“Shit,” Lydia breathes out.
Holding my hands over my mouth to keep from crying out too loudly, I hear the strike of a match before I smell the sulfur in the air.
“Did her candles go out?” Talent’s tone is thick with sleep.
Trickling firelight licks the walls, low at first but growing higher and brighter as Lydia and Talent set flame to the wicks one by one. A yellow glow burns orange-red, banishing the darkness and the nightmare it brought with it, caging the monsters for another time. The beginning and the end are in sight again. My bedroom has four walls, a ceiling, and a floor.
“Camilla, I can’t get half of these to light,” Lydia says. Her voice is as real as the shape of the room. Candlelight contours her face, cradling the smooth angle of her jaw and emphasizing the circles under her eyes.
“Closet,” I force out. My chin quivers and my eyes burn with unshed tears. Even though I feel the mattress under my back and the cotton sheets against my skin, lingering fear sticks like a fading stain. I blink, and warm tears run down my temples into my hair. “I have more candles in there.”
Talent opens my closet door to find it empty of everything but stacks of boxes, each filled with candles. He drives his hand through his hair, taking in my only way of coping before he grabs the box on top. While he lights brand-new candles, Lydia sits at the end of my bed. She doesn’t touch me, or ask if I’m okay, because we’ve been through this before. I’m not okay.
Instead, she crosses her bare legs and leans back on her hand. Lydia considers me as she gives me time to focus on her weight near my feet and the softness in her eyes. Sleep lines cross her face, and there’s a tiny hole near the hem of her shirt. Small imperfections no one outside this room will ever see.
“Lover of light,” she says with a pinch of teasing.
Firelight serves like a safety blanket, but I don’t need my candles during the day like I need them at night. I light them when the sun’s up because they’re the most familiar thing in my life. When my own family left me at the mercy of the dark, tea lights gave me sight. My candles give me comfort.
They’re essential at night. My bedtime routine starts by checking each and every candle in my bedroom for wick lengths and wax levels. If I don’t think a candle will make it through the night, it’s exchanged for one that will. It’s not often they burn out while I’m asleep, but when it happens and if I wake up, my heart and mind immediately go back to those nights I was locked in my family’s closet. There’s no give between this reality and that one, and my reaction is fast and out of my control.
After movie night, I lit my candles absentmindedly while the memory of Wilder’s soft drunken eyes as he lingered at the open front doorway played through my mind over and over like a rerun. He stepped outside and back in with words he was afraid to say on his lips, until they finally came out after a kiss on my cheek.
“Not Benny Cros.”
“Inez said you came from a good home,” Lydia says. She pulls a string from the arm of her shirt and breaks it off with a snap. “I’m going to assume she didn’t know about your family.”
Shaking my head, I push myself into a sitting position and fall back against the headboard. Talent lights one last candle on my nightstand. He’s shirtless with an orange glow reflecting against his chest and tired face, offering a small smile that doesn’t totally hide the worry I’ve caused him.
“My family is only half of it,” I admit.
The slight curve in Talent’s lips straightens, and his expression is nothing short of lethal. It’s easy to forget that there are two sides to Talent. Charming and eloquent, yes, but he’s as capable and dangerous as the gangsters his family runs with. It’s impossible to come out unscathed by that kind of influence—good intentions be dammed.
Talent Ridge gives wrath a kind face.
What does that make Wilder?
Its first?
“Do you want us to stay up with you?” Talent leans against the doorjamb, crossing his arms over his bare chest. There’s not a lie in sight, and I know that if I say yes, they’d stay with me until the sun comes up.
“I’ll probably watch TV for a while.”
“We both know you’re not going back to sleep.” Lydia stands to her feet. “I’ll clear your day.”
“You don’t have to do that,” I insist.
“It’s already done, Camilla.”
Candlelight keeps the bad dreams away, but dread from brushing so close to the past sits heavy in my joints. My legs move restlessly, and no amount of stretching eases the tension in my arms. I turned the television on after Lydia and Talent went back to their room, but I can’t see past the memory of the swinging light bulb above my father’s head.
How many times did he shove me into that closet? How many times did my mom walk by and do nothing? Why didn’t my brothers care enough to help?
God works in mysterious ways, but I told my dad that God never came to me in that closet. I was only ever met with the sound of my own breathing or utter nothingness. Had he believed me instead of blaming me for being ungodly or had my family intervened and saidthis is crazy,maybe the rest wouldn’t have happened.
But they didn’t, and it did.
And it changed everything.
