The contradiction.
The sun was setting and night had begun its descent. Elian didn’t turn on any lights. We sat on his couch in the gloom. The silent, silent world holding its breath and waiting.
Waiting.
“My name was never Elian Beyer. He was an invention. One I created because I couldn’t stomach the person tied to a past. I was trying really hard to forget him.” His confession was expected.
“You trust me with your name.” I was quiet. Oh so quiet.
Elian, his green eyes no longer dancing, but hooded and dark, stared at me with the burning of a man half gone.
“I’m not sure I should,” he said, breathlessly. Honestly.
“I’m not sure you should either.” Just as breathlessly. Just as honestly.
Elian’s finger dug into my skin. Clawing. Restraining. “I want to trust you, Layna. I want you to take everything. But what will you do when I give it to you?” He looked confused. Crazed. Almost out of control. His light brown hair stuck out on all sides as though he had been running his fingers through it mercilessly.
He hadn’t been sleeping. I knew this for fact.
Since our talk that night I had smashed the window, we had been sharing a bed. We fell asleep together. We woke up together. Hands holding, locked tight. Never letting go.
Trapping each other in our confining arms.
And he tossed and turned. Often sitting up until the early hours of the morning. He chased his ghosts while I slept soundly, peacefully embracing mine.
I closed the space between us. I brought my wrist, trapped between his fingers, to my chest so that I cradled both of our hands. “I’ll take what you give me and I’ll tuck it in here. Inside. I promise, Elian.”
My promises meant nothing. They were only words. Words easily cracked.
Elian let go of my arm and wrapped himself around me. Touching. Always touching. As though he couldn’t stand the air having more contact with my skin than he did.
He embraced. He enveloped. I was squeezed and contained.
His.
His.
“Amelia and Elian James,” he whispered into my hair and I smelled him. I drank him in. His pain. His misery. His open vulnerability.
“Amelia and Elian James,” I murmured, my cheek pressed against his chest. His heart thudding beneath my ear.
Thud. Thud. Thud.
“I saw him, you know.”
I pulled back and looked up at my anguished man. My brows knitted together in question.
“You saw who?”
I knew.
I knew.
“Your father. My sister’s killer.”
I couldn’t inhale. Exhale. My stomach cramped and I felt ill. “You saw him?”
Elian dug his hands into my hair and tugged as he dragged them through the long, long strands. I winced. The sharp bite of hair pulled from scalp making my eyes water.
“She ran from the house. She was so angry all the time. She fought with my parents constantly. She stopped being nice to me. I thought she was just being a bitch. I told her to leave. To never come back.” He choked and heaved. He shuddered and sobbed.
I held him. I took his tears for my own.
“I chased after her. I wanted to make it right. I wanted to tell her that I was sorry. I didn’t want her to leave. I had a bad feeling…”
His body shook and I felt the wetness in my hair. I couldn’t look at him. His story was mine. We were linked in a way too horrible. A perfect, beautiful bond that would never be broken.
Because of my father.
Because of him.
He had given me so much.
He had taken almost everything.
“I’m sorry,” I rasped, my throat felt tight. Hard to breathe.
“Don’t apologize for him! Don’t you ever, ever apologize for that monster!”
Slit throats. Severed hands. Blood. Blood. Everywhere.
The buzzing. Filling my ears.
Buzz…
“And then they found her,” I finished for him.
“And then they found her,” Elian said.
No words. Just breathing. Just beating hearts. Empty. Fully. Thump. Thump. Thud.