Page 92 of These Tears

And reality rushes back in.

The little clock ticks my sense away in the sudden, oppressive silence.

‘Demons gone?’ he whispers after two intakes of breath.

I clench my teeth together as I look down and stare at the off button of the camera, pressing it slowly.

I nod solemnly even though I know they’re far from gone. They’re writhing. Screaming. Enraged that I’ve cut them off in the climax of their need.

‘Good,’ he says. ‘My turn.’

17

My next breath rasps in and stalls halfway down as I look up at Elias.

His lids no longer hang heavy over pale eyes that are now fixed on me with sharp focus. It makes him look like another man entirely. The same handsome face. The same impossible blue.

And the devil looking out through it.

‘I let you exorcise yours,’ he reminds me. ‘You let me feed mine. That was the grace, Leah. Remember?’

I nearly swallow my tongue.

Why do I keep forgetting that whatever I take from Elias Crane, he’ll take twice as much from me?

‘Come along.’ He steps away from me, taking the air with him.

The foreboding claws at my spine as I take that reluctant first step.

The table is already set, the soup half-cooled in our bowls. One mushroom cap is missing.

He sits first.

I reach for the chair, but he pulls it back with his foot.

My hand stills on its backrest. I don’t try pulling it out again.

‘From now on we eat from one plate. One bowl. Drink from the same glass.’

My brows come together as I roll those words in my head.

Outrage is the first instinct. But it dissolves as I hold his eyes with mine and find no mockery in them.

Sleeping in his bed together. Living together. Eating from the same plate…

It doesn’t feel like mere taunting, possessiveness or control. Those would be easier to hate. This feels like something older and wounded – like a need to erase the line between what’s mine and what’s his, the space between our bodies, hunger and thirst, shame and witness.

I wonder if what he’s doing reaches far beyond blatant punishment for meddling with his future. Or perhaps it reaches further inside himself.

My ribs pull tight.

Maybe being separated feels like abandonment to him?

Maybe privacy feels like rejection?

I stop myself right then and there. A small, sane piece of my mind screams back at me: How could I still feel sorry for this man?

‘How would that work?’ I ask calmly, framing it away from a protest.