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"Cyn?" he asks, pulling out of Lorcan's hold and striding towards me. I can feel the tension in his body even from the otherside of the room, the barely restrained hope. "Cyn, can you hear me?" He drops to his knees beside the bed, his rough fingertips feathering over my cheek as he dips his head closer.
I blink up at him, feeling his touch, yet I don't acknowledge him. I don't know why. I just keep staring, waiting for my body to react, for my lips to part on a whisper. For something to happen.
"Cyn, please come back to us. We need you," he says, softer now, pleading with me as Lorcan and Arden step up behind him.
I don't look up at them either. I just keep my gaze fixed on Carrick, and the water swimming in his dark eyes.
"Why won't you come back to us?" he whispers, his fingers pushing into my hair as his thumb rubs against my cheek.
I don’t have an answer for him because I don’t know myself. There’s such a big part of me that is still so numb, unable to react to his question, his touch, his intensity. But there’s another part, this tiny small spark that keeps me in the present, listening, watching,feeling.
His touch anchors me, the warmth of his breath keeps me held captive. I hang onto that feeling with feeble fingers, wishing I had the strength to pull myself up and into his arms, to whisper his name like he’s whispering mine.
“Cyn, Cyn, Cyn,” he murmurs, his thumb making circles across my skin, sparking something to life within me.
"Carrick, come on, let her rest," Arden says from behind him.
“Give me a minute, goddamn it,” Carrick retorts, flashing a look over his shoulder before refocusing on me. “You can hear me, I know you can, Cyn. Don’t let the darkness take you. Remember what Faith said.Live.”
And I do remember. I remember it all, and it’s too much. It’s too painful. I’m not strong enough to live with the memories of what happened to her. It was so brutal, so callous.Shedeserved to live. Her baby deserved to live.
“Please, Cyn,” Carrick begs, peppering my face with kisses that I can’t respond to, but need to feel.
Keep kissing me. Touching me. Don’t stop.
"She just needs time," Arden adds, but there's a frailty to his words; they're without any strength as though he doesn't believe them himself. I’m not sure any of them do. I’m not sure I do.
Carrick shakes his head, pressing his warm lips against my cool cheek as they slide up to my ear. "Come back to us, Cyn. Just come back to us."
His voice cracks, and a single tear seeps from between my lashes and slides down my nose.
I want to. I do.
But I’m not strong enough to hold on.
Not without something to keep me here.
Carrick removes his touch. His warm lips leaving my skin, his hands pulling back as he stands, and the absence of his touch has me freefalling back into oblivion.
I wish he knew. I wish they knew that I need their touch to keep me with them.
But it’s too late.
The dark void calls out to me like a siren's song, an irresistible pull drawing me closer and closer until my skin is slick with inky blackness. I feel the velvet embrace of the darkness as it swallows me up, muffling the voices of reality until they are silenced, fading away to a distant island where seaweed clings to the shore and salty tears mingle with the ocean.
19
Lorcan
Rain beats against the windowpane like a thousand tiny hammers, echoing Cyn's sadness as she lay on her bed, staring off into the distance. Thunder rumbles above a stormy sea, a shard of lightning illuminating a grey, cloud-filled sky. Despite the fire roaring in the hearth, there's a coldness that lingers in the room, in all of us, creeping into the gaps split open by Cyn's grief.
“How’s she fairing today?” Arden asks me as he stands in the doorway of Cyn’s bedroom.
I place the tube of arnica cream back on the bedside table, lowering her pyjama top.
"She's no better than yesterday, or the day before that," I reply sullenly.
The truth is she's getting worse.
