Page 61 of Surface Scratch
Caleb sobbed again, his eyes struggling to open. He felt like he was falling.
“I don’t want to sleep,” he whispered. Something cool and wet hit his forehead. He cracked one eyelid open, just enough to see Marcus’s face hovering above him, his black-and-amber eyes glistening with blood-red tears.
“Just sleep, my love.” Marcus stroked his hair.
My love.
That sounds nice.
“Okay.”
He let the darkness take him again.
Chapter Nineteen
He wasn’t sure how many days had passed. Without windows to let light in from outside and with his phone abandoned somewhere in the penthouse, it could have been one day or several weeks. It didn’t matter. He just stayed huddled beneath the heavy down comforter of Marcus’s oversized bed, staring into nothingness between fits of restless sleep and a crushing sense that he was the reason everything had gone to shit.
It had been eight years since the Society came to town. Was it any coincidence that when they showed back up, the first person they went after happened to be their leader’s brother’s date? Both times he’d had a run-in with them, one of them had said the same thing to him: we’re trying to help you.
He didn’t want their help. He didn’t want anyone’s help.
If he’d had his way, he would have gone home, but Marcus was too apprehensive about letting him leave, and Caleb barely had enough energy to drag himself to the bathroom. He probably would have stayed hidden under the covers wallowing in his own head the entire time if bodily functions would let him.
The tightness in his chest and the full-body aches reminded him of the week after his mom passed. When he’d had the funeral director pestering him for arrangements and plans, he’d just hidden on his couch under his pile of blankets. Thankfully, this time no one was bothering him. No one could force him to leave his comfortable hideaway from the world and make him think about what was actually happening.
Well, except for Marcus. His patience was unwavering. He brought Caleb food and water and checked on him constantly, even when Caleb could do little more than grunt at him from his comfortable space. He’d come out of it eventually. He always did.
But if he didn’t figure out what to do, and fast, the Society could come back. Finish what they started in the alleyway that night.
He still couldn’t make sense of it in his head. Nick had always been his protector growing up. Even when he was in the throes of his addiction, Nick never would have allowed someone to lay a finger on him. When he found out that Caleb was dropping out of school because of the incessant bullying, Caleb had had to beg him not to go find out where Adam lived because he worried Nick would do something that couldn’t be taken back.
But Nick had just stood by and let him get hurt that night in the alley. Like he didn’t care. Or like he wanted him to get hurt.
Tariq said the Society killed humans to keep them from being turned into vampires. Would Nick kill him if he refused to leave Marcus?
If he left, would Nick stop going after Marcus and the others?
He pulled the blankets against himself, burying his face in the damp pillow that had absorbed all the tears he couldn’t seem to keep at bay. The thought of not being with Marcus made his chest ache worse than any of the pain he had suffered in the last month.
But the thought of Marcus dead chilled him to the bone.
Not just him, but Ophelia, and Tariq. Even Vincent and Adam, despite everything the two of them had put him through. Vincent seemed like he was at least trying to be less of a hostile asshole. They didn’t deserve to die.
You don’t even know what kind of fucked-up stuff they’ve done to live this long. How many people have they all put through trialing combined?There it was. That critical voice that had been suspiciously quiet since he’d learned the truth about Marcus.
Part of him hoped that the shock of it all had finally calmed that part of himself that always second-guessed what he was saying and doing, but it seemed like it had only put it to bed for a while. It was back in full force again. Taunting him. Reminding him of exactly who he was and didn’t want to be.
The whole concept of trialing was something he had actively told himself not to think about. People brought to the brink of sanity just so a vampire could keep a consistent source of food was more than he could bear to ruminate on. How many peoplehadMarcus done that to?
Maybe that’s the reason all his exes are dead.
“Stop it,” he whispered to himself, shaking his head like his mind was an Etch A Sketch and he could make the thought disappear.
“Stop what?”
He peered out from under the comforter in the direction of Marcus’s voice. Marcus sat in the same folding chair Ophelia had against the wall. How long had he been there?
Caleb fought the urge to immediately cover his head again. He hadn’t said much to Marcus over the past however-long-it-had-been, and a part of him was ashamed of that. He just didn’t want to answer any questions about what had happened at V’s house. That scenario played over and over in his head, his mind intrusively coming up with different things he could have done other than stab V in the neck.
