When I give him a subtle nod, like we’ve spoken and agreed without words, as if we’ve let our souls do the talking instead of our mouths, he leans in and presses his lips to mine, soft and lingering.
Then he lifts me, getting to his feet with me wrapped around him and he begins to take me out of the Tunnel of Blood.
…
As Wrath carries me through the pitch-black carnival, yes, completely naked, my still clothes torn and scattered in the bizarre tunnel, I rest my head on his shoulder, shivering as the cold seeps straight into my bones.
Everything is dead silent except for the distant creak of the rides swaying in the breeze as we past them. Until something catches my eye near the haunted carousel, and I lift my head slowly.
My eyes squint through the darkness, and there, between the skeletal horses, I see a figure. Just standing there. Still and staring right at me.
Their hand lifts, slow and reaching, like they’re trying to beckon me closer. My vision sharpens, and I swear it looks like a woman in a long, white dress rippling as if underwater, black hair spilling down the front of her. I can’t see her face, but I feel her eyes. Right on me.
A spike of panic tears through my chest, and my breath catches as I quickly bury my face into Wrath’s neck.
He stops as soon as he senses my fear, his body tense against mine. I force myself to look again, eyes moving to the spot where she stood.
But she’s gone. Just an empty space and bone-white horses frozen mid-gallop.
Maybe my mind’s just playing tricks on me after everything that happened tonight. Maybe I’m just tired and my bodies stressed.
I lie my head back on his shoulder again and whisper.
“It’s fine… I just thought I saw something.”
When he hears the words, he pauses a second longer before continuing forward.
Chapter Fourteen
Wrath
After carrying Aurelia home, I take her inside her trailer, and she slips out of my arms like my touch has burned her. The second she’s steady, she bolts into the bathroom, but not without one last look back, peeking through the crack in the door like she knows I’m still watching her.
Of course, I am. I always fucking am.
“I won’t be long,” she says, almost too calm after everything I did, then closes it behind her, not locked or slammed, just enough to tell me she wants me to stay.
My jaw tightens while, for a second, my natural instinct gnaws at me to walk out, head back to my own trailer and crawl back into the darkness where I belong, but I don’t. Something keeps me rooted. The way she looked at me. The way she didn’t tell me to leave.
I guess I need her to want me here, even if she doesn’t understand why. Even if I don’t fucking understand why.
I move down the hallway toward her bedroom, and the moment I step inside, a soft glow of her phone lighting up on the bed catches my eye. I creep closer, weaving in and out of the chains, knowing I shouldn’t look, but I can’t stop myself. The curiosity to get to know her wins.
I snatch it up as soon as I’m close, the charger dangling from the bottom, and swipe my thumb across the screen.
When it unlocks, the background hits me first and it’s her, standing in front of the sea, smiling like the broken hasn’t yet touched her yet. Black summer dress, Converse on her feet, sun in her blue eyes.
I've never seen her smile like that. Not once. And the realization turns something deep inside me.
I wonder if she’ll ever smile at me like that. Whether I can, somehow, make her… happy, or if that version of her is already gone and I was too late. Maybe I’m not even capable of doing that myself.
I shake my head, once and hard, reminding myself of who the fuck I am, what the fuck I am and how fucking hung up I suddenly am on this girl.
Then I swipe through her apps until I find the photos. She doesn’t have many. Just a few. But a handful stand out like they don’t belong there. Four guys. Around my age, maybe a little older. One of them looks like he’s pushing mid-thirties. And a matured older woman.
I don’t recognize them, but every single photo looks like it was taken from a distance, the camera zoomed all the way in. Like she took them when they didn’t know. As if she was watching.
My mind races and I start digging through the rest of her phone, fingers moving on instinct, until I find her notes. Names. Locations. Times. Dates. Plans. But they’re time long gone.