Chapter Fourteen

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Crow

Itaught Cyrus how to weatherproof the windows. We got some of them done, then went inside and I made us lunch. I could tell he wanted to help, but thankfully, he didn’t ask. I didn’t eat food I hadn’t made with my own hands. It was even hard for me to eat things from the store in the beginning, but as long as it was closed and untampered with, I’d gotten over that.

It was making me antsy, having someone in my space, doing things with me. In The Enlightened, people had worked in groups a lot, but I wasn’t always a part of that. It depended on Chosen’s mood. Sometimes he would order me to join everyone, saying I was soft, that I didn’t have it in me to be the kind of leader I needed to be, and outside of pain, that was a way to teach me. Other times, he kept me close because I was supposed to emulate him, and he was Chosen, so he didn’t have to do mundane things—since it was through him that we got a better life on earth and through him that we got to heaven. That gave him a pass on other things.

After lunch, we finished the windows. I double-checked my salt, fuel, and propane supply. Last week I’d already serviced the snowplow and snowmobile, so I knew those were fine.

I needed to bring him home, yet I didn’t. I couldn’t figure out why I wasn’t doing it. While he kept me on edge, there was also something soothing about having him here. About the way he smiled at his book when he read and the sounds he made when he ate.

We had dinner together too, and while I cooked, Cyrus settled into his corner of the couch, tucked in with his book, like he belonged there. “Have you read all the books on your shelves?”

“Not the top shelf. Those are for this winter.” Along with the internet, I’d learned more about the outside world, about people, through reading.

“Shit. I’m sorry I took one you haven’t read.”

I shook off his concern but didn’t reply. I just watched him. I liked watching him.

When Cyrus said he was tired, I nodded, secured the house, turned off the lights, and went with him to his room.

“You can’t stay awake all night again.” No, I couldn’t, but I’d catnapped some. “You also can’t stay on the floor again.”

“Go to sleep, little lamb,” I said, conversation done.

With a sigh, he pulled a pillow and a blanket from the bed and brought them to me. When I didn’t take them right away, Cyrus set them beside me, walked back to the bed, stripped out of his clothes, and climbed in. “Get the light, would you?”

What I really wanted was to worship his body again, sink inside his ass and never leave it. Instead, I shut off the light and sat on the floor against the wall. I pulled the blanket over me, and when he started snoring softly, I lay down with my head on the pillow that smelled like him.

*

We settled intoa routine over the next couple of days. Neither of us mentioned Cyrus leaving. I couldn’t figure out why he didn’t want to, what was keeping him here with me. I didn’t know what his plans were about his job either. He’d asked if I had a cell-phone charger, so I lent him mine. I wondered if he would use it to try and call someone to pick him up, but he didn’t.

He ate the meals I cooked, and helped me can vegetables, and asked questions about the gardens and living on a mountain. Sometimes I answered and sometimes I didn’t, and Cyrus never pushed. The weather was getting colder. Snow would arrive soon, so I knew I had to take him home.

The thought of him leaving made discomfort crawl down my spine. Made it feel like there was a weight in my gut. What if the man who hit him came back? What if he let someone other than me inside him?

“You growled. Why did you just growl?” Cyrus ate a bite of pasta.

I shook my head, unable to reply. I hadn’t even known I’d growled.

“I think if you ever moved off the mountain, you should be a chef. Everything you make is so good,” he continued, happy, comfortable in a way I’d never seen him. Not that I’d seen much of him at all.

“I’m taking you home tomorrow,” I said, without looking at him. In my periphery, I saw his fork stop halfway to his mouth. Guilt spread through me like a virus.

“Oh,” he replied softly.

“Not…you. Not because of you,” I clarified because I didn’t want him to think it was his fault. He hadn’t done anything wrong. This was my issue. I had no idea how to share my space with him.

Cyrus didn’t respond. He did continue to eat, though, which I appreciated.

A minute went by, then another and another. Five…maybe more. For the last ten years I’d loved nothing more than the silence, but in that moment, it was deafening.

“You don’t have things,” I told him.

“What do you mean I don’t have things?”

“You only have ninety days of your medication.” I’d looked at the bottles, seen what he had, searched them online so I could learn as much as possible about them.

“Don’t do that. Don’t use my mental illness as a reason I can’t stay here. That’s not fair. Plus, I have more pills at home. I haven’t always been the best with taking them, so I have extra.” He glanced down, clearly embarrassed. “I’m better about it now.”

“What about your job?”

“Fuck my job.”

“Bills? Car? Life?”

“Fuck all that too!” he shouted. “I don’t have anything that matters to me. Nothing besides one small box of my mom’s things in my closet. I don’t care if I lose everything else. I’d start over like I’ve done a hundred other times. Don’t you get it, Crow? I. Am. Nothing.”

My nostrils flared. Hearing him speak about himself that way, knowing that he believed it… I might not know what this was between us, but he wasn’t nothing to me. The words jumbled around in my head again, making it hard to get them out. This tended to happen when my emotions got too high.

Cyrus shoved to his feet and took his plate to the kitchen.

“Finish eating,” I managed to command.

“No.”

“Goddamn it!” I slammed my fist down on the arm of the chair.

“I was going to eat. I was just going to do it over here. I only said no because you don’t get to do that. You don’t get to throw me away and then try to take care of me. You can’t pretend you care if I eat, then want to send me away.”

I didn’t want to send him anywhere, but I needed to. Couldn’t he understand that? Didn’t he see I’d given him more than I ever would or had anyone else? There just wasn’t more inside me to offer.

“I’m sorry,” he said, looking down at his food. “This is your home. Of course I can’t stay. I shouldn’t have gotten mad at you. I keep acting out and apologizing. I know I’m…a lot.”

But he wasn’t a lot to me, not in a bad way. I craved him in ways I’d never craved anything in my life. I nodded, his words not having done what they were supposed to. They didn’t make me feel better. All they did was empty me out, make me feel hollow. They hammered home that he was leaving—and that it was my fault.

Cyrus stood at the counter as he finished eating, then washed his plate.

He climbed onto the couch with his book afterward to read, but it was different. There was a heaviness to him, a sadness that seeped off Cyrus and into me. I felt it, felt weighed down, but it wasn’t all from him, was it? It was my pain too, at the thought of taking him back.

I ate and washed my dish as well, then sat across from him. Time trickled by, but I didn’t pay attention to how much. I wanted to slow it down, something I’d never experienced before.

“I’m tired,” Cyrus eventually said. I was pretty sure it was early to go to bed, but still I nodded.

We did our routine together, and then he stripped and climbed into bed. I turned off the light, then sat in my spot on the floor to watch him one last time.

*

“You don’t getto throw me away and then try to take care of me. You can’t pretend you care if I eat, then want to send me away.”

I stood beside Cyrus’s bed while he slept. His mouth was partly open, small puffs of breath slipping out.

He was naked, and I wanted to strip the blankets from him, wanted to take him one last time, rut into him hard until we became one, but then, I was fooling myself about that, wasn’t I? One more time would never be enough.

If that were the case, I wouldn’t have my shoes on. I wouldn’t be dressed to leave.

My fingers itched to touch him, to feel his soft, warm skin against mine. I wanted to feel it on top of me in a way I never had. Hillary was the only one I’d looked at when I fucked, but I hadn’t wanted to. But then, I hadn’t wanted to be inside her at all.

Not like I desired him, everything about him, and now…now I was going to keep him.

I was quiet as I sneaked out of the room, as I locked it from the outside, then the house when I left.

It felt wrong. The hairs on my neck stood on end. Everything inside me screamed to go back because I was leaving him in my home, the place I’d built just for me, but I worried if I didn’t do this tonight, I would change my mind tomorrow. Because I knew I shouldn’t keep Cyrus on the mountain with me. Still, for once in my life, didn’t I get to keep something I wanted? Didn’t I get to have him?

The drive into town felt never ending.

I parked down the street from Cyrus’s apartment. I knew where he lived because people talked around me—they thought because I chose not to speak, I couldn’t hear either.

I took the keys I’d stolen from his jacket and unlocked his apartment. It was small but clean. It smelled like old trash instead of Cyrus, though, so I took that out first. He had a few dishes in the sink, so I washed them.

The box in his closet was right where he’d told me it was—the only box there. It didn’t weigh much as I picked it up and took it out to my truck.

The pills proved slightly harder to find, but eventually I found a drawer with numerous bottles of various medications. I had a bag and put them inside.

I took some of his clothes out next, then almost put them back. I liked Cyrus in my things, wanted him to wear something that smelled of me and for my things to smell of him too, like I could scent both of us on them. I was getting more obsessed with him, wanted him to belong to me, though what I would do with him, I had no idea.

I took a few things along—jeans because mine were large, and if he was out in the snow, he should have pants that fit, underwear, and a sweatshirt that lay on his mattress and looked like he’d worn it a lot.

When flashing red and blue lights spun around the room, I froze. No. No, no, no, no.

My heart lodged in my throat. I had to get out of there. Had to run. I rushed for the door—just as the officers approached.

“Hands in the air!”

Officer Paulson. He was better than Dirk. My gaze caught on the other officer, whom I didn’t recognize, as they frantically looked around.

My chest tightened, breath hard to control.

I tried to push my way past them, but they grabbed me. I immediately began to flail, fighting to get out of their hold as the two officers tried to cuff me.

“Crow, settle down. We’re just trying to figure out what’s going on here,” Paulson tried to soothe me, but it didn’t work. The other officer tased me, and I immediately went to my knees, electrical currents shooting through me and feeling like they fried my insides. It numbed me enough that they were able to put the cuffs on me.

We were outside Cyrus’s place now, a neighbor watching. A few other people had crowded around to see the show, though I didn’t know what they were doing out here so late. Was it still late? It had to be, but it felt like my brain wasn’t working.

Paulson sat me in the grass as I struggled to get out of the cuffs. My heart was beating too quickly, head throbbing, throat closing, words swimming in my brain like piranhas getting fed, too fast and vicious for me to catch them.

“Crow, what were you doing in Cyrus Evans’s apartment?” Paulson asked.

I let out a low growl in response, my hair a curtain over my face.

He lowered his voice. “I don’t want to arrest you. I don’t feel like you’ll get a fair shot, but you’ve gotta give me something. Where is Cyrus?”

I snapped my teeth at him like an animal. That’s what I felt like in moments like this, as though I wasn’t human.

“Jesus, I’m trying to help you. Did Cyrus say you could be in his apartment? Is there some way we can speak to him?”

Words were too jumbled in my head for me to sort them, anger raging inside me as I tugged to get out of the cuffs. Pain shot through my wrists, but it wasn’t enough to deter me.

“You’re going to hurt yourself. You need to stop,” Paulson begged.

He tried to reach for me, but I snapped at his hand with my teeth. He immediately pulled back.

My heart was breaking down my chest walls, head spinning. Any time the outside world restrained me, it followed the same pattern: they took me from my home, tried to keep me away, and I didn’t care what I had to do to make sure that didn’t happen again.