“She was helping me get you home and saw her class schedule on the table. She started asking questions. I panicked. I didn’t know what to say.”
I clutch my head, still aching like I’ve been sucker punched. “Couldn’t you have made something up?”
He gets up, lies on his bed and stares at the ceiling.
My pulse booms in my ears. “Parker?”
“I won’t lie to her,” he says.
I grit my teeth. We’ve spent the past two weeks arguing about the best way to approach Ella but have yet to agree on anything. My patience is wavering. “What’s your plan, then?”
“We tell her the truth,” he says, as if it’s obvious.
“We’ve been over this. Why do you want to tell her things that will scare her? Besides, it’s not lying if we choose to leave certain things out.”
“Yes, it is,” he says, hands clenched by his side.
“No. It isn’t. Can’t you see I’m protecting her?” I hack at my nails. It’s obvious he’s blinded by his feelings for Ella. “There’s no other way.” I whip my head toward him. “I can’t stop blacking out and slipping into my memories, which means it’s only a matter of time before I lose my hold on you.” I square my shoulders and look him dead in the eye. “Either you want to live and we do it my way, or we split and you’re on your own. Which is it?”
Parker glares at me. “I won’t lie to—”
“Yeah, I heard you the first time,” I snap. “You won’t lie to her.”
But I will.
12Mariella
I’m saturated in white light, sparkling rays reflecting off my skin like shooting stars. I edge toward muffled voices, but with each step the surrounding light fades. The high-pitched notes of a music box echo around me and an icy shiver races down my spine. The last rays of light wane, plunging me into darkness, but the song reverberates, each off-key tone twisting my stomach into tight knots.
A deep rumble begins in the distance, cascading toward me until the ground below my feet is quaking. The noise doubles in intensity, threatening to burst my eardrums. I turn to run, the sound waves pulsing across my skin and vibrating through my chest.
I stumble forward on trembling legs, swallowed by a roaring, unrelenting abyss. Pain erupts in my abdomen, and I scream, hunching over. Wet warmth coats my hands, and my heart falters, fluttering like a bird trapped inside a shrinking cage. I gasp for breath, but the deafening noise is compressing the air within my lungs. Clutching at my bleeding torso, I fall to the floor, legs burning as the skin scrapes off my knees.
Lost in the darkness, suffocating, I wait for death to take me. Time slows. The pain fades, and I slip away. I’m floating in deafening silence.
I love you, Mariella.
A sharp whisper cuts through the calm—the speaker’s deep, smooth voice a gentle symphony as I take my last, shallow breath.
I wake gasping for breath, electricity flooding my body and those words echoing in my ears.
I love you, Mariella.
I’m clutching my necklace in my trembling hand, my heart racing beneath my clenched fist. I’m half asleep, still trapped in my nightmare, the unrelenting roar crushing my chest. Another shiver races down my spine and my eyes snap open.
Morning light pours through Silas’s living room window and recollections of last night rush through my head: fleeing Parker’s apartment. Flagging a passing taxi. Mumbling Silas’s address to the driver before my brain caught up with my mouth. I’d texted Anna, houses and streetlights flying past in a blur, spaced further apart as we drove closer to the edge of the Middlesex Fells Reservation. I banged on the door for several moments before retrieving the spare key hidden above the porch light. Letting myself in, I called out for Silas, but the air in his cottage was still, the fireplace in the living room unlit. With heavy eyelids, I collapsed onto his couch and passed out moments later.
I sit up, rubbing my neck as Parker’s departing words ring in my head.
“You’re acting crazy.”
I draw in a tense breath and scan Silas’s living room, silent except for the steady ticking of the clock beside his record player. His once subtle scent is now powerful in the absenceof my meds, minty yet masculine, mingled with remnant smoke from the fireplace, and lingering traces of soap from his bodywash. I rub my hands over my face. Coming here was a mistake.Thank God he’s away for work.
I reach for my phone and sigh at the dead screen. Surely Silas has a phone charger somewhere? I roll off the sofa and edge toward his bedroom, drawing in a breath before I enter his room. His clean, minty scent lingers, yet his room’s unchanged from the last time I was here—spotless aside from a stray shoe on the floor and a small box sitting beside his nightstand. I walk over and peer inside. It holds a sweater and a half-empty bottle of my sleep medication that I must have left here. I open the top drawer of his nightstand and my mouth drops.
It’s overflowing with half-dispensed pill packets—codeine, oxycodone, diazepam, tapentadol. The list goes on. The packets scrape against one another as I rifle to the bottom of the drawer, discovering a collection of old soccer cards and a brass key. Silas told me he took pills for headaches, but this is something else entirely. This is an addict’s candy store.
I rub my brow. I shouldn’t be surprised. Silas kept his life wrapped in secrets, and peeling one back will only reveal more. We were inseparable for five months, and I learned nothing of his friends and family, only that he’s married to his job. I laugh dryly. Does he have a work wife locked in that study of his?
