Page 114 of Cruel Cravings

Kaden Raskova, the Cleaver Serial Killer himself, is suddenly not so cold when he peers down at my sister and runs his thumb affectionately along her cheek.

As if sensing my gaze on them, my sister’s dark eyes find me out of everyone else in the crowd. She looks right at me with a gleam in her eyes and the same calm, content expression I imagine I have on my face.

Her silent stare tells me all I’ve ever hoped for.

She’s not angry with me. She still loves me. She’ll always be my sister.

But things are different now. We’re living two separate lives.

“Brontë,” I whisper as she looks away. I tug at his arm. “Do you… you see her, right? There she is!”

But as I point at the crowd filling up the promenade, she and Kaden have vanished. They’re nowhere to be found among the dozens of people milling about. The space where they were just standing is now occupied by other travelers, purchasing meat skewers from a vendor.

I swallow hard, my pulse still racing, hoping that Brontë will tell me what I saw was real. That’ll he tell me, or signal, that he saw them too.

But he doesn’t. He slips his arm around my hips and keeps me close at his side as if comforting me for what was an illusion.

Maybe I didn’t see them at all. Maybe my sister was never there.

I exhale slowly, letting the tension seep from my limbs.

Maybe… it doesn’t matter if she wasn’t.

Deep down, I know the truth. She’s still out there somewhere, living her own life, carving her own path the way that I am with Brontë. And in her own way, she still loves me.

Just like I will always love her.

But it’s time to move on. Time I let her go for good.

I turn my face up toward Brontë as we continue down the promenade. The sun is starting to set now, streaking the sky with deep amber and dusky pink. The fading light plays off the sharp lines of his face, the many scars that make him who he is. He seems to sense what I’m thinking and drops a kiss on my lips to solidify my thoughts.

It’s just us now.

Me and my shadow disappearing into the twilight.

THE END

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