Sunlight coated Cami's hair in soft golden rays and I wished for the first time in my entire life that this moment would last forever; that time would stop moving and that I'd never grow old just so that I could relive this over again and again and again.

I used to relish the fact that I would age; that I would grow old and senile and forget all the pains of my past. I used to think that life was so horrible that I couldn't wait to be eighty or ninety years old and on my death bed, waiting for death like a perfect, nice human who'd lived a perfect, ordinary uneventful life and never tried to end it prematurely.

But now, with Cami wrapped around my arms and clinging to me like she was scared I'd somehow float away in her dreams...now I knew the reason why some people said they were scared of death.

I knew why they said they wanted to live forever, when previously I'd thought it to be a punishment akin to torture to be forced to walk this godforsaken earth for an eternity.

Soft breaths escaped her mouth and she sighed out in contentment, and I never wanted to wake her.

How unfortunate for me that the sun did that all on its own.

She smiled up at me sheepishly after realizing how close she'd tucked herself to me.

"Sorry," she said but I didn't respond. She had absolutely nothing to be sorry for.

I jumped up out of her bed first and left to mine before anyone could figure out what had happened last night.

We'd...slept. After having the most intensely intimate moment of my life. I could only wonder if it were the same for her, if she could sense the power of that moment as it flowed through my veins.

We dressed for school separately, but it was when I found her waiting outside with the helmet already on her head that I almost dropped down to my knees in worship of her.

She didn't allow things to be awkward or tense between us.

She clung tightly to me on the smooth ride to school, body loose and content...because of the events of the night before, or because she knew Colton wouldn't be at school to torment her?

He was still in the hospital according to the rumors still swirling on social media.

The courtyard was bare of the 'group' that Parker always hung around. Maybe they finally realized none of them really liked each other and split up. That would've been the cherry on top of the best night I'd had in my entire life.

I hadn't had a single nightmare, even after the effects of the weed I'd smoked had worn off. No nightmares, no dreams, just peace. Just contented, sweet, restful sleep.

Was Cami my remedy?

I never wanted to sleep alone again.

Not if that was how real sleep should have felt like this entire time; not if that was what I'd been missing out on all these years when the anxiety and depression would follow and torment me into oblivion.

Cami found Mori in the courtyard and they were glued together the rest of the day as we ate lunch together, sans Carter and Parker's band of friends.

For the next two weeks, everything followed the same pattern.

Cami would either seek me out in my room at night, or I'd go to hers.

There were no more instances of kissing, though I wasn't about to rush her on anything, although we did talk.

Well, she did most of the talking and I listened while shrugging my shoulders, nodding or shaking my head in answer.

It was the night before Colton was due to return to school, and Cami knew this because Mori had told her that day over text.

She'd been a walking ball of anxiety the entire day, and anything I'd tried to do to calm her wasn't working.

"What's wrong?" I asked, finally caving.

She sat up on the bed a little higher where we'd been camped out. She'd been preferring my room lately. She preferred anything that had my mark on it, really.

My hoodies, my sweatpants, my long sleeved shirts, even my side of the bed.

I'd gladly give her anything she wanted, the moment she asked. Hell, she didn't even have to ask.

Not Cami.

"Do you think...do you think when the cops don't believe what happened that it's not as bad as what you thought?"

"What do you mean?"

"Well...like, you know what happens when a girl reports...that."

I did know what she was talking about, but suddenly I was on high alert. Had she gone to the police, and they hadn't believed her?

What had happened?

"Yes. I watch Law and Order with you every night. I don't think a murder didn't happen just because they couldn't find enough evidence to put away the murderer. I don't think an assault didn't happen just because they didn't have enough evidence. The police not choosing to go forward with a case doesn't mean they didn't believe in the victim, it just meant there wasn't enough evidence to get a guilty sentence."

That answer seemed to appease her as she eased back onto my shoulder and curled herself around my frame, cuddling closer until she was practically glued to my skin. I had to stop myself from sighing out in happiness. I didn't want her to know how much I loved it when she did that.

It would ruin my 'touch guy' act.

"Your mom's been so nice to me lately."

I tried to hum out in interest but it came out scratchy and sounding like a cat coughing up a hairball.

"I'm starting to interpret your sounds, you know? That one meant, 'hmm, interesting.'"

I huffed out another sound to see if she'd decipher that one, too.

"And that one means, 'oh really?' but like really sarcastically. But anyway, like I was saying, I think your mom is trying to make me her actual daughter. You know she took me shopping for a prom dress? I didn't even want to go to prom but I guess I am now."

She was laying on me and I was too comfortable to move to sign my thoughts back to her, which she already knew, so she kept going, talking and talking and it was music to my damn ears.

I'd been used to the silence for too long. Maybe it was time to finally call my doctor and make the appointment. I think Cami would like my voice, no matter how distorted and wrecked it might sound.

"I wonder what it would've been like to have had a mom growing up. What would've happened if my dad didn't do what he did. Would I still have gone to that stupid prep school in L.A. or would we have moved out to the country? Would I have ever met you?"

Of course, the answer to that was 'no', but she wasn't asking that.

She was asking herself if the price of meeting me was worth it. The cost of losing her mother wasn't worth meeting me, I knew it, but she didn't say it out loud. Instead, she kept it light.

"I like to think the universe likes to make us work for things. Like...if you want to be happy, you have to try first, at least a little. If you keep looking at the negative things, then the world will be negative. If you want the real things, like love...you can't just sit back and wait for it to happen to you. You can't settle for things that feel good, you have to wait for something to come along that feels perfect."

I suddenly got the feeling she was talking about someone else that wasn't in the room but was stuck in her head.

"You know when I first met you, I thought you were an asshole with a superiority complex, even though you couldn't talk."

I couldn't help the snort that escaped from me.

She laughed at me, of course, but that didn't stop her.

"I'm glad you stormed into that classroom that day, Grey."

I was about to lean up and say something equally sentimental, until she had to go and ruin it.

"I'm glad you stalked me so hard that you made your mother basically adopt me just so you could be close to me. You must be so obsessed with me."

The closest thing to a laugh fell out of my mouth, and then I was half choking, half bark-laughing as Cami started laughing hysterically, which only made me choke on my voice even harder.

"You're a bitch," I signed to her.

"You love me."

"Not even close."

She had no idea how close to the truth she really was.

It was after seven o'clock the Sunday evening before the school day where everything would change.

It was all getting better—Colton wasn't around because he'd been suspended and in the hospital due to his fight with Parker. The group of friends that used to torment me with Carter and Colton had dissipated almost overnight and none of them even sat together anymore, so Mori had taken to sitting with me and Grey every morning and afternoon at school.

No more teasing mockery of us being on scholarships.

My grades that I'd let slip had risen, and I once again boasted all A's in my classes. Grey was a good study partner—he couldn't distract me by talking aloud, and even when he could communicate, he usually just let me do the talking.

I had a feeling that even if he could talk, he'd choose to be silent.

I'd just entered the bathroom for a shower when my phone began ringing with an unknown number.

Chills shot through my body as I thought of who could be on the other end of that line, but...

You know the old adage about curiosity and the cat.

"Hello?"

"An inmate by the name of Michael Astor from Sentry Penitentiary is attempting to reach you. Please press one to accept the charges."

Charges? My father?

I pressed the number one with the blood roaring in my ears. What was I doing?

"Hello? Cami? Baby, it's Daddy. Are you there?"

"D-dad?"

My voice caught and broke, a scratchy, hollow reminder of the fact that I hadn't said that word to him in over five years.

He'd never even gotten to say goodbye.

Had I even wanted him to?

"It's so good to hear your voice. Listen, I don't have much time. I need you to get in touch with your social worker. She's my lawyer, and she's working on a reduced sentence for me, to cut my time in half. If she does that, then the inheritance can revert back to me. Won't that be great? You'll be over eighteen and I'll be out and able to take care of you."

"What?"

I didn't know what he was saying.

I couldn't comprehend this.

I hadn't spoken to him since he'd killed my mother, and this was what he'd wanted to talk to me about?

Money?

My inheritance?

"It'll be just like old times, baby. I'll even take you on that ski trip we always promised, before..."

His scratchy, deep voice didn't sound like my father's.

This man's voice was desperate, with a tinge of madness and insanity lurking in its depths.

"I...I don't want to talk to you."

"Cami? Come on, just contact your social worker, and tell her you want to give her Power of Attorney over your guardianship. You have to be the one to ask, and you'll go in front of the courts. They'll give it to her, and when I get out it can be transferred to me and we can live together again."

"I don't want to talk to you."

"Cami, I—"

"I DON'T WANT TO TALK TO YOU!"

I kept repeating it, over and over again, as the blood flashed in my mind.

The walls in the bathroom weren't white anymore, they were red and splattered with brain matter.

The floor was a puddle of scarlet that had flowed out of my mom's head.

There were holes in the walls where the rest of the bullets had sprayed and punctured through drywall and the pretty pale blue of our large living room.

One of the bullets had gone through a picture, directly through the eye of a little girl in a unicorn dress on the mantle.

He'd killed that little girl and her mother that day, she just didn't know she'd been a dead girl walking these past five years.

Not until this phone call had finally twisted the knife in a puncturing finality.

I don't want to talk to you I don't want to talk to you I don't want to talk to you I don't want to talk to you I don't want to talk to you I don't want to talk to you I don't want to talk to you I don't want to talk to you I don't want to talk to you I don't want to talk to you I don't want to talk to you I don't want to talk to you I don't want to talk to you I don't want to talk to you I don't want to talk to you I don't want to talk to you I don't want to talk to you I don't want to talk to you I don't want to talk to you I don't want to talk to you I don't want to talk to you I don't want to talk to you I don't want to talk to you I don't want to talk to you I don't want to talk to you I don't want to talk to you I don't want to talk to you I don't want to talk to you I don't want to talk to you I don't want to talk to you I don't want to talk to you I don't want to talk to you I don't want to talk to you I don't want to talk to you I don't want to talk to you I don't want to talk to you I—

"Cami?"

Parker was standing in the open doorway of the bathroom, but I couldn't see him through the tears leaking down my face like the blood that had dripped down the sides of her head when I walked in on her.

"Grey!"

He was there in an instant, picking me up in his arms and cradling me against his chest.

So warm. He was so warm.

I was so cold, so tired, so fucking tired of it all.

When would it end?

I'd see the light at the end of the tunnel, I'd reach for it, only to get dragged right back down to the fiery pits where hope was only an illusion; another form of torture.

There was a reason they said to abandon all hope in the depths of the Underworld.

It wasn't allowed.

Hope was for fools.

The world was nothing more than fire and death and agony and anyone who tried to think differently would wind up with a dagger in their back or a bullet in their brain.