Page 16

Miyori lay on her side after a shower to wash away the rain, facing away from me, her breath soft and even. But I knew she wasn’t asleep. I could tell by the way her shoulders were tight.

I reached out, slid my arm around her waist, and pulled her closer. She didn’t resist, but she didn’t relax either.

“I hate when you shut down like this,” I murmured against the back of her neck.

She didn’t answer right away. Just stared out into the dark room. Then, finally, she said, “I can’t keep doing this.”

My chest clenched. “Doing what?”

“This,” she said, turning to face me now. She looked tired. “You being sweet one minute, then flipping the fuck out the next. I never know which version of you I’m going to get.”

I tried to speak, but she kept going. “I’m starting to feel like I’m in survival mode. And I don’t want to feel like that constantly.”

Her words hit harder than any bullet ever could.

I sat up a little, ran my hand over my face. “I know. I know I’m not easy, Miyori . But I’m trying. I am.” I grabbed her hand, held it against my chest so she could feel the truth pounding behind my ribs. “I’ll change. For you, I will.”

She searched my face like she wanted to believe me but didn’t know if she could.

So I told her my truth.

“I’m like this because my mother cheated on my father,” I said.

“All the time. I didn’t understand what it meant when I was little, but I knew something was off.

He worshipped her, but she… she walked around like she didn’t give a fuck.

Took what she needed from him. Laughed in his face when he cried.

Made him small. My father was a dangerous man, but for her, he was sniveling. ”

Miyori ’s expression softened a little.

“When I was fifteen, she disappeared. Didn’t leave a note. Didn’t say goodbye. Just gone. My pops told me she ran off with some guy.”

I swallowed hard, fingers tightening on hers.

“I believed him up until the day he died. He had throat cancer. Could barely talk by the end. But right before he went… he told me the truth. ”

Miyori sat up slowly, eyes locked on mine.

“He killed her,” I said. My voice didn’t shake, but something inside me did. “He found out she was trying to take me and leave him for good. Said he couldn’t take it. Couldn’t stand being abandoned. So he strangled her in the kitchen. Buried her in the woods behind the house.”

Miyori covered her mouth.

“I remember seeing the mound of dirt days later, and I had thought the dog had buried something.” I laughed, but it came out hollow. “I never told anybody. But I couldn’t keep it in. Not from you.”

“You didn’t have to tell me that,” she whispered. Her eyes were glassy now. “Priest, that’s… that’s heavy.”

“I had to.” I touched her face, traced her cheekbone with my thumb. “Because I see it in your eyes. You’re getting fed up. And I don’t blame you. But I need you to know why I am the way I am.”

She didn’t pull away. She didn’t say anything at all.

“I didn’t learn love like normal people,” I said. “I learned that if you don’t hold on tight enough, they’ll leave. Or worse, make you feel like nothing. That's why I love you like I do.”

“That’s not love, Priest,” she said quietly.

“I know. But it’s what I came from.” I leaned in, pressing my forehead to hers. “I’m scared, Miyori . I don’t know how to be soft, but I want to learn. I want to be better for you. Because I can’t fucking lose you. I’ll lose my mind.”

She finally exhaled, long and shaky. “I don’t want to lose you either,"she said, and that’s all I needed to hear.

We lay like that, tangled together, silently.

Me smiling into the dark.

Mostly everything I had said to her about my parents was a lie. But she had believed me.

I was me because I was born this way. But Miyori needed a reason for why I was the way I am. Something she could hold onto to make me feel more human. She needed a story tragic enough to see no evil. To justify the possessiveness. The threats.

My parents had been loving to each other. Sometimes they told me they didn’t understand how I was so different from them. Both of them were dead. They died in an airplane crash on the way to Italy when I was fifteen. But there was nobody to tell her different.

And I never would, because she needed to believe I learned this behavior, not that it was just who I was .

So I gave her a reason to pity me. A dead mother. A sob story. A father’s final confession.

And just like I knew she would, she swallowed it.

All of it would endear her to me because she thought I was bleeding inside, and she was the type of woman who needed to save someone—like she did with her sister. She was a fixer.

Now she would think that she was the cure for what ailed me.