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Chapter forty-four

Levana

He brings me meals.

Always carefully plated. Always warm.

He sets the trays down so gently it has imaginary bugs skittering over my skin every time.

As if softness can excuse the lock on the door.

Like being fed cancels out being caged.

He lets me out to use the bathroom.

Stands just outside while I go.

Then he walks me down the hallway, hand on my lower back like it’s some kind of kindness, before pushing me back in.

The lock clicks behind me every time.

I don’t even know how much time has passed.

The light changes through the tiny cracks in the boarded up windows—dim to dark, dark to dim again—but it all feels the same. Endless and soul sucking.

They were already boarded up when he locked me in here. Like he thought of everything. Like this was always the plan.

And now, between the locks and the seven names he keeps mumbling under his breath, he’s being more forceful about me fixing Alexander.

But I’m at a loss. It’s an impossible task, and I don’t know what the fuck I’m supposed to do anymore.

When I get the chance to look at Patrick now, his pupils are blown wide, eyes glassy and far away like there’s no one left behind them. Just a shell of the man I love. Scared and sucked into whatever fresh hell’s going on inside his head.

God, I’m such an idiot.

I thought I could manage him. Thought I could soothe him. Thought I—

No. Actually. I don’t know what I thought.

I don’t know where my damn mind’s been throughout this whole fucking thing.

Stuck in the clouds. In my own warped version of reality where I’ve just made everything worse.

I should’ve screamed at the hospital. Should’ve sprinted as far and as fast as I could. Should’ve gotten him help.

Who gives a shit if they’d have thought he was crazy?

Who cares if they’d have labelled him a monster?

At least he would’ve had help.

Real help.

Instead, he has me .

And look where that’s gotten us.

I stare down at the toy brick in my hands and turn it over, staring at the coloured sides like they might answer everything for me.

I turn it over once, then look up toward the bed.

Alexander’s still tucked beneath the blanket.

A child-sized silhouette frozen in time.

Yes, Patrick lost everything.

But Alexander lost his life, before he ever had a chance to really grow.

And now he’s here, in his bedroom, in the quiet company of a woman he’ll never know.

A woman who’s growing his siblings.

Siblings who also belong to the tiny skeletons lying in the crib across the hall.

“Christ,” I whisper, my throat burning. “What am I gonna do, buddy?”

I love Patrick so much. I love these babies so much.

But there’s no version of this where I get to keep all three.

No version where we survive this whole thing.

I have to be smart.

I have to be clever.

I have to be cruel, and follow through with it this time.

I have to lie with love still on my tongue.

I’m sorry, Patrick.

I’m so sorry.