Strange house we must keep and fill. House that eats, and pleads, and kills.
▍ AN ORIGINAL STORY ╱ romantic melodrama!
❪ m!oc & m!oc ❫
❪ f!oc & m!oc ❫
written...
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CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO.The Cove
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This material discusses themes of suicide and mental health struggles. Please proceed with caution. If you or someone you know is struggling, it's important to seek support from a trusted individual or a mental health professional. You're not alone, you are extremely loved, and help is available.
The sun was slipping low over the horizon, casting an amber light over the cove, where the water lapped lazily against the sand. The shoreline, a stretch of damp earth and jagged rocks, seemed to glow in the fading light, as if the very air held its breath for something not yet spoken, not yet understood.
Cassidy, his shirt unbuttoned, shoes forgotten in the sand, and trousers rolled to the knee, stood just beyond the reach of the retreating tide. His fingers brushed over the water, testing the coolness of the current.
Loose droplets of water kissed his ankles, icing the skin there. He had recently spoken with Killian, their bodies tucked beneath linen and cotton blends, heads sunk into feather pillows, and confessed his yearning to learn the rules of the water.
He adored the sea, it spoke to him so often, and yet—and yet, when he was sailing, he was free. He knew the feel of the wind in his face, the spray of the ocean on his lips, the way the world narrowed down to the sound of the rigging and the slapping of the waves against the sides of the boat.
It was, and it is, a place where he is weightless, his body caught between earth and sky, held by the hull like a bird in flight. In those moments, there is nothing that can touch him—not fear, not regret, not even the past. Nor the present.
But when he is here, bare feet against land, with the water biting at the tips of his toes, the yearning becomes something else, something dark and suffocating.
The water, once his sanctuary, becomes a chasm. A taunt. Come here, Cass. Come a little closer. Drown in me. Cease and be truly set free.
The endless expanse beneath the surface pulls at him like an invisible hand, threatening to swallow him whole. His body tenses, and his breath hitches in his throat. His feet, bound to solid earth, feel suddenly heavy, as though they, too, sense the danger of the unseen depths.
He blinks those thoughts away, refocusing on his purpose for lingering here.
He had never learned to swim. The thought of sinking, of being lost in the vast, unknowable blue, had terrified him since he was a young boy. Even in the pool, he was hopeless.
