Something passed between us then, something I couldn’t name, but recognized anyway. A kind of truce, or maybe just the surrender that comes after a war is too old to bother winning.
But she didn’t move away. If anything, she leaned closer, bare foot nudging mine under the coffee table.
Behind us, the kettle whistled. Dante’s silhouette moved in the kitchen, the familiar comfort of his movements making the house feel less like a borrowed space and more like something lived in. I watched him pour tea, then step out onto the porch, leaving us alone in the hush.
“I used to wish something bad would happen to you,” she said, eyes fixed on the lake. “I wished you’d disappear, so I didn’t have to think about you anymore, or your cruelty.”
“I know,” I said. “I wished the same about myself.”
“You’re not as bad as you think, Caiden,” she finally said. “If you were, I wouldn’t be here.”
I looked away, embarrassed at the heat rising in my cheeks. The truth was, I could never quite let go of the image of myself in her eyes. The bully, the fuck-up, the kid who’d once chasedher down the halls just to see her flinch. Yet now she was here. Still here. After all of it.
“How do you do it?” I asked. “How do you look at me and not see…” I let the sentence die, unable to finish it.
She didn’t answer for a while, just stared at the lake, the fog rolling in thick over the water. “I don’t forget,” she said finally. “But I don’t want to spend my life carrying all that, either. If I did, it would eat me alive.”
“I don’t deserve it,” I said.
She turned to me, eyes rimmed in pale pink. “Maybe not. But you’re still human, and I can see through your anger now.” She set her chin in a stubborn way, one that told me not to argue with her.
I didn’t.
Instead, I stood up.
“I’m going to go for a run. Dante said there’s a path in the trees over by the house. I’ll see you later.”
Once I reached the edge of the trees, I took off. I roamed this trail years ago. It goes through the trees, then onto a hidden path that circles the lake and makes a loop back to the house.
Despite being a loop, it was long and stretched for miles.
The woods swallowed me whole by the third step, the world filtering instantly to pine sap, rot, and the low hush of air pushing through the needles overhead.
My body fought the cold, muscles refusing to loosen, lungs straining against the armor of my chest. I ran until my pulse drowned out everything. The memory of her face, the tightness in my gut, the shame humming in my teeth.
With every stride, my mind tried to shake out the same set of memories.
Amelia in the water, her small fists beating against the cold, every moment I’d ever seen her afraid of me, every time she’dforgiven me, even when I’d given her no reason to. It was a loop, a punishment, a treadmill that never let up.
I turned onto the smaller path, legs burning, feet hammering the frostbitten earth. The world here was stripped down. I could let myself dissolve into the afterimage of my own violence.
A branch snapped back and clawed my cheek, but I barely felt it over the raw ache in my chest.
I picked up speed and tried to outrun what I already knew. That I wanted her more than I wanted to change, more than I wanted anything. That I’d hurt her again, eventually, even if I swore I wouldn’t.
The trail arched towards the lake, the water flat and empty, the sky low and mean. I stopped, bracing my hands on my knees, sucking in air that felt more like broken glass than oxygen.
I wanted to scream, to break something, to tear open my own skin just to see if I was still real. Instead, I stood there, hunched and shaking, feeling the animal inside me snarl against its cage.
The voice in my head told me to keep running, to stay gone, to spare her the mess of loving someone who was just a shed snakeskin of anger and need. I almost turned around and did it.
It would be easy. I could just keep going, circle the lake, walk the highway out of Pathosbury forever, and let her have the peace she said she wanted.
The only thing that stopped me was the echo of Amelia’s voice, the way she’d said I wasn’t the villain anymore. The way she’d sat next to me, close enough for her cold foot to knock mine under the table.
I crumpled to the ground, fists filled with mud and dead grass, the taste of iron in my mouth. I’d spent most of my life pretending that wanting things was weakness, that needing anyone meant you were a mark.
But I wanted her. I wanted her so fucking bad I could barely get air in my lungs.
