Page 91 of Apathy
Yeah, I did know.
I had a list of things I was terrified of right now, and at the top of that list was a monster they still couldn’t catch. There were no prints inside the house, no further evidence that could point to one person, and the police were as clueless as the rest of us.
I was glad for October and the colder weather it brought to us. At least now I could wear long-sleeved shirts without looking like a lunatic, while everybody else wore short-sleeved shirts and basked in the rare bouts of sunshine in Winworth.
When the doctor removed the bandages from my arm, I wanted to cry, scream, shout, fucking break something, because he didn’t just slice me up like a turkey for Thanksgiving. No, he left a mark.
A mark I knew.
A mark I had seen two times already.
Once on that paper in my locker, and the second time on the spine of the book I found in the library.
The only thing it was missing was a circle orouroborosaround the symbol, but it was exactly the same mark—the triangle with upturned ends.
Dylan held my other hand while the doctor removed the stitches and applied ointment. I was furious, but I held it inside. At least I tried to hold it inside, until we reached home, when I broke down, letting the tears stream freely down my cheeks, uncaring who was going to see me. And Dylan… Dylan broke a vase that always stood in the foyer of our house, smashing it against the wall as soon as we stepped inside, not once looking at me.
That was the last time I saw him before he went back to Seattle.
“Call me?” she asked as she started heading toward the exit, leaving me alone with Ash.
I should’ve turned around and looked at him instead of staring at the space now vacated by Erin, but I couldn’t.
My stomach churned as worry spread through my body, settling at the pit of my gut. When he finally spoke, his voice ricocheting against the shelves, falling over me like a blanket, that churning sensation increased tenfold, but I still refused to look at him.
“I’m not sure if I should spank you,” he started in a low vibrato, my core clenching and unclenching, my body begging for his touch. “Or if I should just walk out.”
I turned at that.
“What?” I asked breathlessly. He would leave? The nerves from earlier were suddenly replaced by fear, and as I dropped the book on the table, he leaned over, placing his elbows on the dark mahogany wood, his eyes never leaving mine.
“What is going on, Skylar?”
He never called me by my name anymore, at least not my full name. After those nights at my house, something changed in him, and true to his word, he never went back to ignoring me or to pretending that what was happening between us wasn’t real. So hearing him use my full name felt like lead settling in my body, rendering me speechless.
Unmoving, I blinked, and then blinked again as he dragged his hand over his face. He was furious with me, I knew that. But I didn’t know that he would be furious enough to walk away.
“You would leave me?” I murmured, dreading the answer.
Panic gripped me, my heart protesting against my rib cage, afraid it would lose its anchor. But I already lost him. I wasn’t sure if I ever really had him.
Not because he didn’t tell me about his family.
Not because he never tells me anything about him.
But because I was never supposed to be his. My father, my monster, already wrote every sequence of my life, and no matter what I did, I would never have my freedom. At least not while I’m in Winworth.
Ash was mine to love and mine to lose, but I couldn’t bring myself to tell him. I was going to break my own heart, and if I could, I would rid myself of my last name, so that the only thing standing between the two of us was only this table in front of me, and nothing else.
He suddenly stood up and rounded the table, crowding me, cutting off my oxygen supply, because he was everywhere. The sky was not just the sky anymore. It held colors hidden in Ash’s eyes, and every night when I looked up from my balcony, I saw him.
The forest didn’t smell only like wet soil and pine trees. It held Ash in its arms, making me think of him even when I didn’t want to think of anything.
The sound of the chair scraping over the floor sounded around us as he pulled me around. He was on his knees, his hands on my bare legs, inching higher and higher, going underneath the black skirt I wore today.
“I don’t know, Moonshine,” he murmured, looking at me. “I don’t know what’s wrong with you lately, and it’s driving me insane. You won’t let me touch you, you won’t let me kiss you… You’re here, but you’re not here.”
If only he knew how much I wanted to be here, to be present. Not just physically, but mentally as well.
