Page 16 of Ghost Ribbon

It fucking tore.

A crack splintered through the emptiness inside me, spreading outward like lightning across a black sky. The pressure I had felt that night in Italy returned all at once, magnified a thousandfold.

He was here.

He was real.

He had become not a star but a person standing ten feet away from me, staring at the corpse I had made, and everything I hadn’t felt since that night, every fragment of warmth came rushing back.

Darker.

Hungrier.

The ribbon in my pocket burned against my ribs like a brand.

I looked at Marco, at the boy who had given me his brave thing, and I felt everything. Every year I had carried him without knowing it.

He was so beautiful.

I didn’t know what I felt. I didn’t have words for it, didn’t have categories, but he shone brighter than every star in the sky. Brighter than the hope star. Brighter than all the light behind all the darkness in the universe.

I wanted to cross the distance and never let him leave again.

I wanted to know every year he had lived without me.

I wanted to open every part of him and fill it with myself so the spark could never go out, so he could never be lost to me again.

I wanted to keep him where the void could not reach him.

And where I could reach him always.

He made a broken sound - something between a gasp and a sob - and then he turned and ran.

I heard his footsteps pounding down the stairs, growing fainter until the night swallowed them the same way it had swallowed him years ago.

But this time I didn’t want to let him disappear.

I had never wanted anything in my life, but right then I wished for something.

I wanted, wished, needed to keep him.

Chapter 2 - Marco

One year later.

I couldn’t look at myself in the mirror.

The bathroom light was harsh. It stripped away every shadow and left nothing hidden. I stood there and kept my eyes fixed on the sink instead of the glass above it. My hands gripped the cold porcelain until my knuckles ached.

It had been one year since that night, and still the reflection felt like a betrayal I couldn’t face.

If I looked up, I would see the boy who had witnessed everything and done nothing.

My dark curls fell across my forehead. The single black ribbon tied into them was slightly crooked from another restless night.

I hated the way those green eyes had rooted themselves inside me. No matter how often I buried the memory, it always clawed its way back. He had been standing over a body, blood on his hands, and yet…

He was beautiful. Monstrous, but beautiful.