HIS HANDS CAUGHT ME RIGHT before the worst of it, dragged me, shrieking, from a bloodbath of skin and veins and splintered bone.
“Lane? Lane, look at me.”
I blinked through bleary eyes, taking in the brick walls and blocks of wood, the blown-glass art, Paul’s empty bed. Connor shifted his hold on me as I sagged, easing me back onto the pillows. The party had been far from over when I’d collapsed beside his unconscious form; now the warehouse loomed around us, a cavern of shadows and stillness. His drafting table OttLite was on, his work scattered across the surface, abandoned in his haste to wake me.
I’d known it was a risk, dreaming in a strange place—knew she’d always find me, wherever I closed my eyes. Still, some tiny, optimistic part of me had hoped for a reprieve. Hoped that Connor’s presence would act as a barrier between sleep and sorrow. Guess not.
I drew a rasping breath, gathering the shards of my voice.
“Sorry. Sorry, sorry. I’m okay. I am.”
“I know. It was just a dream.” He crawled up beside me anyway and leaned against the wall, wrapped me in the blanket, then in his arms. “Go back to sleep.”
“Oh. No, that’s not happening anytime soon. You can keep working—I’m fine.”
“I know you are.” But he didn’t move. “Is this a regular thing?”
“Since I was five.”
He fell silent, catching the meaning in the timeline. His breath moved slow and warm against my temple; his heart beat strong against my back, twisted its way into my lungs. Triggered a confusing, too-familiar ache that didn’t belong anywhere near the moment. My head turned and tipped toward him, forehead pressing against his cheek, and it wasn’t so bad at all, letting someone hold me up.
“How long was I asleep, Connor?”
“No idea.” I felt his smile against the bridge of my nose. “I woke up, and everyone was gone but you. Did Sadie get home okay?”
“Grey picked her up. She left me her keys. … I can get going if you need me to. I didn’t mean to sleep so long.”
“Stay. If you want.”
My bones ached with the weight of his words. I looked up and met his eyes, found my reflection, and so much more. He was so close to that edge—less than a step between safe and sorry. I couldn’t unsee it. I didn’t want to.
“I will. A little longer, anyway.”
“As long as you like. Lane.” He tucked my hair behind my ear, tipped forward slowly until our foreheads met. “You look so sad.”
“I’m sorry. It’s not you. I don’t know what it is, really. It’s—”
“It’s everything,” he whispered, “and nothing. All at once.”
He caught the tear before it reached my cheek, smoothing it beneath my eye. He wasn’t quick enough to catch the one that followed, though; after that, he stopped trying. Too many words trembled on my tongue, all far beyond our boundaries. All aching to finally be said.
Instead, the dream snuck past them and fell into the world—how the bathroom itself changes slightly, from night to night—how the mirror breaks, sometimes a webbed crack, sometimes a single line. Maybe the light bulbs are gone, or the linens askew on the racks; maybe they’re in the sink or hung on the tub’s edge, so the ends brush the floor. How my mother sprawls on the tiles, mirroring reality, legs crooked at the knee, arms open. Veins open. Head to one side, staring up at me through sightless eyes—except, some nights, she’s different, too.
Sometimes she walks.
Sometimes she stands in the tub, partially hidden by the shower curtain. Sometimes she hangs from the rod, spins in slow circles, arms twisting around each other like the chains of a swing until they run out of length and reverse, unspooling faster and faster, and her bones break the other way, with a squeal like rusty hinges. Sometimes she’s smiling, sometimes she’s crying. Sometimes her mouth parts and unleashes a sorrowful banshee wail, sends it riding out on a wash of blood.
Sometimes she opens her eyes and they look like mine.
I poured all that into the air between us—every hideous detail, every bit of anguish. Every drop of fear and horror. And when those words ran out, Connor was still there, one hand gripped in both of mine, the other cupping the back of my head.
“I’m so sorry,” he said. “No one should have to dream those things.”
“Bad as they are, the reality was worse. I’d take bad dreams forever if it meant I could truly forget that day.”
I shuddered and leaned into him, my cheek finding the hollow between his shoulder and collarbone as he hunched around me, holding his arm in front of us. Pushing up his sleeve as he spoke, revealing his cuff.
“This is the very first piece I made when I moved in here. And this”—he unsnapped it, tossed it aside, turned his hand palm up—“is why I made it.”
His wrist was a nocturnal thing, soft and pallid from lack of sun. Smooth from rubbing raw and healing over countless times until it learned to love the constant slide of leather. Bisected from the palm on down—three inches of raised, pale scar tissue, flanked by the starburst ghosts of stitches.
“Oh my God. What is this?”
“Rock bottom. I was in a bad place, for a long time. I’d been sick for a month, couldn’t keep a job. I was out of money, out of food. No place to stay. No one would help me.”
“Not even Sadie?”
“Sadie was fourteen when they kicked me out. I didn’t see her again until she learned to drive and tracked me down here. So yeah, when I say I was alone … well, even she doesn’t know about this scar.” His arm tightened around me; his chin tucked itself against my shoulder. His voice was calm and unperturbed, so casual it cut my heart.
“I’m sorry. I don’t mean to bring all this back for you, Connor. I shouldn’t have—”
“Stop. I want you to know. If I can come back from my worst, Lane, you can get through this. You’re stronger than I ever was. And when everything falls apart, know at least one person would be devastated if you let it take you down too.”
I know he felt my breath catch, felt it restart again, shudder from my body in a wash of chills. I pulled away, just enough to slide around and see him. His eyes were raw, his face ragged along the seams of his usual blasé mask. This boy, who wore so many, and wore them all so well; who hadn’t hesitated to reach for me, even as he risked himself against my jagged edges.
He’s going to fall in love with you someday.
Sadie’s words, slurred and swoony, wrapped in cinnamon. Seething with truth.
This was bad.
Too many boys had gotten attached and proclaimed their love—a Whitman’s Sampler of Jeremys, trying in vain to coax reciprocations from my reluctant throat. But they didn’t really love me—they loved my face, sure. They loved my body, my long hair, my lips and arms and legs wrapped around them—they loved that plenty, until they realized it was all they got, and then came the pouts and the glares. Then came the tears. As if they hadn’t been plenty enthusiastic at the idea of no-strings sex before they found themselves entangled in it. As if they’d ever come within a country mile of the girl I really was.
What I had with Connor, though, was an intricate thing—a tapestry of chemistry and affection, friendship and respect. An unfamiliar sort of string, wound tight around my heart. It wasn’t that dreamy, unmistakable certainty. It wasn’t love.
But it was something. And what was wrong with me, that I stood so ready to snuff it out? It damn sure was more than could be cobbled together from the scraps of hopefuls past. It was more than an imagined touch through a literal wall.
It was inexplicable. The words knotted around my thoughts and each other and the unaccustomed twists of my tongue as I closed the distance between us, reached for his hands, pressed my lips against his scars—first the one I gave him, then the one he gave himself. Covered his mouth with my own to block any hint of reply.
The breath left his body as I let mine speak for us both. Let my skin whisper everything I couldn’t say.