Page 92 of Pretty Black

Can I exhume you to take it back,

Pry it back into my chest and pretend to move on?

I don’t know how to leave you behind.

I just wanted to sleep.

But how to quiet my mind?

Or live with myself?

I left the cemetery pulled between returning to my boyfriend’s bed and what I knew would give me a night of peace.

THIRTY

PRESENT DAY

Caspian Locke

He wasn’t anywhere in the penthouse or on the roof. I checked even knowing he wouldn’t be there. He hadn’t taken Felix or Elijah with him. My gut kept telling me he’d run away, but I fought it. I didn’t want to believe he’d leave. I wanted to believe he’d found some peace in what we were doing, but maybe my hope was as stupid as it always had been.

“Don’t let this be the end.”

One Year Ago

“Are you going to let this kill you? Are you going to let it end like this?” I found him on the bridge over the lake near the studio.

Barely sunrise. Had he been out here all night?

“What do you want me to say?” The circles under his eyes were more pronounced than I’d ever seen them.

“I don’t know.”

As more days passed, the hardest part of my life became watching Iris love everyone but me. The loss of him threatened to break me. As every day passed, I realized more and more that I’d lost him.

“I miss you.” I’d uttered the words so many times, I sounded like a broken record.

“I miss you too.”

I didn’t like how he looked at the water. Like it was home. Like maybe it would welcome him better than life ever had.

He had this romance with walking the line between this life and the next that terrified me.

What if I lost, and it won? What if it had more to offer than I ever gave him? What if he decided to chase the taste for more?

Would he always be running toward the edge while I held him back?

“Why can’t we have it back if we both miss it?” I risked getting closer.

“I’m not the person I used to be.”

“We can find our way back.” I held out my hand.

He took it. “I don’t think I can. What am I living for? What is any of this for? What’s the point?”

I squeezed his fingers between mine. “Maybe love is the point.”

“You still love me?” he asked.

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