed a woman.
But it has been a very long time. My mind has forgotten, but my body hasn’t.
The sensation is a riot in my skull. Her mouth is hot, wet, and demanding, shattering the sterile walls I’ve spent years building.
I expect the nausea to come, the familiar urge to skin myself alive just to get the touch off me, but it doesn’t.
Instead, there is a hollow ache in my chest that only fills when I press harder against her.
Annabelle moans into the kiss, a broken, desperate sound that fuels the fire in my gut.
My skin isn’t crawling; it’s hungry. I’ve spent a long time avoiding the filth of human contact, yet here I am, drowning in the taste of her.
I drag my hand from her throat to her hair, the blonde strands silk against my palms. It’s too much. It’s not enough.
She doesn’t pull away. Her fingers dig into my arms, anchoring herself to the very thing she claims to hate. I want the truth. I want the moment her soul admits it belongs in the dark with us.
I break the kiss, my breath coming in jagged bursts.
My skin feels like it’s vibrating. The silence of the room has a different quality now, charged with the static of our contact.
I look down at her, seeing the way her lips are swollen and damp.
Her blue eyes are dark, the pupils blown wide as she tries to find her bearings in the wreckage of the moment. I want to sink my teeth into her.
“You didn’t flinch,” she whispers. Her hand is still on my arm, her fingers pressing into my skin like she’s checking for a pulse.
“I told you. You’re the anomaly.” I brush my thumb across her bottom lip. It’s a mindless movement, one driven by a sudden, sharp greed. “Every other person I’ve ever met makes me want to burn the world down just to get away from them. But you make me want to stay.”
“That’s a heavy burden, Callan.” She lets out a shaky breath, her gaze dropping to my chest. “I can’t be your anchor. I’m already sinking.”
“Then we’ll go under together.” I lie down beside her, keeping a fraction of space between our bodies, though the pull is almost physical. “Close your eyes, Annabelle. I’m not leaving.”
She doesn’t argue. She turns her back to me, but she doesn’t move away. I lie in the dark, watching the rise and fall of her shoulders, waiting for the revulsion to set in. It doesn’t. There is only the quiet, terrifying realisation that for the first time in my life, I don’t want to be alone.