Page 47 of Creatures Like Us

“You don’t?” Noah reaches to wipe a stray tear off my cheek, and I let him.

“Yeah, well, maybe I was a little pissed off back then. Besides, it’s not like I mean every single thing I say.”

“Okay,” Noah says. Then he goes silent, but it’s not like I’m going to let him get away with this so easily.

“You’re telling me you don’t think it’s a shitty thing to say? That you’ll kill yourself if I leave you?”

“I just say what I think. Sometimes it doesn’t come out right.”

“But it’s true?”

He nods. “It is.”

I sigh, running a hand through my hair. Fuck.

“It’s what I was planning, remember?” he adds. “The night I found you.”

“I know.” I guess that makes a lot of sense, given the way he’s been acting. Given the way he’s so desperate for me to like him, as if I’m some sort of lifeline. It’s a lot of pressure to put on a person. It’s not healthy, I’ll tell you that.

“You’ve thought about it too, haven’t you?” Noah asks.

I grimace. “You’re not making me feel any better, you know.”

He throws me a weird look. “Who said I was trying to make you feel better?” And he flashes a small smile, in the closest form of sarcasm he’s ever displayed.

“Well, if you want me to stop using, I need to feel better.”

He shrugs. “You’re not using now, are you? I’d say my method is fairly effective.”

“You should teach a class,” I mutter.

“I don’t think so.” And he gives me another smile, eyes glittering with something soft, something desperate. “I don’t care about anyone else but you.”

My breath catches in my throat. “Don’t say that.”

“Should I lie?”

“I don’t know.”

“Would you not rather I be truthful?”

“No. Yes. I don’t know. Just stop talking.” I roll over to my side and wrap an arm around him. “Just let me hold you.”

Noah sighs into my touch, and I bury my nose in his hair, lost in the wave of all the fucked-up emotions he evokes in me.

If he hadn’t found me on New Year’s Eve, would he be dead by now? If I’d escaped when he was upstairs getting me a new pair of pants, would he have picked up where he left off and gone through with it this time?

If you won’t, I’ll do it myself.

He can’t say shit like that to me; it’s not fair. Doesn’t he get it? If I left him, knowing what I know now, and he killed himself as a result, it meansIwould be to blame?…?I’d be the reason?…?Fuck, it’s so messed up I can’t?…?I can’t think about that right now. All I can do is nudge closer to Noah, my arm slung tightly around his waist, trying to ignore the ache in my heart as well as the one between my legs.

I shouldn’t want him. I shouldn’t want to do anything to him except leave his sorry ass and not care one bit that he’d take his own life as a result.

But I do. I do care. I care more about this than I care about freedom, and I don’t care how messed up that is. At least, not for now. For now, I just want to sleep.

It takes a long time before either of us manages to find rest. Sometime during the night, I shift my hand—the one in chains—further up Noah’s body and wrap it lightly around his throat. Like that, we both relax enough to fall asleep at last. If only for a little while, we can find rest and feel safe.

Chapter 14