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How did his love become so violent? How did that sweet boy turn into this killer?

His big hands gripped my hips so hard it hurt. I didn’t push him away. I sat there, body shaking, blood seeping from a shallow cut on my leg from the glass. His words rang in my skull. I always loved you, bluebird.

He was Milo. He was the same boy from the group home. The boy with haunted eyes who watched me eat my dinner and never talked to anyone. The boy who disappeared overnight, right after he turned eighteen, after he kissed me. And now his mouth was crushed against my leg, and he was howling like a wounded animal.

I couldn’t lose it. I had to keep it together for him. I couldn’t even begin to process what he just told me. So, I held him.

A cold dread sank into my bones. I’d been chained, hurt, humiliated. Dragged back through hell. But none of that compared to this. The sick intimacy of holding the man who broke me, feeling the heat of his grief shudder through my body.

“Shh,” I whispered. “It’s okay, Malakar. You’re okay.”

His whole body jerked at the sound of my voice. I stroked his hair. It was greasy, matted with dirt and blood, but I didn’t care. If I stopped, he might snap. If I let go, he might rip me apart.

He looked up at me. His eyes were bottomless. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he kept saying. “Don’t leave me. Please don’t leave. I can be better. I’ll be better for you.”

I swallowed back fear. He was trembling, claws retracted for a moment. I moved my hand down and wiped blood from his forehead. His mouth turned down, then twisted.

“I didn’t mean to hurt you,” he said, voice wavering. “I just—I get so scared you’ll run away. That you’ll leave like mother did. Everything’s dark, bluebird—I can’t stop it, I can’t stop myself.” He clawed at my hips, bruising them. “I’m not him, I’m not like my father. I can be better, bluebird. You make the dark go away.” Another sob ripped free.

I nodded. “I know. I know, Malakar. I’m not leaving.”

It was a lie. Maybe. But saying it calmed him. Calmed me, too. My heart pounded in my chest, a wild, trapped thing, but my fingers kept moving through his hair, petting him, grounding him as best I could.

He gulped for air. “You remember the home? I watched you every night. You always looked so sad.”

I nodded. “Group home was hell. I was sad. My mother had just drowned herself in the lake. My father went to prison for butchering all those women. I’m still in hell.”

He tried to sit up. “We’re both broken, don’t you see, bluebird? It was fate for us to meet in that group home, for your car to break down, for you to find me again.”

Panic was starting to wash over me. This was insane. He was wrong. This wasn’t fate, it couldn’t be. I didn’t know what to say. If I agreed, I would be feeding into his delusion. If I disagreed, the monster might come back.

So, I kissed him, and he kissed me back. Despite everything, I was still trying to help him, to connect with him, to reach the light within him.

Maybe that’s the punchline of life. I tried so hard to run from the horrors of my childhood, but I ended up right where my mom was, before she drowned herself after the arrest of my father. Kissing a killer, and even worse, empathizing with him.

In the end, she couldn’t accept that my father wouldn’t change. Would Malakar change? Maybe. I had to find out.

My hands went back and forth through his hair, comforting him while he sobbed in my lap. It was the most sickening thing ever, I knew that, but I didn’t stop. His head moved my shirt, and it lifted to show the scar, the one he stitched. The wound he created.

Is this what you felt, mom? Your all-consuming devotion to dad, despite what he did. Was it inevitable for me to become you? To love a monster?

Chapter 23

Light In The Darkness

Starla

PAST: AGED 15

Milo was my only light in this darkness.

He would gaze at me with those dark eyes. They were filled with immense pain and torment, yet I felt safe. I didn’t get along with the other kids. They didn’t have a daddy that butchered and raped women. Or they were too young. There weren’t many teenagers in this group home. Just me, Milo, and three others.

One kid was 16, but I stayed away from him. He gave off a weird vibe. Not weird like me, but weird in a sadistic way. I didn’t like it. Another teenager was 14, but she always kept to herself. I tried to make conversation, but I ended up trauma dumping and scaring her. I told her that my mom drowned herself in the lake after my father got arrested. When she asked what he got arrested for, I went into detail about what he did to those poor women.

She got all wide-eyed and ran away.

Milo never ran. I never ran from him either. We gravitated towards each other. Too bad he would be eighteen in a few months. Three year age gap wasn’t that bad if you were both adults. But I was a minor, still a year away from sixteen. He would be out of here, leaving me behind. Just like everybody else.