Page 3 of Genesis (Alter Arlo #2)

ONE SECOND TO PRETEND

CADOC

This fucking lake was the life and the death of me.

Zade was still breathing, but he had passed out.

Even dragging him to the shore hadn’t roused him, and I started to think it was because he hoped for death.

Amelia was in his arms, dead with only half a fucking head, but I knew he’d want to say goodbye to her.

A stray bullet.

A gunfight that hadn’t been aiming for us.

Gone.

Like Zan.

I buckled over, the ache in my broken heart worse than the bullet in my ribs. The pain was unbearable and all-consuming. I collapsed against the sandy shore, breathing in the grit and hoping for death.

What was life without Zan? How was I supposed to move forward?

My heart pounded out of control, each thump a battle cry against my already stinging ribs.

I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t fucking breathe, and the more I tried, the more sand I inhaled, filling my lungs with the small grains that ebbed and flowed with the fluid motion of Zan’s watery grave.

Gone. Zan gone. My world gone. The only piece of a good life I’d ever had… gone. I couldn’t go on without him.

Protect my brother.

How? How was I supposed to protect him when I couldn’t breathe?

When I’d already let his sister die? I’d spent my whole life being beaten, abused, whipped, and flogged, but I’d take that pain for all eternity against the pain I felt now.

Hyperventilating through anguish and still breathing despite my demands for death, I threw up sand and breathed more in.

Screaming, crying, dying and living, I broke. Shattered.

Consciousness came and went, and every time I opened my eyes, I saw Zan’s bloody body lying next to me.

But when I touched him, he felt different.

He wasn’t happy-go-lucky and submissive to love.

This body wasn’t soft and pliable to my every touch.

This body wasn’t anything but a taunt, a torment to look at for the rest of my miserable life, where my only purpose was to keep my promise and protect the identical body to the one I’d lost forever.

They were the same in appearance. Same dark hair and eyes with the same ridges and lines of muscle.

Even the same tattoo. A mind-fuck to forever taunt me with the loss of the man I loved.

The man I let die because I’d been a minute— a fucking minute!

—too late. Now stuck in a mad world with the body but not the soul, I knew it was the only thing I deserved.

I’d stick with Zade to keep my promise, but I’d follow him to admire the body.

Zan’s body with a different heart inside it.

Masochistic. I’d follow him. Waiting for the day it’d feel good to look at him. To take pleasure in the way his body reminded me of all the ways I’d fucked it and praised it. I worshipped this body, and the sick part of my mind still wanted to worship it, just to keep Zan alive.

My boyfriend died, but his body stayed.

My love died, and his body hated me.

I begged for death, but life was my punishment.

A life with the body I desired but could never have.

I deserved it.

Zan’s watery fingers tickled my ankles, teasing me into joining him in the depths of Synner’s Lake.

Come get me, Cadoc. I love you. Don’t stop.

I closed my eyes even though they were already closed. A water-logged receipt with his writing became wrinkled between my fist, but I clutched onto it like the only physical tie I had to him.

Chase me, Cadoc. Find me. Don’t leave me.

I’d never leave him. I’d carry his dead heart as suffocating baggage for the rest of my days and never resent the weight of it. And if he hadn’t made me promise to protect his brother, I’d weigh myself with rocks and drown myself in his grave.

“No! NO! Fuck, no! No. No. No. No. Amelia!”

A body moved under my hand and Zan’s wispy fingers continued to lick at my ankles from the rising tide. My hand fell to the ground and my eyes blinked open, gritty and blurred from the sand.

“Amelia! Fuck!”

The blood-soaked sand lacked two bodies. Zade wasn't lying there. Amelia was gone. I dug my fingers into the blood, trying to hold on to whatever bits of her remained. Failure. A fucking failure. Two Enge kids dead in a week. My fault.

“She’s gone. Fuck, she’s gone.”

Zade tripped, collapsing right on top of me, making my ribs and bullet wound scream in pain. My soul screamed louder. He tried to get up, but he kept falling against me, and when I rolled over to shove him off, he threw up right beside my head.

“Zade…”

“Don’t,” he snarled at me. “Don’t fucking… she’s gone.” He shook violently, trying but failing to stand. Either he gave up or his body quit on him, but he fell against me again, hyperventilating and crying too hard to breathe.

I’d hold him while he died.

I closed my eyes and felt him spasm against me. He trembled when I weakly put an arm over his back to keep him still, and the sick, sick, sick fucking part of me allowed myself one measly second to pretend he was Zan. One second. One second of Zan’s body against mine again. One second.

One second to pretend. One second that felt so real.

“I love you,” I whispered against his hair, stroking it back. “I love you.”

He cried harder, choking warm bile onto my chest. “Amelia,” he gasped. “Amel…”

The next time I woke up, I was alone and the moon was out.

Orange and ominous, it stared down at me from above Synner’s Lake.

I didn’t know what it was looking at, but I knew it wasn’t a nice sight.

A wounded and scarred body that contained a tainted soul and a shattered heart.

There was nothing worthwhile left of me, but Zade would keep me alive just to make me live like this.

I stared at the moon, trying to see what it saw. Was it looking down on Zan’s liquid grave, watching over him while he bloated and decomposed at the bottom? Would I be able to find him if I dove down there? What would I even do with him?

Groaning, I pushed myself to sit up. My bladder was full, and I no longer had any dignity left, so I just…

pissed myself. The moon was my only judge.

While I pissed myself, my eyes found Zan, alive and well, down by the water’s edge.

Sitting with his elbows on his knees in ankle-deep water, looking out at the glowing orange reflection on the rippling surface.

Beautiful. Fuck, he was beautiful.

His shoulders rose up and down, breathing slowly. Calmly. His dark hair reflected the light, and his shirt was off to show blood dripping down his left shoulder blade. Bruises all over him. Pale skin. Anger in the way he held himself.

Oh.

Not Zan.

I wobbled as I stood, piss dripping down my legs. “I need to wash it,” I said to him, pulling him to stand. “I need to wash it.” I dragged him into the water.

Zade didn’t have the strength to fight me, so we waded into his dead twin’s grave to wash the sand and blood from our wounds.

My fingers shook when they touched him, and Zade shivered with his eyes closed when I took another second to pretend.

He stood obediently, letting me scrub the filth from his perfect body.

“It went straight through.” I barely recognized my voice. There was an entrance and exit wound, but Zade wasn’t showing any pain.

“Yeah,” he whispered.

His body went limp in the water, so I leaned him against me to finish cleaning him off. Another second in a false reality. His back to my chest. My lips so close to his neck. His body so perfect against mine. His essence all around us in the dark water.

“On the dock.” I pushed him over to it and left him there to sit on the edge. I grabbed our packs from the beach and brought them over, pulling out the first aid kit.

Zade said nothing while I cleaned and patched him up.

Not even when I added a few stitches. He didn’t even flinch.

He was as broken as I was. Usually, his anger kept him going, but I think he was too tired to be angry.

When I was done, I sat down beside him, feeling numb to the world and too exhausted to think about anything.

“There’re no explosions right now,” Zade said in a monotone voice. “No guns.”

Silence. Just the lapping of the lake against the dock and our hearts trying to beat in our chests. I unwrapped a brand new pack of cigarettes, the plastic saving them from Zan’s clutches, and lit one.

Water dripped down my face, but I didn’t know if it was from the lake or my eyes, so I didn’t bother batting it away.

I just smoked and looked at the moon, trying not to lean into Zade beside me.

By the time either of us spoke again, the moon had moved to the other side of the lake and gotten a lot smaller.

“I need to do yours now,” he said, pushing on my chest until my back hit the dock.

I didn’t have the energy to stop him. I kept smoking while he fished a bullet from my side, and I lit another one when he pulled some sutures through the hole.

At this point, I might have just kept smoking if he reached through my ribcage and tore my heart free. It did me no good now, anyway.

More time passed, the moon kept moving, and Zade sort of fell next to me. He was breathing and I was smoking, and the moon was changing colour.

“I can’t move,” he said, right before the sound of trickling through the dock started. “I can’t… I’m...” He cried.

I didn’t comment. I didn’t care. I’d already pissed myself, so who was I to judge?

Zan was dead and rotting at the bottom of the lake.

Amelia was dead, her body was missing, and who knew what some sick fuck was doing to it.

We were the remnants left over. Ghostly skeletons of our former selves just pissing our pants because there was no will to live left within us.

“Kill me,” he begged.

“Kill me first,” I begged back.

Neither of us moved, and I knew that my life would continue to shatter tomorrow and his anger would come back. When I closed my eyes, I pretended for one more second.