“Adora…” I try again, but she cuts me off.
“Don’t.”
Her voice is flat. Lifeless.
“I want you to leave,” she whispers, still staring at the ceiling like I’m not even there. “I don’t want to hear your cutting words,Ghost.”
That name. It hits like a train. It sounds wrong, so wrong, coming from her lips. But I’m the one who told her not to call me Dominic anymore, didn’t I?
“I don’t have cutting words, Adora. Not anymore,” I murmur, sorrow hugging the sound. “Your heart stopped.” The words nearly choke me. Saying them out loud makes it too real. Too raw.
She turns her head slowly, her expression unreadable. “So?” Her voice is hoarse, a whisper made of knives. “Why do you sound like that’s a bad thing? Isn’t that what you wanted? Or are you just upset I didn’t finish the job?”
My stomach lurches.
“I’m sorry I disappointed you, Ghost. That I didn’t die well enough to give you the closure you needed. But I think we’re even now, don’t you?” Her voice is almost calm. “I paid with my life. So you can walk away knowing you got your revenge after all.”
She turns away again. The void in her eyes guts me.
“Maybe next time my mind spirals, I’ll finally finish what you started.”
“No.” The word rips from my throat. “Adora, no.”
I lean forward, voice breaking. “I wasn’t thinking. I wasn’t — fuck, I wasn’t thinking clearly back there. I acted out of rage. Blind fucking rage.”
I breathe hard, every inhale like razor wire down my throat. “I don’t want you to die,” I whisper.
Because it’s true. It’s the only truth I have left.
I deluded myself into believing I could survive her death. That I could pull that trigger and it would make things better. That the monster inside me would be satisfied.
She turns back to me and her stare slices through my skin — it’s cold, detached. Like I’m a stranger who stumbled in from the streets, mumbling madness.
“You planned it,” she says, voice low. Cold. “All of it. Meticulous. Calculated. You played the long game, Ghost. Nearly a year of pretending. Of lying. So don’t insult me now by pretending otherwise. It’s beneath you. And it’s a slap in the face to me.”
“It was supposed to end after five months,” I rasp. “ That was the plan.” I pause, throat locking up. “But I couldn’t do it then. I kept telling myself I would, eventually, but I know now I never could’ve gone through with it. Not really.”
I suck in a breath, the air scraping like broken glass. “But this morning… you called out forhim. In your sleep. Like he was the love of your life. And something inside me snapped. I don’t even know what I became, I lost all control.”
My voice cracks. “I wish I hadn’t heard it. I wish I ignored it. Anything butthat.”
She tilts her head a little, a dangerous gleam in her eyes. “Who did I call for?”
I close my eyes. “Bowie.”
Her laugh isn’t really a laugh. More like a scoff dipped in acid. “You’re so full of shit.” Her words are sharp enough to draw blood. “You’re not just lying to me. You’re lying to yourself, too.”
I feel her fury before I hear it.
“You say you wouldn’t have gone through with it later, but justhis namewas enough to send you spiraling. And do youknow why, Ghost? Because you never asked. Not once. You never gave me a moment to speak. You never wanted to know my side of the story. Never showed me it was safe to tell you the truth. You locked me inside that fantasy you built, the fake life and your fake affection, and told yourself it was the right thing to do.”
Her voice rises, barely contained. “And I played along. Because I was too afraid to lose you. Because I wanted to keep the version of you who held me, who kissed me, who played the violin just to make me feel better. But it always felt like there was a blade hanging over my head. One word about the lie I told or my marriage tohim, and you’d drop it.”
She breathes hard, her chest rising and falling. “And you liked it that way. Don’t deny it. You investigated, dug up what you wanted, and painted a picture that made sense to you. That justified your anger and your revenge. You thought I never paid. That I just moved on like it didn’t destroy me.”
I try to speak, but she doesn’t stop.
“You convinced yourself I was fine all those years ago because it made your hate easier to carry.”
