I squeeze my mom’s hand tightly even though it’s cold to the touch. Some part of me feels like maybe if I squeeze hard enough, she might feel it.
I stare at her lifeless body in the bed. Every day, her skin sheds more and more, like the bark on a tree flaking off as it’s slowly deprived of nutrients. A shell of a once magnificent tree that crowned the forest and gave so much to so many.
A tear wells up in my eyes, but I push it away.
I’ve already given up on the idea that she’ll ever remember me.
That time has long since passed.
All that remains now is a wake. Day in, day out. Until she slowly withers away.
I lift my head and look at the girl standing in the door opening. The girl who forced her way into my life … the girl who invaded every corner of my mind until there was no escaping her.
Her eyes are filled with so much compassion it’s sickening, and it makes me want to scream.
But that would only push her further away from me.
And the thought of losing her too would drive me insane.
All this time, I’ve been hanging on by a thread.
And her seeing my world for what it truly is … will unravel me.
Crystal
I stare at him, heart struck with so many emotions I can’t utter a single syllable.
Tears well up in my eyes, but I push them away.
It wouldn’t be right to cry, but damn, it has never been harder to keep them at bay.
“This is why I didn’t want your mother to be with my dad,” he says, his voice fluctuating in tone from all the pent-up emotions. “Somewhere in there, inside that fainting husk, is a living, breathing human being.” He pauses, the weight of his emotions sinking into each word like a stone in the pond of my soul, leaving ripples in its wake. “Waiting for her family that no longer exists.”
I swallow.
What words would do justice to this kind of pain? There are none.
This is the visceral suffering of those who have experienced grief. And even though his mother is still alive by a hair, she’s more a ghost than a person. Death has already claimed her just like it claimed my father—whether it’s yesterday, today, or tomorrow, a future for them in our lives no longer exists.
No wonder Caleb broke the second I told him about my father.
This is what he’s been hiding. This is the secret that’s torn him apart at the seam.
And even though I once believed I hated him, the idea that I ever could seems so cruel right now.
All of his anger, all of the revulsions, the fights … all of it was because of this.
His mother, lying motionless in a bed, more dead than living, the last remnant he has of the woman who once called him her baby.
How could my heart not ache for him?
“What … what happened to her?”
His eyes trail off to her face. “A few years ago, she had a stroke.” He swallows. “She never recovered. Even though a part of her may still be in there … her mind has long since left this world. All that remains is her body.” He pushes away the hair off her face so gently it cracks what little resistance I had left. “But I can’t say goodbye. Not yet.”
He touches the ring on her finger.
“My father swore he wouldn’t abandon her,” he says, his voice darkening. “He swore.”
“They’re still … married?” I mutter.
He nods, the silence that follows deafening.
He gets up, slowly walking toward me with a hazy look on his face, stopping mere inches in front of me. “My father hid her in this building to conceal what happened to her from the outside world. Couldn’t face his own damn CFO and tell him the truth. He’s been pretending she’s sick and unable to show her face, but we both know better,” he says, swallowing. “But even he couldn’t pull the plug. Not while there was still some hope.” His brows draw together as his eyes slowly leer up and bore into mine. “Until my father saw your mother and decided he would forget. Forget my mother ever existed.”
“No,” I say, shaking my head. “He wouldn’t forget her.”
“He’s still fucking married, and he doesn’t even care,” he spits. “He’s soiled her memory. My mother. She’s in there.” He points at the body being ventilated. “She’s waiting on him, and he abandoned her.”
“You’re angry,” I say, trying to reason with him.
“Of course, I fucking am!” He grabs the vase filled with fresh flowers standing on a pedestal near the door and chucks it at the wall, shattering it into a million pieces. “There is nothing left for me to fight for! Nothing!”
“Nothing?” My brows furrow together.
Even if he can’t think of anything, there must be something …
“All I have … all I want, so desperately,” he says, suddenly gripping my face with both hands. “Doesn’t want me back.”
My lips part in shock.
He … wants me?
As more than just a plaything?
He releases me and saunters away, staring out the window wistfully.
“You actually … want me?”
He makes a tsk sound. “Didn’t you hear Ares?”
“I thought you were just playing games, that it was just my body, but … it isn’t, is it?”
He tilts his head, the forlorn look in his eyes so striking it makes me want to run over to him and kiss him.
But something about the violence in his eyes stops me.
“I thought I had to hate you,” he says, snorting before shaking his head. “That it would make it easier to shut you out.”
“But you said it was because Ares—”
“Ares has always been there for me. Always,” he interjects. “And then he set his eyes on you. How was I supposed to feel?”
It feels like stone upon stone is thrown. “Wait, you … were jealous of him?”
“Of you.” He pauses.
That’s why he was so aggressive with me even though I hadn’t done anything to him?
“And then eventually him …”
Both of us?
Caleb’s Adam’s apple rises and falls. “But Ares always gets what he wants. That is a fact.”
I shake my head. “He hasn’t gotten me.”
“Hasn’t he?”
I swallow, trying to keep my mind from spinning.
“When he plays with you, doesn’t it make your heart throb and your head dizzy?” he says, biting his bottom lip, drawing in his piercing. “When you hate so deeply, doesn’t it make you loathe the very thought of loving someone?”
“Yes, but—” I choke on my own words.
Because I understand what he’s trying to tell me now …
That my own feelings for Ares mirror Caleb’s for me.
Oh God.
I can’t breathe.
“Your mother got in the way. So I did what I did best. Destroy,” he says, his voice gritty, unhinged. “Destroy every happy thought, every good emotion, every inch of your goddamn angelic soul just so I could tell myself I didn’t desire it more than anything. Because how could I possibly desire someone who’s supposed to become my step—”
“Don’t.” I interrupt. “Don’t say that word.”
He leans away from the window, the sunlight casting a beam of light on half his face, like an angel shot an arrow straight from heaven, and it strips me bare of everything I thought I knew.
“Why?” he asks. “Does the thought scare you as much as it scares me?” His tongue darts out. “After all the filthy, fucked-up, delicious fucking shit we did, does the thought of losing what we have ruin you?”
I swallow down the lump in my throat, wondering if there was ever a world out there where we could’ve been lovers instead.
Still, he turns and steps closer and closer while I back away into the door, leaving no place left to go as he traps me between his arms.
“Deny it all you want, but we can both feel the electric current between us,” he says, inching so close I can almost taste his futile rage. “Can you even resist?”
“I should’ve …” I mutter.
A devilish smirk forms on his face. “You should’ve run when you had the chance.”
“I don’t want to run anymore,” I murmur.
His lips graze mine. “But you make it feel so damn good to chase you.”
When his lips finally connect, it doesn’t even register with me anymore that I’m supposed to hate him, that he’s made me his toy, that he’s tried to destroy my life all for the sake of needing me. Because I can’t resist the way he kisses me with so much raw passion that it takes my breath away.
His mouth encloses mine, his sultry tongue prying open my lips until it twists around mine, and he moans into me, causing goose bumps to spread all over. He pushes me against the door, pressing his hard-on into me while licking the roof of my mouth with that pierced tongue.
And a part of me almost wants to give in. Give in to the moment, fuck all my worries away.
But I don’t want to use him.
I push him off me and look him in the eyes, searching for answers I no longer have.
I thought I understood myself, that I knew exactly what I wanted and needed in this world to survive, but slowly, that steadfast part of me realizes I may have been wrong.
“Kiss me,” he says. “Kiss me, Crystal. Do you even want it as much as I do?”
When I lean in, he leans back, tempting, twisting the narrative until I’m chasing his lips instead, and the smile that cracks on his face makes me want to slap him.
Suddenly, he grips my wrists and shoves me up against the door, his half-mast hazel eyes so striking it’s hard to look away. “Make me believe it.”
With a taunting gaze, he hovers close again, and I slam my lips right back on his.
He kisses me back with just as much fervor, claiming my mouth like it’s the only thing keeping him from jumping off a goddamn cliff, and it feels powerful. Daunting. Wrecking.
To the point where I claw my way out of his grip and wrap my arms around his neck, pulling him closer into me so our two broken souls meld into one.
Caleb
I could no longer stop myself. I had to kiss those beautiful perky lips even though I know I’m sucking the life out of her like a goddamn soul-stealing demon from hell.
But I don’t care anymore.
I need that spark, that little ounce of happiness I siphon out of her every time our lips collide.
It’s the only thing that’s keeping me breathing.
Keeping me sane.
The thought of her ruins me.
Destroys every inch of my sanity until I can no longer think straight, and I hate her for it.
I hate how much she’s weaved her way into my life without a thought as to how easily she makes everyone around her fall for her. How easily she makes us all crave to poison her innocence.
But I hate most of all that it’s driven a wedge between Ares and me. The only man who’s ever understood me. The only man who’s ever cared enough to be there for me.
I wanted him, and then he wanted her, so I had to make her pay.
But along the way, I fell.
I fell so hard my lungs began to crack, and the only way I could suck in the oxygen was when I was with her.
God …
God can’t help me now.
I kiss her so hard it makes the tears in my soul dry up as I pour every ounce of my sadness into her. She can take it. She knows what it feels like to need something so desperately you feel like you can’t live without it. What it is to grieve without grieving, to live like a shadow of oneself, to haunt the world, searching for your own goddamn soul.
She’s seen death with her own damn eyes.
She knows. I can feel it in the way she kisses me back with equal desperation.
And the second she told me the truth about her father, the last ounce of hostility I was holding on to vanished.
“We have to stop,” she murmurs, but I can’t take my lips off hers.
I refuse. If I do, the dream will shatter, and so will I.
“No.”
“Caleb.”
I groan into her mouth, kissing her one last time with everything I have to give before I have to return to reality.
“Your phone.”
My eyes burst open, and I tear my lips away from hers, still heady from the way she kissed me back.
But then I hear my ringtone.
I clear my throat and fish it out of my pocket, the name on the screen making chills run up and down my spine.
“Ares?” I say as I pick up.
“Open the door.”
I hold my breath and look at Crystal, who definitely heard too.
She pushes down the handle and slowly cracks open the door.
Ares stands there with a phone against his ear just like me, staring us both down.
Oh fuck.
