Page 52 of Say You'll Stay
“Mother, please,” I beg, hating the weakness in my voice but unable to hold it back. “Don’t do this. I’m your son, for fuck’s sake.”
For a moment, just a moment, I think I see a flicker of doubt in her eyes. A hint of the mother I once knew, the one who sang me lullabies and kissed my scraped knees. But then it’s gone, replaced by a hardness, a cruelty I’ve become all too familiar with.
“You stopped being my son the moment you chose that gold-digging whore over your family,” she hisses, each word a twist of the knife in my gut. “Now, you’re nothing more than a means to an end. A necessary sacrifice for the greater good of the Deveaux name.”
I feel the fight drain out of me, replaced by a cold, creeping numbness. Is this it, then? The end of the line, the final nail in the coffin of the man I used to be?
I close my eyes, Cara’s face swimming behind my lids. Her smile, her laugh, the way her eyes sparked with mischief and love in equal measure. She was my everything, my reason for breathing, for being.
And now, because of my own fucked up choices, my own weakness, I’ll never see her again. I’ll never get the chance to make things right, to be the man she deserves.
I’m dimly aware of being dragged away, of Amethyst’s stricken face, the doctor’s stammered apologies. None of it matters. None of it compares to the loss, the yawning void that’s opened up in my chest, threatening to swallow me whole.
They strap me down, hook me up to machines that beep and whir and invade. Tear away every last shred of my autonomy, my humanity. And all the while, my mother watches, a cold, triumphant smile on her lips.
“This is for the best, Juniper,” she says, her voice distant, distorted. “You’ll see. One day, you’ll thank me for this.”
I want to laugh, to rage, to scream until my throat is raw and bleeding. But I can’t. I’m trapped, helpless, a prisoner in my own body and mind.
As the sedative takes hold, dragging me down into the waiting dark, I cling to one last thought, one final lifeline in the storm.
Cara. My Cara Mia. The love of my miserable fucking life.
I’m sorry, baby. I’m so fucking sorry. For everything.
Please, don’t forget me. Don’t let this break you. You’re stronger than you know, stronger than I ever was.
Live, Cara. Live for both of us.
I love you.
Always.
And then, oblivion claims me, and I know no more.
Chapter nineteen
The rich aroma of freshly brewed coffee usually comforts me like a warm hug, but today the intoxicating scent has the opposite effect. Tendrils of nausea slither up my throat as I stare at the haunting animation playing on my computer screen. It’s my latest creation, far darker than my typical whimsical style—elongated, distorted shadows loom ominously, skeletal fingers twisted into claws reaching out from sinister shapes. A perfect manifestation of the inner turmoil devouring me.
“Geez, Cara, you okay?” Louis’s familiar voice cuts through the oppressive silence cloaking my studio.
I can’t meet his concerned gaze, shoulders hunching inward as the weight of my torment presses down like a crushing avalanche. How could I begin to explain the inky poison leeching into every sun-dappled dream until it corrodes into a waking nightmare?
“Your Instagram’s blowing up,” Louis prods gently, closing the distance between us to grip my arm. The warmth of his calloused palm has always grounded me before when I felt untethered, but today it’s like a flickering candle struggling against the suffocating black void threatening to extinguish it. “Followers are flooding my DMs worried about you after that disturbing animation. Talk to me, bella.”
My lips twist in a mirthless facsimile of a smile as I finally drag my gaze up to meet his summer-sky eyes. The tender concern blazing there is like a white-hot lash, searing me with its poignancy. If only for a few crystalline moments, I was blissfully oblivious to the harsh realities calcifying around me.
“Just trying something edgy and new,” I rasp out, the lie feeling like jagged shards grinding my soul into shattered dust motes as it passes my lips.
Louis sucks in a sharp breath, strong jaw clenching as his grip tightens incrementally on my bicep. I can practically see the realization dawning, the sickening knowledge that something has gone horribly, irrevocably awry in my world. This is no mere artistic exploration into the macabre, no ironic foray into darkness just for novelty’s sake.
This is the desperate scream of a soul being inexorably consumed by the very night terrors meant only to torment, never breach reality.
“Talk to me, Cara.” It’s half-plea, half-command etched in granite as his piercing gaze bores into mine. “Don’t shut me out with empty deflections when I can practically taste the despair radiating off you in waves.”
Louis always did have an uncanny gift for seeing past the myriad intricate masks I deploy to shield myself from the world’s cruelties. Even now, as fresh horrors sluice through my veins with every panicked beat of my heart, one soul-searing look from him is enough to dismantle decades worth of practiced self-preservation.
The fantasy shatters like a rock delicately tossed through a kaleidoscopic window. In its place remains only the jagged shrapnel of distilled reality—ugly, stark, utterly visceral in its gaping anguish.