Chapter 7
Chapter 7
The day Maya left, I had the worst fight of my life with my family.
My father looked at me like I was dirt and said, “What are you without the Cole family? Nothing.”
I told him then I wanted nothing.
Not his money.
Not his house.
Not his name.
I moved into a run-down apartment complex because it was cheap enough to pay for without asking anyone for help.
It smelled vaguely like damp concrete and old takeout.
The hall lights flickered.
The elevator got stuck once a week.
It was perfect.
I thought I could start over there.
I thought if I cut everything else away, I might be able to survive what was left of me.
I was wrong.
The night I almost ended things, I had a knife in my hand.
I had already pressed the blade against my wrist.
Then someone started pounding on my door.
Fast.
Urgent.
Panicked.
I froze, shoved the knife under my pillow, and opened the door.
A girl stood there in pajamas with messy hair and a face full of apology.
“Um,” she said, pointing to the apartment next door, “my power went out. Can you help me? I don’t know how to fix it.”
That was Sienna.
I stared at her for two seconds and said, “Okay.”
I fixed the breaker.
She stood there watching me like I had performed actual magic.
Then she brightened and said, “Did you eat yet? I’ll buy dinner.”
I didn’t even get a chance to refuse.
She had already pulled out her phone and started ordering delivery.
Fifteen minutes later, she marched right into my apartment carrying takeout containers like she belonged there.
“Wow,” she said, looking around. “Your place is so clean. Do you live alone?”
I nodded.
She made a sympathetic noise and then kept eating.
I remember looking at her and thinking that she had absolutely no sense of boundaries.
I also remember thinking it was the funniest thing I’d seen in months.
That meal gave me stomach problems for two days.
She had ordered something violently spicy.
I can’t handle spice.
I ate it anyway because she was sitting there looking so pleased with herself.
On the third day, she knocked again.
This time she was holding two takeout boxes.
“I ordered too much. Help me.”
I stared at the food, remembered the hell I had suffered, and said after a long pause, “I’ll cook.”
Her eyes lit up.
“You can cook?”
“A little.”
That was how it started.
After that, I cooked for her all the time.
Her name was Sienna Hart.
She lived next door.
She wasn’t picky.
She would eat almost anything.
And somehow, no matter how questionable my cooking turned out, she never got sick from it.
If I ate it myself, there was at least a fifty-percent chance I’d regret everything.
One day I finally asked her, “Is it really not that bad?”
She thought about it seriously.
“It’s edible,” she said. “Which already makes you better than me. I can burn ramen.”
Then she smiled.
And I laughed.
I hadn’t meant to.
But once I did, she laughed too.
Her eyes curved into crescents like moonlight.
Little by little, I started noticing things.
No family ever came to see her.
No friends called.
She went to work.
Came home.
Ordered takeout.
Or came to my place and ate whatever I made.
Always alone.
So one day I asked, “What about your parents?”
She went still for half a beat.
Then smiled.
“They don’t want me.”
She said it like it was a joke.
Like it didn’t hurt.
That smile got under my skin more effectively than anything else she ever did.
Then she added, cheerful as ever, “But honestly, I’m happy now. I can eat whatever I want and nobody tells me what to do.”
She was smiling the whole time.
Like sunlight in human form.
I think anyone who got close to her would have been drawn in by that light.
I was.
When I confessed, I was so nervous I thought I might actually stop breathing.
I said, “Sienna… what if I cook for you every day?”
She blinked.
Then she threw herself into my arms and said, “Okay.”
For one full second, I felt like the luckiest person alive.
And then the apocalypse came.
I got bitten on the first bad night.
I burned with fever until I thought my bones would crack open.
When I woke, I was different.
I could still think.
Still speak.
Still control myself.
But I knew.
I knew I wasn’t human anymore.
I didn’t bite anyone.
I didn’t want to.
But I was terrified she would find out.
So I lied.
I told her I had access to a secure villa with strong defenses.
I took her there.
And once I had her with me, safe and hidden, a thought took root inside me that I never said out loud.
I wanted to keep her.
Just there.
With me.
In that quiet house.
No other people.
No danger.
No one to take her away.
I knew it was selfish.
I knew it was wrong.
But I had already lost too much.
I couldn’t lose her too.
The strangest part was that even after all of it—
even after I became a monster—
she still chose me.
Maybe that was why I loved her enough to cry over chips.
Maybe that was why I would have followed her forever.
Maybe that was why, in the end, the world didn’t really end for me at all.
Because she was still in it.