The Captain's Forbidden Mate

Episode 9: QUIET

LENA

They never show the part after. In movies, they cut from the horrifying reveal to the happy ending as if there's not some disgusting chunk of humanity in between that we, as human beings, can't stomach witnessing.

Noah stayed back to finish off Marek. I don't know what he meant by 'finish off,' but it hadn't been good enough apparently because Cole drove me home instead. Somehow he'd managed to flip the switch back to being Cole, and I'm thankful for it because I'm not sure I would've survived the transition if I'd seen it happen. He tossed a hoodie over my head that I'm sure was balled up in the backseat of his truck and said nothing about the blood still drying beneath his own nails.

I didn't say anything either. Not for eleven minutes. I counted them off on the dashboard because I knew if I counted I'd have something real to hold onto, some solid ground when my hands had finally stopped shaking.

“You’re not screaming,” he said finally, eyes fixed on the road as if it were some kind of holy relic.

"Should I be?" I asked because I genuinely couldn't tell. Part of me was still waiting for the panic to settle in and make my entire body shake, make my heartbeat stutter out some frantic rhythm my body could actually recognize. It was late and I was tired and I didn't know what terrified me more, that I was feeling none of it.

"Most people would be."

"I'm not most people." My voice sounds steadier than I feel and that surprises both of us, I think, because I can see his jaw tighten. "Also already told you. Saw your eyes before. This isn't, I don't know, new. Not exactly."

He pulled in a gas station and parked his truck in the lot, hands gripping the wheel as if he needed something tangible and solid to hold onto. He finally looked at me and the mask was gone, not the usual smirk or confident cockiness of his peers but the face of an exhausted young man, someone who'd carried something heavy for too long and was just now learning how to set it down

"What are you," he said quietly, not accusation or anger but a simple statement, and somehow that was worse.

"I don't know," I admit, my throat tight. "I don't know what any of this is. I've had dreams since I was little, gold eyes, running, a forest that wasn't real. I thought they were dreams, everyone has weird dreams."

"Not everyone dreams in a language that doesn't exist and then wakes up humming a song they've never heard."

I stared at him. "How do you know about the song?"

He did not answer, which was an answer in and of itself, and something cold crawled down my spine.

We sat there in silence for a long time in a gas station that reeked of old coffee and gasoline, two people who somehow knew things about each other we didn't speak of, the fluorescent lights buzzing overhead the only sound in between our breaths, and for once neither of us seemed to want to fill the space with something untrue.

"I have to tell you something," Cole said eventually, and the way he said it, the resignation and dread in his posture, scared me more than anything else had.

I said nothing, just sat there with my hands folded tight in my lap, braced myself for whatever words would come next. The way to hear something important is the same way you brace yourself for a door to slam somewhere in the house you're unfamiliar with. You wait until the sound comes, until the wall shakes or the floor boards creak, knowing that something in your life will change irreparably with that single noise and there's nothing you can do to stop it. Outside the truck, a semi roared through the gas station lot and pulled away, headlights sweeping briefly across Cole's face before the night swallowed him up again, and for half a second I saw something in his features I think I'd never truly seen before. A young man standing on the precipice of something big, a fate he wanted to share with someone he cared about while knowing he couldn't. All the fear and responsibility and hurt that had shaped him up until that point funneled into those few seconds and for the first time in my life I understood what it truly meant to be seventeen.

The sign above the pumps buzzed and flickered, bathing everything in a sickly green light every few seconds, and somewhere behind us a bell jingled as a clerk wandered out the front door to unlock the gas pumps for the morning shift, unaware that two feet away, in a battered pickup truck, an entirely different reality was about to bleed into everyday life. I remember thinking, absurdly, that I should've been more scared. That some primal part of me should've recognized the moment for what it was and reacted accordingly, called someone or driven off into the night and left Cole to sort out his business alone. Instead I just felt oddly detached, as if I'd spent too long in the throes of grief and was finally coming out the other side. Hollowed out and strangely unafraid, as if the worst part was over and everything from here on out just happened after.

He turned to face me, and for the first time since I'd met him, Cole Arden didn't look like the captain of the hockey team. He looked like some generic pretty boy, someone who'd be tossed aside at every turn because he didn't have that effortless swagger most privileged kids did. He looked like someone about jump off a building with his best friend and there wasn't really any better option for either of them. I find myself, absurdly, wanting to reach out and reassure him that I'd still be his friend. That whatever was going to come out of his mouth next wouldn't change a damn thing about the way I felt about him, even though I had no idea what that could possibly mean yet.