Souls Entwined

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Sixteen
Elle's POV

The mind was a powerful thing, always thinking, constantly conjuring new thoughts to ponder. It was impossible to turn off, and the onslaught became too much after some time. The thoughts ticked over in my mind, running over and over stuck on a hamster wheel, completely out of control.

It had been like this for hours, dredging through the faded memories, pinning new ones to old fears. And sleep had been hard to find. Every time I thought I was close, another heart-ceasing memory pulled itself out of the fog, a highlight reel playing over every mistake I had made over the last four days.

I pulled the duvet higher, trying to block out the thoughts.

We were in Dornwich now, the smaller of the five regions and the furthest from Aucteraden. Dornwich was unsure and hesitant to accept me like every other region, though I hadn't expected a welcome wagon after passing through Clarcton and Arkala.

We were only four days in and halfway through our trip, but it felt like I hadn't seen Kaden in weeks.

I threw the blankets to the floor, clambering to my feet. I was desperate to escape the memories, the haunting little snippets of every little mistake I had made, but they followed me as I paced across the room. Like a caged animal, I worked my way back and forth, once, twice. I counted to ten and then twenty. I was struggling to control my breathing.

As it often did, my mind turned to Kaden, but rather than bringing comfort, the thought of him only worsened the embarrassment.

I had never expected to be great at pretending to be Luna. But, instead, I felt like I had gone from a childhood of silly games, finishing homework late and answering online quizzes that told me what kind of fruit I was, to being thrown to the wolves. And they were ravenous ones, hungry for a mistake. For if I made one, then their anger could be justified.

I had spent most of the day focusing too much on finding the right words. The times when I did, the words had come out sharp but jolted or well-rehearsed but meek. I struggled to find the balance. Then, after a while of falling into the same rhythm, just thinking about speaking up caused me to feel as though the ground beneath me had dropped away. Left handing onto a precarious ledge already so close to falling left me battling away the doubt that followed the snide remarks and obvious disappointment.

Even with all the struggling, juggling, and feeling as though I was under a microscope, more often than not, I found myself with nothing to say.

And Kaden, beautiful, sweet, strong-headed, flawed Kaden, had witnessed it all.

Who had been the first to pull away? I didn't know. Why we didn't just talk about it, to solve our issues with words instead of silence, was beyond me, but our silence had fostered something impenetrable. It felt as though we were back at square one.

The thoughts caused the walls to move, crushing around me as the air squeezed from my lungs. The onslaught of memories reached into the recess of my mind, even pulling at the pleasant thoughts. Then, with gnarly, knotted fingers, they turned those sweet thoughts into the things that nightmares were made of.

I pounded a fist against my head, trying to knock the thoughts loose, but nothing helped. Finally, throwing myself onto the bed, I picked my phone up with shaking hands. If I could just drown myself out with the white noise of social media, maybe the memories would fade away.

We were well past the living hours of the day, and my newsfeed was filled with people at parties, pictures of neon lights and half-sculled beers splayed across my screen. Those images would be gone tomorrow evening after sober brains tried to piece together drunken nights.