Cooper woke the next morning to an empty bed.
He stretched out his arm, dragging a hand along the empty sheets Calla usually occupied. Harsh winter sunlight slanted through the blinds, striping the carpeted floor, effectively blinding him. He blinked, bleary-eyed, trying to shake off the last dredges of sleep that clung to him.
He might have given in, too—if it weren't for the tempting, sugary-sweet aroma of something on the air, chasing him out of bed and into the kitchen.
That was where he found her: Calla, standing by the sink, her expression one of immense disapproval as she frowned down at a mixing bowl tucked in the crook of her elbow. She'd stacked an assortment of pans on the stove, little blue flames burning beneath each of them.
Cooper smiled, though there was something...off about the otherwise idyllic scene. Maybe it was the newspaper—an honest-to-God newspaper—spread out on the counter between the pancake mix and the milk, a dozen obituaries having been torn out and scattered. Discarded. Or it could have been the calendar next to the mangled newspaper, with several dates marked up in vivid red ink. Mrs. Henschel, Blackwell Cemetery, Sunday @ 4:00 PM, he read. And many others besides.
Or maybe—and this was the likeliest answer—it was the knife thrown carelessly in the sink. A rather familiar knife with a bone white handle, its blade smeared with bits of orange pulp. Cooper recognized it immediately.
Calla had been using an old murder weapon to slice fucking oranges.
Padding barefoot across the icy kitchen floor, Cooper joined her at the sink and wrapped his arms around her waist. Okay, so maybe this wasn't exactly like any other quaint Sunday morning. There were one too many obituaries for that. But, well...
He'd take it.
Cooper propped his chin against her shoulder. "Why are you ripping obituaries out of the morning paper?"
"Aren't you going to ask how I even got the morning paper?"
He paused. "Actually, yes. I haven't seen a newspaper in years, now that you mention it." He frowned as a memory came to him. "Except for this one old guy who always brought one in to the Diner—"
"They still come in the mail." She returned her attention to the pancake mix in her arms. "The more you know."
"Random. But okay." He eyed the open flames on the stove. "Would you like some help with your would-be pancakes?"
"No, I most certainly do not need your help." She scowled, angrily churning the mix around and around. Then she stopped. Sighed. Turned and shoved the bowl against his chest. "Fine. You do it."
He grinned. "You forgot the milk." He grabbed the carton she'd left out on the counter and measured out a cupful, her dark eyes watching his every move.
They had more important things to do than sit around and whip up pancakes—like, figure out how to twist Michaels' dirty little secret against him, for starters. But Cooper couldn't muster the energy to care. For now, he was content just to be here with Calla, doing something so completely...normal.
Still. Something about the obituaries and their not normalness nagged at him.
The professor will be dead soon.
He stopped his mixing. "Calla?"
"Hmm?" When he looked up, he found her staring down at her work schedule, frowning as she crossed out one date and then another. And another.
He may not have heard exactly what Michaels said to Calla over the phone yesterday, but he'd gotten the basic gist of it. Professor Li was still alive. And that needed to change.
That unpleasant reminder had caused a knot to form in Cooper's stomach—a knot that had grown tighter and heavier with each passing hour. But Calla, as always, seemed indifferent to the task. Probably because she was indifferent. It wasn't like she'd known the guy. And even if she had...
She was happy. For the first time. Watching that girl die, it filled something empty inside of her. You could see it.
Cooper suppressed a shudder. "If it weren't for Michaels..." he started, unsure of himself.
Calla glanced up from her work calendar, suddenly invested in the conversation. "If it weren't for Michaels?" she prompted.
You can still back out of this conversation. But he couldn't. If he kept this weight on his shoulders, he'd be crushed. "If it weren't for Michaels and his creepy vendetta, would you still...uh, kill people?"
She blinked, perplexed by the question. Not a strong start. "You mean, people as in Kurt and Owen and your professor?"
"No. Yes." He flushed. "I mean any people. Like, whatever...inspired you to kill Tracy, for instance. Is that..." She was happy. For the first time. "I mean, is it like...an urge, or something?"
Realization sparked in her eyes. She looked away, at the flames on the stove, the muscles in her jaw working as she fought...whatever it was she wanted to say. Cooper alternated between watching at the pancake batter and watching her. Waiting for her anger.
But the anger never came.
Her jaw relaxed and, with a weary sigh, she sagged against the kitchen island. "I don't know, Cooper. And I know that isn't what you want to hear," she said as he opened his mouth. He closed it again. "But it's the truth. I've been so wrapped up in Michaels, that every awful thing he's asked of me..." She shrugged a bit helplessly. "It hasn't seemed so awful. Those people, they were just jobs. Tasks to check off. Like a grocery list."
He winced at the harshness of her words. But had he really expected anything less?
"There's not really been any time to ask myself if I...enjoy it." She paused. Considered him. "But I know there's a part of me that does enjoy it."
She would not trust this piece of herself to anyone else, he realized. It was his to keep. His burden to bear, as it was hers.
So he set down the bowl of pancake batter. And he listened.
Her shrewd eyes took him in for another few seconds, until finally she spared him and looked to the window over the sink. To the gray, cold world beyond. "I guess I could blame it all on my dead brother," she said blandly. "Spin some sob story about how watching him die screwed up some fundamental something inside my brain. But that would be a lie. And a convenient one, at that." Her grip on the island's edge tightened, knuckles going stark white. "I've always been angry. I was angry before and I was angry after. Because when I'm not angry, I'm empty and that's somehow so much worse."
She closed her eyes, her brow furrowed in concentration—as if she were taking a microscope to her own brain, hunting for a normal switch she could flip on at a touch.
"I know the empty spaces aren't supposed to be there," she said, opening her eyes once more. "For years, I wondered what the hell I was missing. The power of love, perhaps?" Her lips twisted in an ironic smile. He couldn't quite muster one of his own. "I can't tell you how many tears I've forced, just to see if they would make me feel the way everyone else does. If love couldn't fill the holes inside me, maybe sadness would. But that's never done it for me, either."
Watching that girl die, it filled something empty inside of her. You could see it.
Cooper hated to think that Cory had been right all along—that he'd seen Calla, as Cooper had seen her. The idea unsettled him, not because of what she was, but because Calla had always been his secret to keep, and he was loath to share that with anyone else.
Even a dead guy.
He abandoned that jealous—and somewhat concerning—train of thought when Calla said, "I think I finally figured out what it is that's missing." She turned her face to his. "Humanity."
Cooper leapt at the chance to smooth over her jagged edges. "You're still human, Calla."
"Yes," she conceded, impatient. "I'm still a human being, by definition. But kindness, and generosity, and compassion and remorse and all the other things that make up this shitty, miserable human experience..." Her eyes had gone flat. Cold, like a reptile. "There's a...a darkness where the kindness and compassion should be, Cooper. It's never bothered me before. But maybe that's what the killing does. It fills the empty spaces."
And what about me? Do I fill up those empty spaces?
As if in response to his unspoken question, she stepped closer to him. But then she hesitated. Giving him the space he needed to refuse her, if that was what he wanted. "I know you want to fix me. I know you think the...the pancakes and the normal little moments will make up for all the empty. But they won't. I am what I am." She turned her face away from his. "And I'm afraid what I am doesn't fit into your plans for a perfect future together."
Cooper just stared at her. Is that what he wanted? To fix her? To...to patch up the holes and the imperfections and turn her into someone else, someone whose lies wouldn't come so easily.
Someone who could love and be loved.
But she could love. He'd seen it before, in the smoke and ashes as she burned the last of her keepsakes of Rachel. He'd heard it in her words as she promised him a long, happy life, even as she gave up on her own. He'd felt it in her touch, surprisingly gentle as she held his face in her hands. As she kissed him. Whispered his name in the dark.
She was a liar, yes. But she'd made a liar out of him, too—and now hers was the only truth he knew.
"I don't want to fix you," he said quietly, but he made no move to close the distance between them. Not yet. "And yeah, okay. So what if I do have plans? So what if I think of the future? Our future," he corrected himself. "Sue me for wanting more for both of us."
"Cooper—"
"I don't care," he interjected. "I'm not an idiot, you know. It wouldn't be perfect. One year from now or five years from now, things will probably still be messy between us. I mean, we're an absolute clusterfuck as it is."
She choked on a laugh. "That's an understatement."
"Oh, shut up. I'm trying to have a moment here."
She clasped her hands together, eyes sparkling as she waited for him to continue with his moment. And suddenly, the awkwardness of this conversation, the heavy—it was worth it, just to see her fighting that smile. She was more alive now than she'd been in days. Weeks.
He would do anything to keep it that way. And that scared him.
"I won't pretend to understand everything about you," he said slowly, stepping around the kitchen island. Playing fire with the no-man's-land between them. "And I won't pretend you don't scare the hell out of me sometimes." At that, her smile wavered. "This thing with the professor...it's eating me up inside. Just like Rachel still eats you up inside."
The light in her eyes started to dim. "That's not—"
"I know it's not the same. The guilt I feel about Professor Li...you wouldn't understand the first thing about it. I get that now. But you're angry, Calla. You're angry about what happened to Rachel, and that anger doesn't just come from nowhere. You care. Don't bother denying it."
She frowned. He was close enough now that she easily batted his finger aside. "And that somehow outweighs all the rest?"
"No." He met her hard stare with a serious look of his own. "It doesn't. But the fact that you care, even if it's in your own, uh, unique way—"
"Get to the point, Cooper."
"Calla, I'm not trying to fix you." This time, he was the one fighting back a burst of maniacal laughter. "Hell, I can't even fix myself. The anxiety pills barely work. And the nightmares..." Hesitantly, he reached for her hand, and was relieved when she didn't pull away. "You're the only one who understands. You're the only one who doesn't question who I am or what I've done. I just...I want that. I want you."
She stared down at their hands, suddenly vulnerable. "I don't understand why," she whispered, fingers tense against his. Like she might snatch her hand back at any moment. "You could be happy without me, you know."
Her words startled him. "I..." Surely he could give her some reassurance. But truth be told, he didn't know how to answer her.
I don't understand why.
Maybe it's my daddy issues, was one option. But he didn't think she would appreciate the sentiment. Nor did he seriously think his dearly departed piece of shit father was the singular reason behind why Cooper couldn't seem to let her walk out of his life—no matter how poisonous she might be for him.
Could be my OCD, he mused, changing tactics. He'd always thrived on routine. On sameness. On this-goes-here and that-goes-there. And Calla, just like Vincent, had always been right there at the center of his life. She was familiar. Comfortable. Even when she made him acutely uncomfortable, challenging his perception of the world and the people in it in new, unexpected ways. Pushing his boundaries and his buttons, all at once.
But that couldn't be it, either. It was too simple. Too practical. There had to be some other explanation for why he'd chosen her, despite everything.
Why does there have to be an explanation for everything? he wondered, suddenly frustrated with himself and the world and everyone in it. Why can't it just...be?
Maybe that was his problem; there wasn't a definitive answer lurking in the shadows. Maybe this was just how their stories were meant to be written, the threads of their life an incomprehensible tangle.
"I don't fully understand it, either," he managed at last. "But I've got empty spaces, too. You're not the only one with scars."
Calla's expression softened. She pulled him close, wrapping both of her hands around his, tracing the scar carved into his skin. "I forget about that sometimes." She frowned, troubled. "I'm an incredibly selfish person, aren't I?"
"Yes," he agreed immediately. She shot him a scandalized look. "But you're trying. And that's what counts."
"I don't think trying ever really counts for anything, actually."
"Do you want the brownie points or not?"
"No." She paused. "I'd take an actual brownie, though."
"Well..." He surprised her with a kiss. "You're just going to have to settle for pancakes."
She eyed the clock over the stove. "I've gotta be at work in an hour."
How quickly the tone in conversation had shifted. Relief coursed through him. We're going to be just fine, he thought. "Good thing I'm a pancake-making expert."
Cooper was not, in fact, a pancake-making anything. The next fifteen minutes were proof of that. Calla nearly called the whole thing off after he torched the first batch, smoke drifting through the kitchen, fire alarms screeching. "Oh, fantastic. I kill your cat, you burn down my apartment. Is that what this is?" she demanded, cracking open every window she could reach to chase out the smoke.
"Mr. Kitty's revenge," he muttered under his breath, too low for her to hear.
The second batch proved to be more successful. Calla made a face as he drowned his pancakes in syrup—her words, not his—and dodged every single one of his attempts to smear some of the sugary goodness against her cheek, smiling despite her many toothless threats.
When she kissed him goodbye, he tasted syrup on her lips.
Alone now with only his thoughts, Cooper wandered over to the sink, the remnants of smoke still lingering in the kitchen. He'd clean the kitchen, he decided. There wasn't much he could do about the smoke, but he could at least wash the dishes and—
Ah. He'd forgotten about the knife.
He stared down into the sink, at the inconspicuous knife that could have belonged in any kitchen. There had been a time when the Smiths had used that knife. Maybe even to slice up their own oranges.
Before Calla had used it to slice their daughter's throat.
Swallowing thickly, he picked up the knife. For all his talk about empty spaces and scars, he'd been utterly truthful when he'd told Calla that there were pieces of her he would never understand. This, he knew, was one of those pieces.
And even despite that, he would still choose her.
You could be happy without me, you know.
She'd been right, of course. He knew it to be true. He'd most certainly be happy without the constant reminder of their twisted past sitting in the kitchen, haunting him...
Not that it would be easy to move on from Calla Parker. He would never be able to forget her. What she'd done. What they'd shared. But he knew he could manage it—knew he could carve out a new life for himself and be happy with that choice, if it came down to it.
It wasn't like he was a total loser. He had other things going for him. His mom. Vincent. Fantasy football, on a good weekend.
But it was like Calla had said so long ago: I don't want to be invisible.
She saw him for what he really was. The guy with the shoebox under the bed and one too many pictures of the girl next door. The guy who'd gladly offered up another's life in exchange for his own. The guy who, even now, let murder slide right under his radar—who'd poisoned his own professor, just to make sure someone he cared about wouldn't have to suffer.
Cooper carefully ran his thumb along the knife's serrated edges. He used to think Calla had ruined him. Maybe she had. And maybe that was okay, because there was a part of him that was broken, that had always been broken—the same part that had kept his suspicions about his neighbor to himself all those years, a darkness in him that recognized what she was and had been chasing that darkness ever since.
Vincent had seen it. He'd seen it and despised it and turned his back, because there were good people in this world, good people who could rise above the dark, who could demand more.
And then there were those like Cooper. People who stared at the darkness for so long, they began to wonder if there was anything so wrong with it, after all.
The knife slipped against his thumb and he hissed, dropping the blade back into the sink. Fascinated, Cooper watched as a thin line of blood ran down the edge of his finger, carving a path across his skin.
The blood reminded him of Calla.
An obsession. That had to be the word for this, he thought, watching his own blood drip down into the sink. He was obsessed with Calla and always had been. But it was more than that. It was—
Love.
He loved her. Even the parts of her that weren't sure how to love him back.
Numb, Cooper snapped on the faucet and held his thumb under the stream. Helpless. He felt completely and utterly helpless in the face of such a realization. Like there was nothing in the world he could do about it. The way he felt was as inevitable as the tide, dragging him out to sea.
Surely he would drown.
Or not.
Seeing no papers towels, he wrapped his thumb with one of the newspaper clippings Calla had left lying around. He couldn't just...sit with this information. It was too much for any one person to bear. He would tell her, he decided. He had to tell Calla how he felt, and she would either freak out or she wouldn't, but either way the truth would be out there in the great big world and not here, lingering on his shoulders.
What if she doesn't feel the same? What if you're just her plaything? What if she tires of you?
This and more ran through his head as he raced into her bedroom, frantically searching for his phone, his wallet, and—there, the keys to the truck. Calla wouldn't get back from the funeral home—mortuary, he mentally corrected himself—for at least another three hours, and he just couldn't wait that long. He couldn't.
He tossed aside the bloodied newspaper clipping as he burst through the front door, the winter air cold on the back of his neck, fumbling with the keys in his eagerness to get to Calla, to tell her, to make her understand—
Distracted as he was, Cooper never saw him coming.
One second, he was on his feet. The next, there was a hand over his mouth. No, not a hand.
A damp cloth.
Cooper inhaled sharply, trying to pry the hand that held the cloth away from his face, but his vision blurred as soon as the sickly sweet something hit his lungs, and his movements grew sluggish. Panicked and groggy and all the more panicked because he was groggy, he tried to claw his way back into the apartment. To safety.
But it was no use. The ground rose up to meet him, his bones hitting the concrete with a painful jolt he could barely feel, but that he was sure would come back to bite him later.
A pair of footsteps moved into his path. Whoever it was knelt, crouching on the ground beside him. Cooper blinked rapidly as his vision dimmed, his heart heavy and useless in his chest.
The last thing he saw as he lay there was a tear-streaked face.
"I'm so sorry," Kevin whispered.
And then Cooper heard nothing at all.