After Mateo left, I couldn't quite place my thoughts. He did seem genuinely confused. Like he wasn't the one who found me in the pigsty.
Like he wasn't the one who held me in it, who wiped chicken blood from his hands before telling me I was precious. Like he hadn't pulled the blanket over my shoulders or whispered about Axel's secrets in the dark.
But that didn't make sense. None of this made sense.
I stood there in the middle of the shack, dripping, towel clutched like a flag of surrender, and stared at the door like it might open again and spit out answers. It didn't. Just creaked once in the wind before falling silent like the rest of the world.
"Rainmad," I muttered to myself. "He actually called me rainmad."
The worst part was that I couldn't even be offended. Because maybe I was. Maybe the rain had soaked into my skull and rewired things.
