My anger blisters beneath the weight of this imploding loss. “Tell me.”
I’m met with nothing but a dark, lightless stare. Tears flood my vision until I can barely see Rowan through the watery veil.
“Just be honest with me. Why can’t you love me? What’s wrong with me? Tell me—”
“Because you’re a fucking psycho, that’s why.”
Rowan’s words hit me like a slap. The tears stop. My breath stops. My shattered heart. Even time. The moment of silence between us feels eternal, a pain that’s carved right into whatever is left of my soul, his words branded there forever. I know in an instant they’ll follow me, a ghost that will never let go.
Rowan folds his hands into tight fists as he leans a little closer, as though trying to force this revelation through my eyes and into my brain. “You kill people and cut bits of them off and make an elaborate show out of stringing up some batshit crazy map that no one can figure out but you. Then you gouge out their fucking eyes and make them into decorations. I know I’m no fucking saint, but that shit is next-level insane. That is what’s wrong with you Sloane. You’re unhinged. You’re going to crash and burn. You’ll take me with you if I let this keep going. So you need to fucking leave.”
I take an unsteady step backward, then another, and another. Discomfort registers for the first time in my hand, and I realize I’ve been gripping the restaurant key so tightly that it’s bitten into my skin. I pull it from my pocket and stare at the silver resting on the red marks in my palm.
My gaze lifts, not to Rowan but the sketch I drew last year. It’s framed near the door to the front of the restaurant, right where Rowan can see it as he works, where it’s safe from the heat and humidity in the kitchen. Just like I thought it was safe in his skin. Like I was safe in his heart.
But I’m not.
When my attention drags to Rowan, I hold his eyes for the last time.
I give myself just one breath to remember every detail of his beautiful face. His full lips. That scar I wish I could kiss. His navy eyes, even though their glare cuts right through me.
In the next breath, I turn my hand and let the key slide from my skin and fall to the floor.
I say nothing more as I pivot on my heel and leave 3 In Coach.
I run the whole way back to his apartment. Twelve blocks. Three flights of stairs. It’s only when I take my set of house keys from my pocket and burst into the living room in a mess of sweat and uneven breaths that I let myself cry again.
I’m a fucking psycho.
I thought he was just like me. I thought we were the same. It might have started with a game, but even from the beginning, it felt like so much more. Like I’d finally found a kindred soul. All these years, these crazy experiences, the longing and loneliness of the in-between—I thought it added up to something brighter on our horizon. We were getting closer, weren’t we?
It’s what I let myself believe.
How could I have been so wrong all this time?
I love Rowan. Right down to my fucking core. I love the future I saw with him, and now he’s ripped it right out of my grasp.
What if this is always what was waiting on the other side of the mountain? Just a jagged cliff to fall over?
It takes me a long moment to realize I’ve moved from the center of the room to Rowan’s sofa. I don’t know how long I’ve been sitting. I don’t even know how much time has passed since I arrived. It feels like my head is stuffed with cotton, a fuzzy barrier between my thoughts and the world.
I blink and look at Winston, who sits across from me on Rowan’s favorite chair, his eyes a slash of yellow in his plush gray fur.
“You’re probably even more psycho than me. You’re named after a fucking undead cat,” I say to the feline as another burst of tears crawls up my throat. I toss a defeated wave in Winston’s direction before I drop my head into my hands and fucking sob. “So yeah, like, I totally get it with the whole look of death thing you’ve got going on, but you’re still getting on a fucking plane and coming with me because I’ll be damned if I go back to Raleigh alone.”
I cry a flood of tears that feels never-ending until something soft grazes my hand. My damp palms slide down my face and Winston stares up at me, his gentle purr a rumble of comfort. When I lift my arm, he climbs onto my lap and lays down. “So, I admit I’m a psycho and now you want to be friends? I guess that tracks.”
We sit like that until my tears eventually slow, just me and the cat and the vibration of his purr against my thighs. And after a long while, when the knowledge that Rowan could come back at any moment eats away at my thoughts enough to dominate them, I set the cat aside and rise.