Page 158 of His Trick

She was helpless and frozen on the ground. The impact of the fall had knocked her out.

I lay on the fucking ground, in the blood of Carrington, listening to his empty chest.

I couldn’t breathe.

I couldn’t think.

The room spun around me as shadows danced on the walls. My sobs consumed the silence around me, mixing with the dripping water and the suffocating metallic tang in the air.

There was nothing but silence.

I waited there in the quiet, trembling uncontrollably. My hands pressed into his chest, his blood soaking my entire body. I whispered apologies, meaningless words, into his hair. I kissed him again and again, watched the warm heat fade further from his body, and felt every piece of my soul darken.

My light…

Was gone.

Every memory slammed into me—my father’s cruelty, my fucked up childhood, Carrington’s voice, the blood, Xanthy’s wide staring eyes, and my own love and failure. The shed pressed down like a tomb on top of me. I was broken. My heart shattered. My world had ended.

And I had no one to blame but myself.

One Month Later…

I usedto think grief was loud.

Explosive.

The kind of thing that shattered glass with the noise and made grown men collapse onto cold floors.

But I was wrong…

Grief was quiet.

It was the slow-festering mold under the floorboards before you fell in without noticing. The smell you didn’t recognize until it was too late.

It was Carrington’s duffel bag still stuffed in my closet because I couldn’t bring myself to throw it out.

It was the desperation of running in the woods, hoping that the earthy pine scent of him would linger even a second longer.

It was the ache in my body every night where his warmth should’ve been, but Xanthy’s replaced it.

It had been a month since he died.

One fucking month of hearing the echo of his cruel laugh in the back of my skull, mocking me, taunting me, and begging me to see the truth.

I couldn’t.

Because every time I closed my eyes, all I saw was the moment he hit the ground with his shirt soaking into that awful red. I still couldn’t see past the way his mouth parted like he had one last smartass remark for me, yet never got to say it. I couldn’t feel anything but the taste of blood on his lips, the last time he had kissed me.

I couldn’t feel anything anymore. I was numb.

Death may as well have taken me, too.

People checked on me after I melted away into my sorrows the moment Carrington was officially declared ‘missing.’ My friends from college and the orphanage reached out, hell, even my shit hole father tried to call me just to gloat.

I ignored them all. I didn’t have words for the lost prince of Normal. I didn’t have the complacency they needed to feel better about themselves for ‘caring’ about me at all.

Xanthy busied herself, content with pretending the world was still spinning, and the crack everyone else saw in us was nothing more than a blemish to smear makeup on.