The Dark and Hollow Places - Carrie Ryan [55]
In that moment I felt like everything was alive. The world was new again and nothing but hope. When he pulled me down to the mattress and pressed against me, it was the first night in my life that I drifted into an easy sleep, a smile so wide on my face I was sure it would break me.
When I woke up, Elias was gone. He finally came home as the afternoon sun burned down around me, as my entire mind had been consumed with a frantic worry. In his arms he carried a Recruiter uniform. He’d signed up that morning and would leave for training in the evening.
Every day, the pain of that moment has scored through me. The humiliation and anger and misery and rejection. So many emotions that churn over me, always forcing me to feel it all fresh again and again—never in my life had I felt so ugly and unwanted.
And what took root that day has done nothing but thrive and bloom ever since.
I’ve drifted so deep asleep that the shift of air in the room and the sound of footsteps doesn’t wake me at first. It isn’t until hands grip my arms that I’m able to struggle awake, muscles tense to lash out until I see who’s holding me.
Elias. He kneels in front of me, shaking me gently. “Annah,” he says softly. His voice makes heat flare across my skin and my stomach drop.
A look of relief flickers across his face when I open my eyes and he falls back until he’s seated next to me, legs crossed, knee brushing my thigh. My mind flashes to the memory of him—the feel of his hands on my body—and I take a deep breath.
“I was terrified something happened to you,” he says.
“I’m sorry,” I tell him. “I didn’t mean to fall asleep. I wasn’t sure where else to go.” There’s only one lantern lit and it casts weak light around us, making it seem almost as though we’re underwater.
After Elias left for the Recruiters I dreamed of this moment: him coming home. Me seeing him again, finally. I’ve had this conversation with him so many ways and in so many places. I’ve imagined his voice, his expressions, the feel of his hands along my body.
And yet I’m so lost. There’s something missing between us—the quiet intensity that bloomed just before he left.
I want to talk to him, to tell him everything he’s missed for the past three years. But when I open my mouth, nothing comes out. Because what has he missed? Endless gray days of monotony. Mondays gathering food, Tuesdays baking for the week, Wednesdays scavenging for goods, the in-between time nothing. Waiting. Fighting. Surviving.
What’s different about me since he left? How can I explain how lonely and scared I was? How in the beginning I spent every hour wondering about him until that was all I was: endless hours of wondering about someone other than myself.
That I ate when I had to, not because I was hungry but because that was how I was going to stay alive and be there for him when he came back.
How long it took for me to stop thinking about him every moment of every day. How hard it was to push him far enough away that I could recover from his absence. How I vowed that I’d never go through that again.
“I thought about you,” Elias finally says, and I crumble inside. I look away from him so he can’t see it. I have to bite my lip to keep from making a sound.
“All the time, I thought of you, Annah.” The edge of his hand brushes my hip as he shifts his weight, and I close my eyes.
In my most secret dreams, this is what he always said to me. But we weren’t in some barren room in an old abandoned building, we were out in the sun on a grassy hill with white apple blossoms twirling around us in the warm wind.
My legs feel jumpy and I push to my feet, pacing back and forth between the scattered tables. Needing to get away from what’s so familiar: the smell, the buzzing nearness. In my dreams this is where he’d take me in his arms. This is where he’d run his fingers over my face, magically