"You don't what?" I ask quietly.
"I don't know what I'm supposed to do with that." His voice is barely audible over the downpour. "I don't know what any of this is anymore."
"You're still you," I murmur. "The picture doesn't change that."
"Everyone knows I'm a monster."
"You're not?—"
"Iam." He turns to face me fully, and even through the mask, even through the rain, I can see the devastation written across every line of his body. "That's what they're calling me. Monster. Freak.Thing. And they're right, Bells. They're fuckingright. You want to know why Nash couldn't look at me? Why my own twin brother—the person who loved me more than anyone in the world—had to turn away every time I took off the mask?"
His voice cracks on the last word.
"Because I'mhorrifying. Because looking at me makes people sick. Because I'm not human anymore, I'm just... this. This ruined, grotesquethingthat should've died in that fire instead of?—"
"Stop."
The word comes out harder than I intended. Harder than I knew I was capable of right now.
Rex goes silent. Stares at me with that single eye, chest heaving, rain streaming down his mask.
"You want to know why I'm here?" I ask, and my voice is steady even though my hands are shaking. "You want to know why I tracked you down through a fucking rainstorm to a cemetery in the dark?"
He doesn't answer.
"Because I saw the pictures." I hold his gaze, refusing to look away. "I saw every detail. The scars, the exposed teeth, the eye that won't close. I saw exactly what you look like, Rex. Not a flash in a dark tunnel. Not a glimpse through shadows.Everything. In high-definition. And you know what my first thought was?"
Still nothing.
"Where is he." I lean closer, close enough that I can see the way his jaw is clenched beneath the mask. "Notholy shitorthat's terrifyingor any of the bullshit those commenters are spewing. I thoughtwhere is heandis he okayandI need to find him."
"You're insane," he whispers.
"Maybe." I shrug, rain dripping off the coat he threw over my shoulders. "But not for the reasons you think. Either way, I'm here. I saw the photo, I understood exactly what I was looking at, and I'm still here. You can either accept that or keep pushing me away, but I'm not leaving."
The silence stretches between us, heavy and electric. Rex's eye searches my face like he's looking for the lie, the catch, the inevitable moment when I'll realize my mistake and run.
He won't find it.
Because there isn't one.
Another shiver wracks my body. This one's violent, my teeth chattering hard enough that I have to clench my jaw to keep them from cracking together. The cold has seeped into my bones, past the wet clothes and the soaked binder and straight into my core.
Rex notices immediately.
"You need to go," he says, and there's something different in his voice now. Softer. Almost concerned.
Oooh,ConcernedRex is my least favorite version of all. I wish he'd just fucking yell at me.
"Then get up," I say.
"What?"
"Get up." I point toward the cemetery path. "Your car's that way, right? So either you get up and walk back to it with me, or I sit here and freeze to death with you. Your call."
He stares at me like I've sprouted a second head. "You're fuckinginsane."
"You already said that."