Todos os capítulos de Drowning in You: Capítulo 51 - Capítulo 60

CALLUM'S POVThe silence in our corner of the roof was a different kind of torture. It wasn't the heavy, charged silence of a fight or the suffocating quiet of a shared secret. It was a cold, clinical distance. Leo was there, but he wasn't. He moved around the mats with a precision that felt robotic. He spoke to me in short, one-word answers. He didn't look at me. Not really. When his eyes did drift my way, they were empty. He had retreated into some part of himself where I couldn't reach him, and it was driving me insane.I lay on my back and stared at the gray concrete of the ceiling. I cracked my knuckles one by one. The sound echoed in the small space. I chewed the inside of my cheek until I tasted the familiar, metallic tang of blood. I wanted to scream. I wanted to grab him by the shoulders and shake him until he looked at me with that mixture of hate and longing again. I could handle his fury. I could handle his resentment. I could even handle his tears. But I couldn't handl

Leo hesitated, then he reached out and picked up one of the apples. He took a small bite. I watched his throat move as he swallowed. I felt a surge of satisfaction, a small, warm spark in the middle of the cold. It wasn't a conversation. It wasn't an apology. But it was something. "Thank you," he murmured. "Don't thank me," I snapped. "I just don't want to have to carry your corpse down the stairs because you fainted from hunger. It would be a waste of my energy." I turned away and lay down on my mat. I closed my eyes, but I couldn't sleep. I could hear the sound of Leo eating the apple, the slow, rhythmic noise of it. I wanted to reach out and touch him. I wanted to pull him into my arms and tell him that I would steal everything in the world if it meant he could be healthy and happy. But I didn't. I lay there in the dark, brooding in the silence. I thought about the childhood we had shared. I thought about the way we used to hide in the grass and talk about the things we wan

LEO'S POV ___Nobody slept after the body stopped twitching. We stood in a loose, broken ring around the dead man, watching the black fluid pool beneath his cheek and spread toward a crack in the concrete. The storm had rolled past us during the chaos, leaving behind a pale, bruised dawn that made everything look worse. The light hit the dead man's face and showed the webbing of purple veins under his skin, a map of something I had never seen before and never wanted to see again.Coach Miller was the first to move. He grabbed a tarp from the supply pile and threw it over the body in one quick motion, as if hiding it from view could undo what we had all just watched happen."Everyone back to the shelter zones," Miller said. His voice was low and tight. "Nobody touches the body. Nobody touches the fluid. We burn the tarp when we figure out how."Nobody moved. People just stood there, their faces slack, their mouths half open. A girl near the front was crying without sound, tears carvin

Phoebe's smile didn't move, but something behind it did. A small, cold thing. She recovered in less than a second. "I'm just worried about you, Leo. That's all. You're the kind of person who takes care of everyone else, and nobody takes care of you. I've seen you give away your own food three times this week. Three times. And meanwhile he's sitting over there eating his full ration and making the rest of us feel like he's doing us a favor by being here." "He dives into collapsing buildings for us." "Of course he does. It makes him feel like a hero. That's the problem." I pushed my glasses up my nose. I could feel the back of my neck going hot, that specific kind of hot that happened when I knew someone was lying to me and I couldn't quite catch the shape of the lie yet. "Why are you telling me this Phoebe?" "Because I don't want you to get hurt." "We had a deal. The deal is off. You don't owe me anything." "This isn't about the deal." "Then what's it about?" She looked at me

CALLUM'S POV________The dragging sound came again. Slow, heavy, something sliding against the inside of the building two floors below us. Then a pause. Then one more pull. Then nothing.I didn't let go of Leo's hand. I kept my grip on his fingers and my eyes on the black water lapping against the brickwork. Sushi was still rigid against his throat, ears flat, her tail puffed to twice its normal size. I had never seen the cat do that. The cat loved everything. The cat loved me, which was proof enough of her poor judgment, but she had always loved me. She did not love whatever was down there."Callum," Leo whispered. His voice had gone very small."I know.""Is it a person ?""It's not a person.""How do you know.""A person would be yelling."He went quiet. I could feel his pulse through the back of his hand. He was shaking a little, in that controlled way he had, where he tried to keep it in his fingers so no one else could see. I wanted to pull him into my chest and hold him there