“Would have deserved to fall off a cliff,” I said, and tried to smile, but it didn’t land.
A long silence. I wanted her to yell, to throw the album at my head, to do anything except look at me with that lacerating mixture of pity and expectation.
She finally blinked and said, “Dante told me what happened at the house.” A pause, and then: “He also told me you set it on fire.”
I winced. “That place needed to burn,” I said while moving toward the bed slowly.
She shrugged, but it was an angry gesture, one that left her shoulders up around her ears. “What is that supposed to solve? Is it some kind of victory, torching your past?”
I rubbed my eyes. “I didn’t think it through. Honestly, I barely remember it. I just—” My throat burned. “I couldn’t stand being in there. It was like every bad thing that ever happened was waiting in every room, and if I didn’t do something, I’d end up like him.”
She was quiet. She crouched and picked up the fallen album, closing it with a snap. “So, you burned it down and ran away. That’s the Caiden Baxter method.”
The words cut more than I expected. Her voice was flat, cold, not a trace of the warmth I’d grown addicted to in her. “I deserve that,” I said, sitting on the edge of the bed. “But I’m not running now. I’m here, aren’t I?”
She stood there, pinning me with her gaze, green irises ablaze. “Why did you even come back?”
It was a good question. The answer was embarrassingly simple. “I didn’t have anywhere else to go.” The words hung there, meaningless and desperate.
She looked away, out the window, where a skein of crows tangled in the wind above the parking lot. Her jaw moved as if she were chewing on the next thing she wanted to say. “You don’t have to stay,” she said, so quietly I almost missed it. “You could disappear like you usually do.”
I stood with her and grabbed her arm, turning her towards me. “I’m not going anywhere, Amelia. I won’t leave you again. I had a moment of weakness last night. That’s all.”
I expected her to yell at me, but her defense crumbled, and she lowered her head. “Okay. That’s good to hear. I’m sorry for snapping. I was just so hurt and upset by your absence.”
I didn’t take offense at her snapping at me. She was probably scared, not knowing which Caiden would walk back into this motel room, and felt the need to challenge me.
I rubbed her arm with my thumb. “I know. I’m sorry.”
She nodded, as if she understood. Maybe she did.
I reached for the photo album on the floor. “Can I?” I asked, and she gave the tiniest nod.
The first page was a baby picture. Amelia, round-faced and red, swaddled in a hospital blanket. I flipped. A toddler at the beach, squinting into a salt wind; a kindergarten school portrait, her hair ragged from a home haircut; a row of birthday cakes, each year a little less extravagant until it was just a Hostess cupcake with a candle jammed in. I felt her watching me, reading how I reacted, waiting for me to laugh or sneer. I did neither.
“You were cute,” I said, and she snorted.
“Don’t patronize me.”
“I’m not. I did think you were cute back then, especially as kids, before the hatred took over.” The words left my lips, and all I could do was wait for her reaction.
She closed the album and set it on the bed between us, her jaw working through the implications. “If you liked me, whydid you…?” She trailed off, not needing to finish. The years had filled in that blank with enough evidence.
I had already told her some of it while we were in the cage, but it was rushed and filled with anger back then.
“Because that’s what I was taught to do,” I said, voice so soft it barely belonged to me. “I saw my dad hurt people—hurt me, hurt my mom—and I thought that was the only power there was. I wanted you to see me, but I couldn’t let you see the real me. So, I made you hate me instead. It was safer.” The words sounded pathetic laid out in the air, but I didn’t look away.
She studied my face for a long, cold moment, then finally, quietly, “You know, sometimes I wondered if you did it because you secretly wanted to be friends. Maybe even more, once we were older.” Her eyes flicked to the window, then back at me, softening by a fraction. “I hated myself for thinking that.”
I swallowed. “You weren’t wrong. Like I said, I had a yearning for you. It came out in little moments, but the hatred ran too deep, and I buried that yearning.”
She let out a sound that was neither laugh nor sob, but a hybrid that belonged to no single emotion. “I’m too tired to be angry today,” she said. “Maybe I’ll be angry tomorrow. But I just want to not feel alone. Is that so much to ask?”
I shook my head. “No. It’s not.”
We had been through too much together. I didn’t leave her alone in Colorado, or in Blake’s cabin, or at the funeral when she came undone, and I wouldn’t leave her alone now.
I did last night, and I was fucking angry at myself for that, but I would redeem myself for her for the rest of my miserable life if that was what it took. She deserved at least one person who didn’t flinch or run at the sight of her grief.
