Headlights(98)

I am so afraid every goddamned second of everything that’s happened before and everything that could still come. Everything that I could be. That he made me.

I fucking hate him.

My dad at the center of everything.

“How could you, Rose, how could you?”

Hannah rocks against me, grabs my ass and pulls me in tight to her. I groan again. My eyes on the mirror, on— She pulls back, releases my finger from her mouth but holds my wrist with one of her hands. She says, “Don’t stop.”

My eyes on the mirror. I move. Shove myself into her.

“More,” she says.

Pull out, push in.

“More, harder. Please.”

Hannah. Shove myself in.

“Yes,”

My eyes on the mirror, and the wet slap of—

“Yes, god yes, fuck yes.”

I drive into her, again and again.

“Don’t stop, okay? Don’t stop. I’m so close. We’re so close. Don’t you fucking dare stop.”

I groan, growl. My eyes in the mirror, and so much pain, and—

Hannah pulls my wrist to her mouth and closes her lips around my pinky.

Hannah. Sucking, licking.

Taking my finger on her tongue, between her teeth, consuming me, all of me.

Both of us, this pain, this fear.

Sharing it, living it.

Together.

He disappears. My dad disappears from the mirror. That part disappears.

It’s just me in the mirror.

It’s just her. And me.

Hannah

I push into her again and again, until there is only us in a black universe.

Her body and mine, her heat, her want. Her need.

There is Hannah. Music playing, sound, vibration. Pressure. Static.

A lifetime of events leading to this.

There is us and oblivion.

And when I’m right there, when I can feel that she is too, almost over the edge, almost taking that great leap into the black together, I push into her one last time.

Just as her teeth rip the last chunk of meat from my finger, taking everything that’s left. Sucking, chewing, swallowing. All of it.

There is no life. No death.

There is nothing in the dark.

Just Hannah and me.

Just us.





4



I open my eyes to morning light and snow that only falls softly now.

I sit up. There is no blood on the window glass from birds hitting it. There’s no blood on the bathroom floor. I lie back down in the bed and stare up at the ceiling.

Was any of it real? Just as I think it, the pain hits me, and I hold up my hand. There’s a bandage on it.

My pinky’s gone, the bone too.

I turn my head. She’s sleeping, still. Quiet. Her hair fanned out over the pillow, face soft and for once without the look of pain there. For once without the nose plug. I shouldn’t disturb her. I should give myself some space, some time to think away from her. Go for a run or go get coffee or something, just to clear my head. But even as I think it, now, knowing what she’s been through, having seen it myself …

And I feel it still. That other-space.

It’s still there. A kind of dark open night and Hannah and me standing inside it. I close my eyes and imagine walking toward her in it, imagine reaching out and touching her—

She makes a sound beside me, turns her head, and opens her eyes.

She rolls over to face me and looks at me.

I watch … feel, maybe … her asking the same questions to herself about last night. What was real, what wasn’t. I don’t remember leaving the bathroom, and I don’t know if she does. I don’t remember anything after that final moment with her in there. I don’t remember re-bandaging my hand. Nothing.

I reach for my phone. Wi-Fi is still out. Cell service too. I put it down, turn back to her.

What happened to the Witchwalker? Why did it trap us in there? Where did it go?

Her eyes search my face, and my questions pause.

Her eyes on me. I feel a deep pulsing ache in my chest.

For once, it’s not self-hatred, not fear or guilt or shame or pain. It’s something else. So much louder and brighter. But it could still tear me apart, and I’d let it. It happened so fast and feels like it was always here.

“It’s different now, isn’t it?” she says.

“What is?” I say. I reach out and brush her hair behind her ear with my bandaged hand. But I know what she means. Of course I do.

She’s so beautiful in the gray snowy light I can barely breathe.

Still, I want to hear her say it, need to hear it maybe.

“Everything.”

Outside, something passes by the window, the shadow of a bird. Otherwise, in the quiet falling slow and the mercifully silent radio, it’s just us here. Our heartbeats.

She reaches out and takes my hand, lifts it to her face. Her nostrils flare.

She eyes the bandage that will need a change soon, and she lifts my remaining fingers to her lips and kisses them each, looking up at me. Openly, without any kind of guard or filter. And I think, no wonder I’ve been obsessed with this woman since the day I first saw her. Her, here, taking me in in the same way.

When you’ve lived in the dark, survived it, it’s hard sometimes to explain to others. Really explain how it’s with you every second. How it is everything. How you’re battling all the time, how you don’t want to battle it at all. How a part of you grows to know it so completely you don’t want it to go.