Headlights(94)

Please, she screams in the other-place, so loud in my head, PLEASE, MAKE IT STOP, PLEASE!

“I don’t know what to do! I don’t know how to make it stop!”

Daniel!

Hannah’s voice. In my head. Hannah, frantic, Hannah blind and stuck on the mountain, stuck on the side of the highway, in the drainpipes, stuck in the motel bed.

DANIEL!

Hannah, calling my name.

I don’t know, I don’t think, just feel so much, fear, want, terror, I don’t— PLEASE!

I don’t think. I—

I bend down and press my lips to hers. And …

Everything goes silent.

Silence. Stillness.

Dark.

For half a second. For an eternity.

Hannah’s lips and mine.

Her skin, and my skin.

Everything suspended. Quiet …

Then I pull back.

And it all rushes back in.

Music. Both songs. Static. Vibration. Cold. Loud. So loud. Blood. Blood— The shower, behind Hannah. The smell.

Ears ringing, room turning. This smell, I know. I know it so well, and so does Hannah, and— Not water. It’s not water coming down in the shower.

I don’t know how it’s possible. Don’t know how any of this could be real. But what’s pouring down from the showerhead, filling the room with its scent, what’s actually physically here.

It’s blood.

Hannah. Blood. Meat. Salt. Sound.

Too much, it’s too much, it’s all—

She grabs me and presses her lips to mine.

Silence, again.

Stillness.

Hannah’s lips. Hannah’s hands on my shoulder, my side.

Fuck.

Hannah’s tears caught on our lips, and—

Relief. So much relief. We hold tight to each other, don’t move. A lifeline. A tether, between worlds.

Silence, here. The two of us.

That other-world, the in-between. Memories flashing like a silent movie now, between us. Hers, and mine. All the worst moments, every moment of a life that makes us want to end it all. Every moment that I’ve carried, that she has. Hannah, who’s had to carry all of this alone.

She’s seeing it all too, I know she is. My mom, my dad, the motel. The Stansfields. The car crash. Josie and war, watching my friends die. Telling their families. Watching everyone I love die again and again and again.

Me, in Hannah’s mind. Her in mine. The things she’s feeling, that she’s felt. Every part of her laid bare and as clear and visceral as though I am living it now with her, for her. Living it again and again. The mountain, her life before, every moment in the drainpipes and the motel.

She opens her lips, a little. Her tongue finding its way into my mouth, and fuck. She groans, presses herself into me. Clings to me.

I don’t know if the thing is out there still, but it’s locked us here. Her and me together, blocking out the noise. The pain.

A great tidal wave. The avalanche that’s always been coming.

What is the point of fighting it at all? When this is what I’ve wanted from the second I heard her name, saw her drawings in her cabin. Saw her face for the first time. I haven’t stopped thinking about her, haven’t stopped dreaming and obsessing. Haven’t stopped wanting.

Her. Hannah Lawrence.

I want her.

I want her so fucking much.

I move my hand behind her neck, slide it up beneath her hair, and pull her in as close as I can. She groans and meets me, presses her hips against mine. Fuck, I breathe again, as she slides her teeth over my tongue, hovers them toward the back of it.

We pause. Her teeth on my tongue. My tongue in her mouth. She could bite down. It would be so easy. She could take it from me. Has me entirely at her mercy.

She hesitates, and I can feel her growing want, her craving. Her need. Both our heaving breaths.

I should move. I should do something, protect myself, or …

But I won’t. I don’t want to. I know now, feel with total certainty, that I’d let her do anything. I might as well fall to my knees.

She inhales sharply, and I can feel her need building. She’s imagining it, biting down. The spray of hot salt down her throat, teeth sinking into soft flesh. Taking a part of me into her, keeping it for herself. I can feel her, see her, thinking it. Experience it myself, through her. And I think, this is it.

But she pulls back, just slightly. And … I can feel what it costs her, how hard it is.

I want to give her what she needs. Something. Give her anything.

I reach over to the take-out container, and with us separated slightly, all the sound rushes back. The vibration pushing in, the music, both songs, overlapping, the worst songs from the worst moments of our lives, interchanging, the static, every scream from every terrible moment we’ve ever lived. The screams of loved ones, our own. Loud. So loud, too loud. This thing outside trapping us here. It’s still here. Still so loud.

I take a piece of steak between my fingers and I hold it up before her, fighting through the sound, the pain.

She leans forward, tilts her head back, her mouth open. Hannah with her mouth open before me. Her eyes on mine. She’s so fucking beautiful.

I drop the meat to her tongue.

She groans, her eyelids fluttering, as she closes her mouth over the meat in my hand. As I feed it to her bit by bit. Seeing her like this—fuck. Juice runs over her bottom lip, drips down from her chin, and as she sucks the end of the meat into her mouth, I run my thumb over that bottom lip, lean forward and kiss the side of her neck, her jaw as she chews. Lick my way up her throat to her chin to get everything that’s dripped as she chews and groans and swallows and holds on to me so tight. I’m going to have marks from her nails in me. I can’t think of anything I want more. To make this woman forget—everything, all the pain, the suffering.