Cami was having a nightmare.

The whimpering cries started around two o'clock in the morning, but it was the gut-wrenching sobs that woke me up from a dead sleep.

I'd smoked a bit before bed, which was what had allowed me to fall into the depths of sleep and unthinking peace so quickly and easily when usually I'd had to suffer through it in the dark staring at nothing waiting for the night to drag me under, but not tonight.

Tonight it had been quick and painless—much like I'd wanted my death to be—but the waking up part?

That had been the real hell. Listening to Cami in pain was like taking a serrated knife and scraping the ridged edges against the inside of my arms.

Hearing her cries was a new torture in and of itself that I'd never subjected myself to even in my darkest moments.

So maybe that was why I'd jumped up immediately and placed my ear against the door in the bathroom that led to her room.

It was why I had pulled on a pair of sweatpants over my boxers that I'd been sleeping in and edged the door open slightly, seeing her shadowed shape writhe around in the blackness surrounding her like it was welcoming her home into its inky embrace.

I'd felt those shadows pull at me one too many times—felt the allure of their call deep in the darkest dregs of my soul—and knew that I couldn't let her suffer it alone.

She'd been different from the moment we'd stepped off my bike and she walked into the door.

She was even quieter than me at dinner—which was impossible, but somehow she still accomplished it.

Not a single grunt or hum of acknowledgement.

My mother seemed to know immediately what was wrong and didn't push her on the subject, but that didn't appease me. I needed to know if she was alright. I had to know. I had to.

Knowing was the only way that I could make sure it didn't happen again. It was the only way to acknowledge that it was in the past and it wouldn't be able to damage her the same way it once had.

I eased the door open further until it squeaked on its hinges and cursed the damn door before she shifted in the bed again, shooting straight up as her eyes flashed open and landed directly on me.

"Grey? What—what are you doing in here?"

I was grateful for some stray beam of moonlight that had cast me in a shimmering streak illuminating my motions.

"I heard you screaming and wanted to check on you. Are you okay?"

She sighed, a dark, almost resentful sound filled with years of exhaustion and something far too heavy for someone her age.

She had seen and felt too much of the dangers and ruin of this world before ever even reaching full legal adulthood.

Yet again—something that the two of us had in common.

It wasn't something I relished having in common with anyone.

"I'm fine. Just a nightmare, I guess. I get them sometimes. Sorry I woke you up."

"Do you want to talk about it?"

I could see her squinting her eyes in the darkness and almost chuckled at the sight if it weren't for the rest of her expression.

She was so tired, I could make out the deep purple bags underneath her eyes even from this distance.

"Not really."

I had enough sense to say that I was disappointed, until she spoke again.

"But I wouldn't mind talking about something else."

The edges of my mouth quirked up.

"Oh really? Like what?"

She reached over to the lamp on her bedside table and suddenly the room was awash in yellow golden light unveiling the barren landscape that was her bedroom, her sanctuary, blank save for some little wooden trinket on the dresser and a duffel bag in the corner.

Almost like she never really unpacked.

Like she could pack up and disappear at any moment.

Like she was never here to begin with.

I didn't like the direction my thoughts were taking and decided to take her up on her offer, finding the desk chair beneath her pristine white desk and rolling it up beside her bed.

She unfurled herself from the thick white comforter beneath her and crossed her legs underneath her, sitting up further and getting comfortable while pulling her long, thick and dark hair up with a spare hair band on the dresser.

With her hair out of her face and pulled up tight, she looked younger, almost more vulnerable, more alive.

The smooth, creamy white column of her neck was exposed, and I found myself desperate to reach forward and place my hands on her skin just to see if her pulse would jump from my touch.

Would chills break out on her skin like they had in the caves earlier?

Would that shimmering magic of that infinitesimal moment return and wash my blood and bones with enchantment once more? Would she feel it, too?

This buzzing electrical current that hummed its song through the bond created by the two of us from the moment we locked eyes in that empty classroom and she struck out at me with her words, uncaring of the fact that I couldn't talk.

I was just another person to her, just Grey. Just the weird brother of the golden boy. Just another human, just like her, at least in that regard.

"What do you want to talk about, then?"

"I don't know, anything. Distract me."

So she was anxious, then.

I could tell the moment I sat down across from the bed and her leg wouldn't stop its incessant shaking, her fingers picking at the skin of her nails nervously.

Although it wasn't that she was nervous of me; no, I could tell it had to do with the nightmare she'd just had.

The damn thing was eating her up inside.

So I distracted her.

"What are some words you want to learn to sign?"

"Oh, that's a good one. I don't know—maybe...discombobulated? I always used to like that word. Oh, and what about symphony? Descriptive words, oh, I don't know the sign for 'descriptive' either. I know 'describe' but not 'descriptive'."

And so we spent the next fifteen minutes or so practicing the sing language until she began using the new words in sentences.

"The cat was discombobulated so he fell off the stage at the symphony and was descriptive in his fall."

"That's the most descriptive and discombobulated sentence about a symphony I've ever heard."

She fell apart in laughter and—fuck, if it wasn't a goddamn symphony to my ears.

I was falling down into a hole I didn't know I'd ever be able to dig myself out of.

She was light and airy and wistful with a wild streak filled with fiery passion and angst that was enough to rival my own.

She was complex and filled with different dimensions that I was both intrigued and terrified to explore, if only she would let me.

She was a blank canvas the world had drawn upon until she became splattered with darkness and the colors got all mixed up together until she was an unrecognizable caricature of who the world wanted her to be versus the girl that was sitting in front of me.

She was new, she was good, she was broken, but in that moment, she was mine and somehow I was hers.

If only for a moment.

The nightmare had snuffed out all the light from the world.

The blood had blotted out the sun and the gunshot winked all the stars from existence.

The prison sentence murdered electricity and his final goodbye had sent a nuke to the moon.

My father's wailed cries still echoed in my ears when Grey had edged the door to my bedroom open, and I had never been so relieved to see another person in my entire life.

Here was my escape—here was the way that I could take my mind off the terror and the pain and the knowing.

The knowing was the worst of it all.

Knowing what my mother had done—knowing what my father had done to her because of it.

It had been five years and still I was haunted.

At least it wasn't a nightmare about Colton.

If it had been that...I didn't know if I would've been able to stand Grey's presence in that moment.

Or maybe I would have. There was something different about his gaze, his touch, his presence.

His attention wasn't lecherous, his touch not a painful reminder of everything I'd endured thus far, his eyes not hungry and filled with lust.

He'd never made an unwanted advance on me, never tried to go out of his way to make me uncomfortable—rather, the opposite.

He'd protected me from Colton when he saw what was happening in the classroom.

He was stepping into that role of my safe place, and I was scared to let it evolve into that because of what it would mean in the future. What if he left me? What would happen to me if suddenly I let him into my life and my heart in that way, and he just decided to walk right on out?

His face was open, clear, patient.

We had fun, so much fun that I wondered what life used to be like without him. Hadn't Grey always been there?

No, he hadn't.

Because if he had...Colton would never have done to me what he had.

I never would've suffered half as much as I had if I'd had Grey there with me.

"So...can I ask you a personal question?"

"Why not? Go ahead. But I get to ask my own personal question."

"Fine," I said begrudgingly to the amused and arrogant look on his face.

I scooted closer to him on the bed subconsciously, though I wasn't sure why.

"Why...why don't you have a girlfriend?"

Why was I suddenly shy, hiding my face with one of my hands while trying and failing to not look at Grey?

His dark eyes widened in half surprise and half intrigue, though that arrogant smirk still remained on his face.

It wasn't lost on me that he was shirtless.

In fact, it was one of the first things that I noticed about him when he came into my room.

There was a drop-dead gorgeous boy in my room, shirtless, staring at me expectantly with eyes of an innocent sin contradiction.

I wasn't blind; I just didn't know what would happen if I let him touch me...in that way. I was scared to try, scared that I would have a breakdown in front of him and scare away the only person who'd ever seen the real me, flaws and all, and not balked from it or ran screaming the other way.

With Colton, I'd shown him a facade. I'd shown him what he wanted to see—a simpering, sad, lonely girl who needed help and was willing to give up half of her soul in order to have safety even though she was staying with the villain the whole time.

"Well, I don't really want one. Being a part of the freak show at our school doesn't really make girls want to jump into a relationship with me."

"That makes sense, I guess. But you're like..."

"Like what?"

Oh fuck, what had I gotten myself into?

Why had I opened my stupid fat mouth and let those stupid, embarrassing words fall out of my stupid dumb mouth?!

"Ugh, fuck it. You're hot. You're funny. You're a really good guy underneath all the piercings and black clothes and 'fuck off' stare you give everyone. I guess I'm wondering why no one's ever had a shot with bad-boy Grey."

There. I'd said it. And I was immediately regretting it as my cheeks turned redder than the burning fiery scarlet of a hot sunset.

"Cami. Are you saying you have a crush on me?"

"Shut up!"

"Technically, I didn't even say anything."

"You're ridiculous. And discombobulating."

"Nice use of the word, but you need to change it if you're going to use it with i-n-g at the end. I can show you, if you want?"

I could only nod my head in agreement, and then Grey was out of his seat, leaning into me and placing his hands on my own and helping me form the right words and—

holy fucking shit I couldn't breathe.

It was a good breathlessness this time, not like I was choking on water that I could never surface from, but instead like I was panting from a nice run out in the cool air gilded in honey sunlight that had made my skin glow in effervescence.

This was the kind of breathlessness where I couldn't wait to see what happened next.

Where Grey was everything I could see and all I could feel and the only thing I wanted to touch, see, smell, hear, sense in that moment...

"Cami..."

The breath of his whispered voice blew across my temple and I blinked back at him in shock.

Had he just...?

"Did you just say my name...out loud?"

He pulled his head back a bit so I could see the wide smile brimming on his face.

The sound was hesitant, like he hadn't tried out sounds from his mouth in a very long time.

It was a harsh, rasping whisper, something not made from his voice but from his breath.

Grey had just spoken my name aloud, and I almost melted into a puddle at his feet.

"Since when have you been able to do that?"

His resulting shrug was enough to make me rear back and playfully push his shoulder, but he didn't budge, and touching him was clearly a mistake because all I wanted to do...was do it again.

So I did.

My hand came back to his shoulder and my fingertips traced the black ink of his tattoos while he stayed stock still, allowing me this little piece of exploration and curiosity.

There was an all-black bird at the base of his sternum directly in the middle, it's wings stretched wide and outwards as if in mid-flight and was perched right beneath his scars on his neck, almost like after his attempt he felt the need to ink it there on his body the truth of what happened...after.

Filler pieces of dark shadowed flowers connected with licking flames caressed his skin as they traveled down and connected with his arms, all of it a patchwork of art that told a secret story that only he knew the words to.

"When did you get all of this done?"

"The year after my attempt. Mom basically let me do whatever I wanted as long as it wasn't a danger to me or others around me. I fed her some bullshit line about getting it done to take my power back. It worked."

"Wow. They're beautiful," I breathed, wanting him to sign to me again because then his arms would have to come up between us and I could look up into his eyes at the same time while translating his signs.

His muscles flexed underneath my featherlight touch, his skin burning from the outside in with a fevered glow that I wanted to bask in every moment of every day.

He let out a staggered breath that fanned out across my face, and then I was a goner.

Completely and totally gone in the sensations that swirled around my body and fueled the desire that I thought I'd never feel again.

Who was the girl that leaned forward on bated breath and the weight of the wings that covered Grey's tanned skin?

Who was she to bask in this early morning night and wrap it around her like a warm blanket and suffocate the demons with the comforting safety of Grey's arm?

And who was she, to press her lips against his, to swallow down her protests and throw caution into the fraying wind?

Who was this girl in my body, taking over and hitting mute on the pain that never seemed to go away...until now?

Who was I?