AllFreeNovel
Share Us
WORM
She outlined every letter, and I let her. I owed her that, after all. I’d shared her secrets with the world; it was only fair that I showed her mine.
“They were my first foster family, the ones who took me in after my mom died. The ones who died in a fire.” I took a long, steadying breath. “The fire I started.”
The silence couldn’t have been thicker. I could have felt awkward right now. Being seen like this should have been excruciating, but it wasn’t. It felt like a heavy weight was lifting off me as I confessed to my sins before the only judge I cared about.
“When you were eight,” Lily finally said.
I nodded, my heart lifting with the compassionate tone filling her voice.
“When I was eight, yes. I killed two people.”
“I don’t think I’d call them people.” Her voice was strong as she rounded me, her hand falling from the word and appearing in front of me. Her green eyes glittered and those perfect toffee-colored lashes were stuck together. Her cheeks were wet.
She was crying.
Crying for me.
“It’s not your fault, Cayden. They got what they deserved,” she whispered, and a long tear streaked down her cheek.
I reached for it, brushing the salt from her cheek with my thumb. She was close now, her slim body cradled between my thighs. So close I could smell the heavenly scent of her skin, even over the antiseptic and blood.
“Don’t cry for me. I don’t deserve your tears, and we both know it.” My voice was a raw murmur.
She shook her head. “Maybe not, but that eight-year-old boy does.”
I cupped her face, wanting to kiss her more than I’d ever wanted anything. I brushed her tears from her skin in gentle circles over her cheeks.
“He’s gone. Don’t worry about him,” I reassured her.
She shook her head again and placed a hand on my bare chest, just over my heart. “He’s not gone. He’s in here…be kind to him, okay?”
I couldn’t take not kissing her for one more second. She was too much, and she saw me too clearly. I leaned in and pressed my lips against hers—chaste kiss, considering all the things we’d done together—but it felt intimate in a way I’d never experienced. No one who had ever reallyseenme had ever wanted me. No one except her.
She pulled back just as the kiss deepened. “I have to bandage your side. You’re lucky, the knife didn’t go too deep.”
She stepped away, and it felt like a physical blow to lose her softness.
She took another bowl from the counter and brought it to my side. It was filled with gauze and tape.
“You’re good at this,” I observed as she worked, bandaging up my side.
She shrugged. “I’ve worked here for years. The basics have rubbed off on me…well, the animal basics, anyway.”
“Are you calling me an animal?” I teased her, but my words only made her wince, and I knew she was thinking about the word on my back, carved time and time again into a terrified young boy’s flesh.
“Is that why you were so upset…when I called you a parasitoid?” she wondered quietly.
I nodded. “I guess it hit a little too close to home, not that you could have known that.”
“I guess if I’d just called you a jerk, like a normal person…maybe everything would have been different between us. We would have just been strangers to each other. People who lived next door…our worlds passing, but never colliding.”
She patted the neat, dry dressing she’d placed on my wound.
I grabbed her wrist before she could turn away. “No, you’re wrong. You and I were destined to be more than strangers. We were always going to be more. We were born to collide.”
She stared at me, her green eyes as lush as ever. I wanted to wander into that sweet, calm forest and live there forever. Then she yawned, and I realized how exhausted she must be.
