Raging Desires

Prologue - Parallel Souls

Sunday, January 19th

She was only hungry.

That was it.

Nicole had come down the hall, stomach growling, hoping there was something left in the kitchen—crackers, a heel of bread, anything. She hadn’t eaten since breakfast, and that hadn’t been much.

She’d barely opened the first cupboard when she heard him.

“The hell do you think you’re doing?”

His voice came from behind her—low, slurred, with an edge that made her stomach clench before she even turned around.

Her father stood in the doorway, reeking of whiskey—that much was nothing new. But the look in his eyes was. The drink usually glazed him over, made him slow and easy to avoid. Tonight he was sharp. Focused. That was when he was dangerous.

“I was just—”

“Don’t.” He pushed off the frame and took a step forward. “Don’t stand there and lie to my face.”

“I’m not lying. I was just hungry.”

“Bullshit.” He crossed the kitchen in three steps, close enough to loom over her. “You’re after my bottle. That’s what this is.”

“Dad, I don’t even—”

“Every damn time something goes missing in this house, it’s you.” His voice climbed, unraveling. “You think I don’t know? You eat everything, drink everything—”

“I didn’t—”

“Get out.” He roared it, the sound filling the kitchen, rattling something loose in her chest. “Get the fuck out. Now.”

“Dad, please—”

She didn’t get the chance to finish.

His hand closed around her upper arm like a vise, fingers digging straight to the bone. “Ow—” The sound tore out of her before she could stop it as he yanked her toward him. Pain screamed up into her shoulder. Her feet slid on the cracked linoleum as he dragged her down the hall, her free hand catching the wall just to stay upright.

Don’t fight back. He’ll only get worse.

“Think I’m fuckin’ stupid?” he snarled, close enough that the whiskey rolling off him turned her stomach. “Bottles don’t just drink themselves.”

You did. Hours ago. You just can’t remember.

She knew better than to say it. He was far too drunk to remember finishing it himself—blaming her was easier. It always was.

His grip tightened, and she locked her jaw hard enough that her teeth ached.

They reached the back door. He fumbled the knob once, cursed under his breath, then wrenched it open.

Cold air rushed in.

Then he threw her.

She hit the porch hard—the splintered boards biting into her knees, palms slamming flat to catch herself. The impact knocked the air from her lungs. She stayed there a moment, stunned, hands burning, the cold already eating through her clothes.

He loomed in the doorway, one shoulder braced against the frame, chest heaving.

“You’re sleeping out here tonight. Don’t even try coming back in.”

Her eyes flicked to his, searching for even a flicker of compassion.

There was none. Just that flat, dead stare.

He went inside and came back a moment later, her sneakers bunched in one hand. He hurled them at her. One caught her hard in the thigh; the other sailed wide and smacked the porch railing before bouncing into the corner.

“Don’t ever touch my whiskey again.” His voice dropped, mean and deliberate. “You don’t buy it, you don’t touch it. You already eat my food. Sleep under my roof. Breathe my goddamn air. Now I gotta watch my liquor too?”

“No,” she said. Her voice came out smaller than she wanted it to. “I was just looking for something to eat.”

His lip curled. “Yeah? You wanna eat? Stop stealing from me first.”

I’ve never stolen a single thing from you.

She stayed down, too afraid to stand. Too afraid to do anything that might set him off again. She’d learned that the hard way—learned it in bruises, in split lips, and mornings spent covering what she couldn’t explain.

So she stayed very, very still.

He looked down at her from the doorway. She felt his eyes on her before she even looked up—that stare she knew too well. She waited for something in him to soften.

It never did. If anything, seeing her down there seemed to satisfy him—like it was exactly where he’d always thought she belonged.

He let out a slow, ugly snort. “Bitch,” he said, the word dropping out of him like he enjoyed it. “You’re just a useless, ungrateful little bitch.” His hand found the knob, fingers curling around it slowly, almost leisurely, like he had all the time in the world. His eyes moved over her one last time—flat, dead, the way you’d look at something you’d long stopped caring about. “Just like your mother.”

The door slammed.

The lock clicked.

She stayed on her knees, staring at the chipped white paint of the closed door.

Just like your mother.

She’d heard him say worse. But that one always hurt the most. And he knew it.

She forced herself up, legs shaky beneath her.

The back porch was a ruin—warped floorboards buckling up at the seams, two broken windows at the far end patched with cardboard that the wind had already started working loose, and the old couch that had become her bed more nights than she could count.

She dropped onto it, the springs poking into her hips through the thin fabric of her skirt. The blanket she kept folded over the back was damp at the edges, carrying that smell of mildew and cold she’d stopped noticing until nights like this made it impossible to ignore. She wrapped it around herself anyway, tucking her knees up and pulling the fabric under her chin—and the cold air immediately found every place she was still exposed. She pulled it tighter.

A dull ache settled into her body—back, hips, shoulders—too many nights spent out here instead of in her bed. Too many times he’d banished her to the porch because he was drunk, or pissed off, or just tired of looking at her. More often than not, the last one.

Why does he hate me so much? What did I ever do?

The darkness didn’t answer. But deep down, she already knew.

I remind him of her. And he hates me for it.

And with that thought came her mother—slipping in the way she always did on the worst nights. She remembered her laugh first—how it bubbled up out of nowhere and made her laugh too, even when she didn’t know why. The warmth of her arms, the way a hug from her had felt like the safest place in the world. The way her thumb would brush tears away when she cried. Her perfume—something citrusy with something softer underneath that she could no longer remember, no matter how hard she tried.

Then one morning: gone.

No note. No goodbye. No explanation—at least not one she’d ever been allowed to hear.

What kind of force was strong enough to make a mother walk away from her child? From me?

Was I not enough to stay for? The thought cut sharp as glass. If she really loved me, how could she leave me here… with him?

She blinked hard against the pressure building behind her eyes. Tears only made the cold worse; they dried and left her face raw and stinging, and she refused to give this night that.

She knew she’d have children of her own someday. Kids who’d never go to bed like this, never lie awake in the cold wondering if they were wanted. She’d kiss their foreheads every night and tell them she loved them—and she’d mean it every time. Because she knew—God, she knew—what it cost a child to go without it. She’d make sure they never had to find out.

She pushed herself upright and peered through the fogged porch window into the kitchen. Her fathers silhouette moved from counter to cupboard, the bottle never leaving his hand. That was what he loved. What he protected. What was worth everything to him.

Not her.

This can’t be my life.

She turned to the window beside her. Dark clouds were already rolling in, swallowing the stars one by one.

I can’t live like this forever.

She was so tired of being unwanted. So tired of surviving. Of being alone.

But underneath it all, something in her refused to go quiet—stubborn and small, but fiercely alive, insisting this wasn’t all she was meant for. That somewhere beyond this rotting porch and this cold and this terrible life, there was a place she belonged. A place where she’d be happy and loved.

She closed her eyes and let herself feel it.

Warmth, first. And then him—the man she hadn’t met yet but believed in the way you believe in something you’ve never seen and yet somehow know is real. She couldn’t picture his face. She didn’t need to. She’d know him by the feeling of him—his steadiness, the safety he’d carry with him. Someone who’d look at her and actually see her—not a burden, not an inconvenience, but a person worth loving. Someone who’d fight for her. Protect her. Someone who needed her just as much as she needed him.

She kept her eyes shut and held the feeling close, let it wrap around her like something warm.

Her knight. Someone who’d come for her and take her far away from all of this—far enough that nights like this would become nothing more than a bad dream she used to have.

He’s out there. She held onto it hard. He has to be. I just have to survive long enough for him to find me.

Rain began to tap against the porch roof, soft at first, then fuller and more steady, blurring the world beyond the windows into shadow and sound. The wind slid through the gaps in the boards, threading through her hair, finding the skin at the back of her neck where the blanket had slipped. She tucked her chin and curled tighter.

Then the thunder came.

It rolled in low at first—just a rumble somewhere past the tree line—but her body knew it before her mind did. Her shoulders drew up. Her fingers twisted into the blanket.

It’s okay. It’s far away.

It wasn’t far away for long.

The next crack split the sky directly overhead—not a rumble, more like an explosion, like the world cracking right down the middle. She flinched so hard her elbow knocked the back of the couch, a small strangled sound slipping out before she could stop it. She lay back down and yanked the blanket up tight, pressing her hand over her mouth, squeezing her eyes shut.

You’re fine. You’re fine. It’s just noise.

It had always been like this. Since she was small—so small she couldn’t remember a time before the fear—thunder had gotten to her in a way nothing else quite could. Even her father, even the worst of his moods, she could read him, brace for him. But thunder had no face, no pattern, no warning you could learn to spot. It just came.

She pulled the damp blanket over her head, tucked it around her ears, and made herself breathe. In through her nose. Slow.

Lightning bleached the porch white and she counted—one, two—before thunder swallowed everything again, rattling the cardboard patch loose in the broken window frame. Wind tore through the gap with a low whistle and rain hammered the roof like it meant to break through.

She pressed herself deeper into the cushions, knees pulled to her chest, face buried. Her heart was going too fast. She could feel it in her throat.

Stop. Just stop. You’re eighteen years old.

But that didn’t mean anything when the thunder shook the walls and there was no one to reach for. That was the part nobody told you—fear wasn’t about age. It was about being alone inside it, with nothing to hold onto and no one to tell you it would pass.

She used to crawl into her mother’s bed during storms. She could still feel her lifting the covers and pulling her close, her arm warm and solid around her in the dark, her lips pressed soft against her hair. It’s just noise, baby. Just the sky being loud. She’d say it over and over, quiet and steady, until the fear melted away. Like nothing in the world could touch her as long as she was right there. She had never felt so safe in her life.

Her throat tightened.

She pressed her fist harder against her mouth and counted between the lightning and the thunder, the way her mother had taught her—as if distance could be measured and therefore survived.

Slowly, slowly, the gaps between them stretched. The thunder moved east, grumbling as it went, and the rain softened from a battering to something almost gentle against the roof. Her pulse followed it down, reluctantly, beat by stubborn beat.

She didn’t unclench all at once. She never did. But the worst of it had passed, and slowly—reluctantly—her chest began to loosen.

The storm slowed into something she could almost bear. The cold was still there, biting through every gap in the blanket, but exhaustion was stronger now, pulling her down into the couch, dragging at the edges of her thoughts like an undertow.

Her eyelids grew heavy the way they always did after fear burned itself out—that hollow, bone-deep tiredness it left behind. She let herself sink into it, cheek pressed against the arm of the couch, the blanket still tucked over her ears.

I know he’s out there, she thought, already drifting. Someone to hold me through the storms.

When I find him… I’ll know. And I’ll never, ever let go.

She held onto that as her eyes closed, and sleep came to take the rest.

In her dream, she wasn’t alone. Warm arms held her from behind, like they already knew her—like they’d always known her. A broad chest pressed against her back, a heartbeat she could feel. A voice at her ear, loving, saying her name the way no one ever had.

Like it was something worth saying.

Like she was something worth having.

And God, she felt it—all of it—warmth blooming through her chest like sunlight through glass. Safe. Cherished. So completely and utterly loved that it almost hurt, because nothing in her waking life had ever come close to feeling like this. Like she could finally breathe. Like she had finally, somehow, come home.

The corners of her mouth curved into something quiet and defiant—the smile of a girl who’d been given every reason in the world to stop hoping.

And hadn’t.

***

He hadn’t planned on being awake this late.

That was the thing about the house now—it had a way of keeping him up. Not because it was loud. Because it wasn’t. Almost six months since the accident, and Daniel still hadn’t gotten used to it: the way a house this size could go so completely, crushingly silent.

He sat on the couch, the television murmuring at a volume too low to follow, blue-gray light washing over him in slow waves. He wasn’t watching. He hadn’t been watching for a while. He was just sitting there, because the alternative was lying in bed staring at the ceiling, and somehow that was worse.

How did my life come to this?

His eyes drifted to the family portrait above the fireplace. His parents smiled back at him—his mother’s hand resting on his shoulder, his father standing tall beside her, all of them caught in some ordinary afternoon that none of them had known to hold onto. He’d been twelve in that photo. He remembered the day it was taken—had complained the entire time about dressing up, about standing still, about all of it. His mother had laughed. His father had called him dramatic and rolled his eyes.

I’d give anything to complain about that again.

He was eighteen now. Six years between that boy and this one. In some ways they felt like the same person. In other ways, like strangers.

He looked at his parents’ faces a moment longer, then made himself look away.

I’m trying, he told them silently. I don’t know what the hell I’m doing. But I’m trying.

He pushed off the couch and crossed to the fireplace, crouching to click off the electric insert his father had installed years ago. The artificial flames died. The room went dimmer, quieter. He stayed there a moment with one hand on the mantle, eyes on the floor.

His father had loved this room. Every evening the three of them would end up here without planning it—his dad in the armchair with whatever he was reading, his mother on the couch with her feet tucked under her, a book open in her lap. The coffee table always cluttered with bookmarks and empty mugs. Nobody had to say anything. They’d just drift here like the room had its own pull, and sit together in that comfortable, easy silence of people who simply liked being near each other.

God, I miss that. The lump in his throat tightened. I miss the sound of pages turning.

He had Mark. He knew that—was grateful for it, in the way you’re grateful for anything that keeps the worst of the dark at bay. Mark would show up with no warning, and they’d hang out and talk for hours, and for a little while the house would feel less like a tomb. But Mark went home, and when the door closed behind him, he was left with the silence again—and the silence was always harder after company than it had been before.

It wasn’t Mark’s fault. It wasn’t anyone’s fault.

It was just the truth of it.

He stood, and instead of going straight upstairs, found himself drifting toward the kitchen — thirsty, or maybe just not ready for the dark of his room yet.

He reached for a mug without looking — his father’s, the heavy ceramic one with the chipped handle that had lived on the second hook for as long as he could remember. His hand closed around it before his brain caught up.

He stopped.

Just stood there holding it, the weight familiar in a way that hurt. He turned it once in his hand, thumb finding the chip on the handle automatically, the way you find an old scar without meaning to.

I can’t use this.

The thought arrived quiet and absolute. Not just that he didn’t want to — he genuinely couldn’t. Using it felt wrong in a way he couldn’t explain, like it would erase something, wear down some last trace of his father that was still sitting right here on this hook, waiting.

He put the mug back carefully. Precisely. Back on the second hook where it lived.

I didn’t even notice I was reaching for it.

He stood there a moment longer, hand still raised, then let it drop to his side. He grabbed a glass instead, filled it, and drank without tasting it.

He headed for the stairs.

The house was quiet around him as he climbed—same creak on the fourth step from the top, same faint smell of wood polish and something older underneath that he’d never been able to name. He moved through it all like a ghost of himself. A boy rattling around in rooms that used to hold a whole life, and now just held him.

I hate this. His hand trailed the banister, the thought arriving flat and certain. I hate being alone.

He knew what his parents would say—could almost hear them if he went still enough. His mother’s voice, warm and unshakable: You’re going to have a beautiful life, baby. His father quieter, more measured, but no less certain: This isn’t the end, son. Just one chapter.

He wanted to believe them. On his better days, he almost could. But there were nights—nights like this one, when the rain pressed against the windows and the hall stretched long and dark ahead of him—when the loneliness felt less like a feeling and more like a fact. Like it had stopped being temporary. Like it had unpacked its bags and taken up residence and left its shoes by the door.

Six months. He’d been surviving for six months, and surviving was starting to feel like the best he could hope for.

There were moments—quiet ones, unguarded—when grief would catch him sideways. Hearing a car pull into the driveway and feeling his whole body lift before he remembered. Picking up his phone to call someone who wasn’t there anymore. Waking up some mornings convinced, just for one disorienting second before consciousness settled in, that it had all been a dream. That if he went downstairs they’d be there—his dad with coffee, his mom humming at the stove.

And then the second would pass. And it cost him every time.

He pushed his bedroom door open and stood in the dark without turning on the light.

The rain was loud against the window. He crossed to it without thinking and stood there, watching the water track down the glass in crooked lines, the occasional flash of lightning turning the backyard white for half a second before everything went dark again.

His mother had loved thunderstorms. She’d stand at windows exactly like this one, or stand outside with her umbrella if it was warm enough, just to be closer to it. It’s the sky being dramatic, she used to say. You have to respect that.

He almost smiled.

The thunder rolled through, low and unhurried, and he let it. And then — quietly, the way it always came when he least expected it — he felt her. Not in any way he could explain. Just a warmth beside him in the dark, close enough that the loneliness of the whole long night seemed to ease back, just slightly. Like she was standing beside him the way she always used to. Like she was still here, watching the rain with him one more time.

He stood very still and didn’t breathe too hard, afraid to lose it.

Slowly, his breathing settled. His shoulders came down. For the first time all night, his mind went somewhere close to quiet.

Thanks, Mom.

He let the curtain fall and turned toward the bed.

The room settled around him, dark and quiet, and the warmth he’d felt at the window was already thinning — the way it always did. Like cupped water. Like he could feel it going even as he tried to hold it.

He stood there in the middle of the room for a moment, and felt the full weight of the silence come back.

I want a family. The thought came with a clarity that almost startled him. Not someday. Now. He wanted voices in this house. Mess. The beautiful, ordinary chaos of people who loved each other. Someone to come home to. Someone who made this place feel like a home again instead of a monument to everything he’d lost.

He wanted to take care of someone—to be the reason someone felt safe, the same way his father had been that for his mother. He’d grown up watching that and thought it was just the way things were, not realizing until it was gone what a rare and lucky thing it had been.

He undressed and slid between the cool sheets, staring up at nothing.

He didn’t know who she was yet—only what he felt when he let himself imagine her. The quiet certainty of her. Someone to love, fully and without reservation. Someone who needed him back. He wanted to build something real, something that filled these rooms with warmth and noise and life again. He wanted to be the person someone couldn’t imagine going without.

Please. His eyes grew heavy. I’m so tired of being alone.

Sleep came slowly, and with it came something better than the dark. She was there in his dream—just the warmth of her against him, her head tucked against his chest, his arm wrapped around her like she was something he’d been searching for his whole life and had finally, finally found. Her breathing was slow and even, and he matched it without thinking. Like something in him had always known exactly how to hold her.

He pressed his lips to the top of her head and pulled her closer. Felt her melt into him like she’d been waiting just as long.

There you are. The feeling that moved through him was almost violent in its certainty.

I’ll find you. The thought burned at the edges as sleep pulled him under, fierce and absolute. I swear to God, I will find you.

Somewhere out on that same rain-soaked night, only a few blocks away, someone was already dreaming the same dream.

And neither of them knew it yet.