Page 278 of Ominous: Part 1

“Eden.”

He wants me to look at him, I can tell. But I don’t. Not until he says, “Eden, don’t be like this,” and I hear it. Maybe it’s the late hour or strange night or maybe even the marijuana lingering in his own system, but there’re the wobbly notes of his voice, some of his surety slipping away.

It’s so unusual for him, I look up.

“I won’t make this a thing,” he says earnestly. “But…”

I grit my teeth. It isn’t that I don’t understand. I just don’t ever want him to see me as less than, and he’s already so hard to keep up with. If he starts thinking he has to save me at every turn, watch over every move I make, he’ll grow bored, faster. He doesn’t need any more burdens to carry.

Whether he realizes it or not, I know he already has so many of his own. He needs to chase highs, not swoop down to catch my lows. And Iknowhe’d do bad things for me.

Something terrible.

But I need to keep him as long as I can. I don’t want him taken from me, too soon.

The silence stretches.

He doesn’t finish his sentence.

“What?” I find myself asking, even though I didn’t think I wanted to hear it. I run my tongue over my teeth, lips dry. “What is it?”

He brings his hand up, over his mouth, turning his head. Then he drops his hand and says, without looking at me, “I won’t make it a thing,” he promises again. “But the way I feel about you, sometimes… it’s overwhelming.”

There’s a soreness in my throat.In my lungs.Like I’ve been hit in the chest, and all the air has abandoned me.

I curl my fingers in the sheets for something to hold onto.

“Sometimes I think I’ll do something we’ll regret just to keep you.”

We’ll regret.

I’d like to say I don’t know what he means. That it’s not possible to feel remorse for something I didn’t do.

Except those words feel like an omen, and I know with us, nothing is impossible.

Andnothingcan be a nightmare as much as a dream. Besides, he’s echoing my own fears back to me.

“I won’t let you.” It’s a promise. A vow. “I wouldn’t let you do something… like that.”

The silence lingers, and I’m torn between the urge to flee and the desire to never move. We could leave it like this. My word to him, to keep him out of trouble when it comes to me. We could pretend it’ll never end, because of it.

But he doesn’t let us pretend.

I build castles in the sky. He kicks them down into hell.

Still facing away from me, he smiles before he says, “Even you wouldn’t be able to stop me.” And I know it isn’t words of bravado.

It’s only truth.

45

Eli

The Halloween morningis barely there to greet us.

Shivering beside me, her arm brushing against mine, Eden says, “Maybe they were right.”

Probably.Based on the empty coastline, the thin threads of pink and orange not enough to warm us, the waves rough and the sand cool beneath our feet, her sandals and mine dangling from the fingertips of each of my hands, they were likely right. Dominic and Luna, shockingly the only two people up, refused to come outside because they said the water would be too cold.