And I’m gone.
***
The pain rings incessantly against my skull. My memories come in flashes.
It starts like a re-run of my favorite comfort watch, morphing into a version of the show I don’t remember as it begins again. The actors become unrecognizable, replaced by lookalikes that don’t sound alike at all.
Painting. Bowling. Punching. Dragging.
More punching. More people. Talking. Sirens.
A flashlight in my face. A pressure cuff on my arm.
A loud argument.Don’t touch her.A quiet warning.You’re too close to this.
The familiar feel of my soft bed underneath me. Eyelids fluttering. Colin in a chair in the corner, lit only by the bright blue glow of his laptop, the rest of the room shadowed in darkness.
The bed dips beside me, a whisper of words trailing across the duvet and crawling under the covers with me. “You’re chaos, Stark.”
I think I mumble back, “I’m your chaos.”
And I think I hear his response.
“You might be.”
16
Chloe
Isqueeze my duvet around my shoulders, resistant to waking fully.
The metronome of pain that has been beating steadily in my brain for far too long has slowed to a dull ache, closely matching the timing of a lighthouse spinning between land and sea.
In and out of focus. Gone, then back again.
The curtains are drawn in front of the closed shutters; but it wouldn’t matter, anyway, because there’s not a shred of light bleeding into the room.
A soft knock sounds from downstairs, and a moment later, the door opens. It takes me a moment to realize someone let the visitor into my house.
“She’s still out,” Colin says, his voice tense.
There’s a woman’s voice, gentle but insistent. “We have to take her statement, Colin.” The sound of heels clicking across the marble floors echoes up the stairs, then the soft thud of footsteps on the staircase.
I open my eyes to my bedroom door as the crack expands, bleeding light from the hallway into the room. I shield my eyes with my hand, rolling onto my back.
“Sorry,” Colin mumbles, clicking the door closed behind him and crossing the room to my side. I roll over to face him. He stands next to the edge of the bed, his fingers twitching at his side like he wants to reach out and touch me, but he doesn’t.
I wind my fingers into his. I can tell he tries to keep himself from returning my grip, but he can’t.
He’s the only thing that makes sense in this moment where the last forty-eight hours of my life feels like a blur, and I want to hold onto that.
“Where you been, panda bear?” I murmur, stroking my thumb against his hand. The rough feel under my fingers draws my attention down. His knuckles are red, cuts littering his skin. They look swollen, tender, but he doesn’t wince or draw his hand away.
“Here,” he says quietly, lowering himself to sitting on the edge of the mattress and angling his body toward me.
“Why?”Tell me why you care so much. Tell me you care about me.
His face is shaded in the darkness of the room, a sliver of moonlight from somewhere outside the window cutting into the space and glinting off the green swirl of his irises as he studies me quietly, not answering.
