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Chapter Nine
Time had become the most confusing thing of all. While I was certain Michael had only left me minutes ago, the darkness outside whispered it had been more like hours. While I was certain that we were just teenagers again, the stained marks on the ceiling reminded me I wasn’t safe in my own bed. When he left that night, I cried too. When I saw him covered in blood, my body trembled. It was six years later and somehow, I’d been transported back to the girl I used to be.
The one who felt totally lost if I wasn’t in his eye.
It should have made me feel good. If I didn’t trust Michael, having him touch me, was just one step closer to being able to leave this place. He’d start to trust me, start to leave the door unlocked, and I could hobble out into the woods like I dreamt of on that first night. If Ididbelieve him, though, an entirely new fear had to work its way into the spotlight. If there was someone after me, someone who tried to hurt me in the woods, then Michael was the only person who could keep me safe. But I’d always wanted more than safety, didn’t I?
Why was it that every time I got close to him, my world burst into flames?
I hadn’t been able to move much after everything that happened. Cumming left my legs too weak to carry me across the room. I’d never had anyone touch me the way Michael had. After our time in the library, I’d never had anyone touch meperiod. I knew in that second that no one would compete, that it wasn’t right to lay beneath someone else if all I would do was wish it was Michael. After he made me cum, all I could do was sit there, unable to move from the grave he so lovingly lowered me into. It took an hour for me to decide to crawl into a hot bath, but warm water only melted the ice that surrounded me. I sobbed. A broken body was something I’d become familiar with— the accident had seen to that. I was used to feeling ostracized, to feeling neglected, to feeling like a second-class citizen. I wasn’t used to those dark eyes, and maybe that was why I couldn’t move. After I crawled out of the bath, I hadn’t bothered to get dressed. Sopping wet hair grew knotted as I tugged the blankets from the bed, and as I rested in a nest of sheets and sobs, I waited.
Waited for clarity,
Waited for morning,
Waited for Michael.
By the time the early morning light flittered through the trees, I knew I was drifting in and out of consciousness. It was between those moments of clarity and confusion that I felt him the most. Sometimes he waited for me on the other side of the door, sometimes he left me all alone. It was a sensation I’d experienced on my most painful nights. When strangers gawked at my scars from across the street, imagining Michael was next to me always made it easier. In the dark, I could pretend that he was there like he used to be, trying to understand me the way he used to, trying to get it the way he used to. On his floor, things were different. Time had changed something. As my eyes flitted open, the warmth on the other side of the door wasn’t just a product of my imagination. This time, I didn’t create the soft sounds waiting for me in the hall.
“Michael?”
My eyelids grew heavy as the silence wrapped around me. The world grew quiet, but a shift stiffened tired muscles. He was waiting on the other side.
“You should be asleep.”
In the dark, my lips curved into a smile. Nuzzling deeper into my blankets, I gave a gentle hum. For now, I decided, this would be good enough. His hands weren’t on me like they were in my dreams, like they were in the bathroom, but his presence brought the same comfort. To my tired head, at least. To the parts of me that were so willing to overlook the horrors he was capable of.
“I didn’t think you’d come back,” I admitted.
Quiet filled the space between us. If I hadn’t been so tired, I might have found the strength to be embarrassed. Michael had made it perfectly clear that we weren’t the kids we used to be, that the relationship we once had was nothing more than a young girl’s wildly unchecked imagination. He told me he didn’t love me, didn’t he? Hadn’t he made that perfectly clear when he left?
On the other side of the door, Michael shifted. His hiss brought another smile to my face, and my eyes closed again. Why was it so impossible for him to just say something nice? “I’ve always come back,” he reminded me. “You need to sleep.”
It was a command I desperately wanted to follow. His warmth ebbed the sadness, and when all that was left were the gentle notes of his voice, my body relaxed into a peace I hadn’t tasted in years. Though, quiet only reminded me of the thing I’d been so desperate to avoid, of the facts I couldn’t run from anymore. I was scared. I was scared of everything, and when I finally felt the warmth of my oldest friend, I found the strength to admit it.
“I can’t,” I choked. “I can’t sleep anymore.”
It wouldn’t take any more than that. For Michael, it never would. While I expected a hiss of mockery and the sharp snap of his teeth, the admission relaxed Michael back against the wall. I could see his feet cross and recross from beneath the door, a cautious tongue searching for the words that would soothe me— not that that had ever been Michael’s specialty.
“I’d never let anything happen to you, Bridget.” A second thought stiffened his muscles, and I heard his head tilt against the wall. He was looking back at me, seeing the darkness that awaited him beyond the door. “I’ve never let anything happen to you.”
“Why?”
The question slipped out before my tired lips could stop it. I couldn’t keep my eyes open anymore. I knew Michael well enough to know that I’d never hear those words from him— the ones that would make sense of this mess. He’d never tell me why he couldn’t let me go, why it was so easy for him to send me away but so hard for him to properly leave.
The dark offered the safety I needed. From my place on the floor, I murmured out a question I mightactuallyget an answer for: “How long have you been watching me?”
His dark chuckle filled my lungs. It was Michael’s patented attempt at avoidance, but when the silence came, I knew even that had changed. The door between us, the one that I cursed just hours ago, had a way of bringing awful pieces together. When my eyes weren’t on him, Michael seemed to relax easier, and when Michael relaxed, I caught a glimpse of the boy I’d been waiting years for.
“Since the beginning?”
“No,” he snapped. When the anger gnawed away at him, Michael relaxed back against the wall. “Not since the beginning,” he choked out. “When I saw that fuck at the bus stop try to—”
That night, that bus stop, would be forever tattooed in my mind. It was the first time he saved me. It was the first night he called me Birdie. It was the first night, I think, Michael and I really saw each other. He’d wasted four weeks snarling at me from across the desk in the library, trying to force me to move seats. He wouldn’t let me so much as glance at him before that night— the one where he followed me home. That was the first time I saw those dark eyes, the part of Michael that he tried so desperately to control around me.
Those were the eyes that put an end to the constant harassment on those late-night bus rides.
Those were the eyes that saved me.
