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Most kids liked fighting each other. Not me. I only wanted to hurt myself. When my body ached, my heart didn’t. Simple math, and a pretty good deal.
She could talk. Technically, I mean. Not that I’d ever heard her say anything. But that’s what our parents said—that it wasn’t about her voice. It was about the world. I got it. I hated the world, too. We just hated it differently.
“Always. Whenever. Forever,”
I wanted to die instead of Mom. I was pretty useless. But so many people were dependent on Ma.
“The sun will rise again tomorrow,”
She drew me into a hug. I sank into her arms. I didn’t want to kiss her. I wanted to zip open my skin and tuck her into me. Hide her from the world and keep her mine.
and a brain that’s been put through enough tests to know that, for better or worse, I remember everything. Everything bad. Everything good. And the in-between.
refused to utter words for no apparent reason other than the fact that when I’d spoken words aloud, they hadn’t been enough for my mother. I wasn’t enough.
“You could have died,” he screamed in my face, pounding his scarred knuckles over his heart. “You could have left me.”
“Thanks to you,” I signed. “You saved me.” “Remember always, whenever, forever? What happened to that bullshit? Where’s your side of the bargain?”
Knight buried his face in my hair, and I squeezed my eyes shut, imagining him doing it with someone else. Despite the chill, my blood ran hotter. Mine. I wasn’t only thinking it. My lips moved, shaping the word. I could almost hear the word. I tightened my hold on him.
“Moonshine,” he whispered. “You fill up the empty, dark space—like the moon owns the sky. It is quiet. It is bright. It doesn’t need to be a ball of flame to be noticed. It simply exists. It forever glows.”
Maybe that’s how he knew, all those years later, that I’d lied—by omission. He wasn’t nothing. He was my everything.
Once upon a time, Knight had been my protector. But nowadays? Nowadays, he was the very thing I needed protection from. And the person to shield me from him was myself.
“The sun will shine tomorrow, my love. I know.” “Because it must?”
“Anyway, to your request—your quite reasonable request, milady—I assure you, I love you. I’m in love with you. I’m crazy about you. Have been since age four. It was always you. Never someone else. Not even for a fleeting moment. Not even when I dreamed of moving on from you. Even when I hated you—or when I thought I did—I knew we’d be together. I knew. Our love always had a pulse. Sometimes it was faint. Sometimes it was beating so hard I couldn’t hear anything else. But it would never die. It can’t. I won’t let it.”
