Page 91 of Left In The Dark

No one’s ever tried this hard to keep me somewhere before, and I’ve never wanted to be anyone’s this long so badly. I don’t care what he is anymore, or that he probably didn’t have the best intentions at first. I don’t care about any of that. I care about how he carried me everywhere, how he did things for me when they felt like too much without batting an eye, and I care about how he cares for me. He wants me to stay too. I can feel it. He doesn’t have to say it for me to feel it. Yes, I want him to. Of course I do, but it never meant anything when the others said it.

It was empty words when they said it. There’s too much endearment in his eyes for him to mean nothing. I’m his sweet boy when he says I am. I’m his perfect piglet. I’m his. He’s been adding “my” in front of everything more and more, no longer correcting himself. Yes, he wants me too.

“How was your day, piglet?”

“Good,” I say, scooting my hip to the right. “Long.”

He laughs. “Yeah, mine too.” He sits on the edge of the bed by my legs. “All my days are tough.”

“’Cause of your job?” I prop myself up on my elbows and he leans forward, stretching his arm to stack pillows behind me.

“Yeah, and ’cause I keep wanting to get to the next part of our book with you.”

“You’ve read it before.”

“I know, but it’s been a while.” He rests his hand on my ankle. ““And before, I read it alone. It’s a better experiment when there’s someone to talk to about it afterwards.”

“It’s my favorite part,” I beam.

“Aren’t you going to ask me today?” His head leans more to the left, his eyes holding onto me.

“Ask you what?” There’s something weighing heavy on his mind. I can tell. He has the most expressive eyes I’ve ever seen. They tell me so much whenever he can’t.

“If I’m going to let you go soon.”

“Are you?”

“You won’t be better for a while . . . so . . .”

“So, after that, then?”

“Maybe.” He sighs, lowering his eyes. “I . . . I . . .”

“You want me to stay,” I sputter.

He rests a hand on my ankle and lightly squeezes. “Yeah, but it doesn’t matter what I want. It should matter what’s best for you.”

“Since when?”

“Since now, Blake. It should always have mattered, but I had everything wrong all this time.”

“The voice changer is off.”

“Yeah,” he deflates. “It is.”

“Did you forget to turn it back on?” My chest rises and falls heavily.

“No. I wanted you to hear me.”

“I like your voice way better.”

“It makes things a lot easier when I get to use it.”

“Going without the mask will too.”

“I can’t take that off. Then you’ll know what I look like, and then—”

“You can’t let me go,” I finish for him.”