What Grows Dies Here

He scooped me up once more and carried me to my bedroom. Didn’t stop until he laid me on the bed as gently as you would a baby bird.

I couldn’t help but let out a little moan of protest as his arms loosened around me, and the bed threatened to swallow me up.

There was a thump, then another as his shoes hit the floor. He wasted no time in climbing into bed and pulling me back into his arms. I burrowed in as close as I could, wishing I could unzip his skin and bury myself inside of it. I settled for splaying myself half on top of him, inhaling his scent and letting it wash over me.

Karson’s arms were tight around me, telling me without words he wasn’t going to let me go.

We didn’t speak for a long time, silence lurking all around us, the settling of the house puncturing it every now and then.

Though I felt safer than I had in a long time, I was still tense, my every muscle coiled. My limbs were tight, my jaw clenched.

Karson could feel that, I knew. He understood my body better than anyone.

I heard his swift intake of breath, and I held my own, preparing for him to say something, ruin this, forcing me to clamber away, to protect myself.

The air felt thick, heavy, growing more stifling from all the words left unsaid. The powder keg finally seconds away from exploding.

I squeezed my eyes closed, clutched him tighter, preparing for what was to come.

“Sleep,” Karson ordered in a rough voice.

I creaked my eyes open.

Karson moved one of his hands from my back to stroke the side of my face. “Sleep, darlin,” he repeated, less abrasive this time.

The command came out easily, fluidly, as if such a thing was possible in such a situation. As if the seemingly simple concept of sleep wasn’t an impossible mountain to scale.

But even mountains shrank in the face of Karson.

So I slept.

KARSON

I did not relax after Wren finally drifted off to sleep. Her body didn’t either. All of her muscles were stiff, strained, as if she was preparing to run, to do battle in her fucking sleep.

Tonight would be the longest she’d slept since it happened.

I knew that because she only slept through the night when she was with me. And even though things between us were fucked, they weren’t destroyed. We weren’t destroyed.

Wren understandably thought that we were because she was in ruins. To her very core she was. What happened had been a bomb that laid waste to everything.

Wren was still surrounded by smoke, debris. She couldn’t fathom that anything could’ve survived the blast.

I only knew that we did because I was still here. Still somewhat human. The monster inside of me did not have control.

Not entirely.

I watched Wren’s face in the dim light, all of her features scrunched together. My hands skimmed over her hips, over the place where she had a pink, puckered wound that was transitioning into a scar.

She had two scars on her body. My name in ink on her hip and the evidence of the bullet that had torn through her body as a result of me.

What she said that day in the hospital had been true for her. She didn’t carry blame for me.

She was pushing me away for her survival. It was that simple. The mere fact that she didn’t find fault in me for this was what gave me hope that she was still in there. My beautiful Wren was in there.

Somewhere.

WREN