I've tried to stop thinking about you. And I can't.
It runs through her mind, padded by the beat of her heart in her ears.
Again and again. The foreign sound of what he's saying, knowing what it means, but not fully understanding his use of it. There's the why, but more importantly, the so what?
Caroline hears it echoing in her ears. She feels something happening as she babbles a reply. Something that never quite goes away even after all's said and done; it lingers like the smell of a person who's slept too many nights in her bed.
There comes a day when she isn't so sure if it's what he really said that bothered her for years - even if it hadn't actually been him.
They weren't his words after all.
Is it still the same now? She doesn't know. Sometimes she forgets. On a good day, she goes on without slipping into reminiscence, but it's only because her mind is preoccupied.
Then she finds herself alone, and it starts.
The flit of an image; the lick of sweat off his back; the smell of that coat; the taste of his blood journeying from the corner of her mouth, beneath her ear, to the back of her neck. And his breathing. Just the soft rise and ebb of him, returning life back to her. What was once his became hers.
I've tried to stop thinking about you. And I can't.
Caroline closes her eyes, bitter. Not because it keeps resurfacing, but because she doesn't know – because she'll never know – if she'll ever hear the words leave his lips again, the same way she doesn't know how he ended up so deep under her skin.