Chapter 8
MACKENZIE
The cabin was quiet, safe from the cicadas’ lazy symphony outside. Fifteen minutes after Max had climbed into his bunk, I noticed his breathing had evened out. My eyes drifted to the small light he’d left on for me.
I felt like such a fool.
He was the kindest, most patient person I’d ever known. He didn’t understand why I feared the dark; he’d only asked once, casually. Yet here he was, making sure I felt safe.
And I was being a bitch. I was using him. I was teasing him.
I turned onto my back, staring at the underside of his mattress.
I couldn’t stop replaying the way he looked at me tonight, the weight behind his voice when he said he was starting to feel things. Every syllable had carried the truth.
He liked me. Like, really liked me.
I rolled onto my side, hugging the thin blanket tighter around my waist. My skin still tingled where his hand rested, his thumb tracing slow patterns over my hip, leaving goosebumps. It hadn’t been casual. It hadn’t been playful.
And I felt it. Deep down, painfully. The want.
But that was the problem.
This wasn’t supposed to be real. Max had already ruined the illusion in just a few hours.
I was stupid to think we could play at something this intimate without consequences.
As soon as I proposed the fake dating scenario, it was as if a doorway had opened, and suddenly, we both realized we liked each other. That we had liked each other for years.
He had looked so good on the lake tonight. And the invisible string between us was tightening, suffocating, drawing me in until it felt like falling for him wasn’t just possible. It was inevitable.
Max saw me for me. Every jagged, broken edge. He read my silences, my moods, and didn’t flinch. He didn’t try to fix me. He just saw me.
I didn’t want to admit to myself how attracted I was to him. It scared me how badly I wanted him.
I paused, making sure his breathing was still slow, and then my hand slid beneath the sheets, down between my thighs. I was desperate and aching. I bit my lip as I imagined my hand was his—his mouth, his weight pressing me down and making me forget everything but him.
I thought about the way his gaze lingered too long, heavy, and hungry, like he wanted to devour me. My hips lifted into my own hand, chasing the release.
We’d been friends forever, two halves of the same messed-up whole. Being with him made sense, perfect sense. And when I finally shattered against my palm, muffling a moan into the pillow, the only name in my head was his.
He meant everything to me. And maybe that was why I couldn’t bear the thought of losing him.
As friends, I was able to keep him at a distance. It was easy to keep things from him when we were talking on the phone miles apart. But if we dated, that shred of privacy was gone. He would find out because I wouldn’t be able to hide it from him.
And then, what would that even mean—for Mom and me?
We’d been federally protected assets for seven years, but I still wasn’t sure what we were being protected from. My dad? Or something else?
Whenever I asked, Mom said it was “complicated,” and Agent West said it was “classified,” that normal witness protection rules didn’t pertain to us.
Other protected families didn’t have agents; they just resumed their lives in the normal world, but with new names and new identities. I didn’t understand why we were always monitored. Why had everything stayed the same, but different?
But the rules were simple. Don’t talk about Dad. Don’t talk about the past. Don’t get too close.
I knew my Dad was a bad person. I heard my mom call him “the Butcher” once, her voice low like she didn’t want the walls to hear.
When I asked too many questions, like about the bodies, or why my Dad did what he did, West got quiet in that way that made me feel like I’d broken something, and Mom would change the subject.
But where did dating fit into this world I lived in?
Jackson had been vetted, West said. He was clear. I had been okay to date him. But where did Max fit in? Dating him meant questions. Questions meant details. And Max always had questions.
My phone pinged, jolting me out of my thoughts.
JACKSON KENSWICK
If you fuck him, you die.
A deep feeling of dread rippled through me. A memory of last winter broke through, dragging me back to my bedroom in Marigold. A memory that reminded me that some things aren’t meant to be so simple.
7 MONTHS EARLIER
I was packing in my bedroom, laughing at something Max had said on the phone that morning. I felt the lightness of excitement. Mom was taking me to Colorado for the first time. We had finally gotten FBI clearance, and this was my first real vacation. Agent West was coming with us.
I jumped as Jackson’s voice cut through the air behind me.
“What’s so funny?” he asked, his voice dark with jealousy.
I froze. “Nothing… just something Max said this morning.”
The click of my bedroom door closing jarred my senses. He stopped, turning towards me.
“You think I don’t see it?”
“See what?” I asked, trying to keep my tone steady as irritation rose.
“What he wants.”
“He’s my friend, Jackson,” I said, folding clothes into my duffel bag.
“You think I’m blind?” His voice dropped to a low, dangerous rumble. “You talk to him every single day. Twice a day, sometimes. I see how much you like him.”
My throat went dry as dread seeped in. I spun around too late. He slammed me against the wall with brutal force. His hand clenched my head, pressing so hard it felt like my skin would tear. My neck cracked painfully. I struggled to move, but he held my head down.
A ragged gasp escaped my throat, unnoticed by him. His eyes were hollow, vacant—completely devoid of humanity. He was a stranger. A monster who could crush me without a second thought.
“Do you want to fuck him?” His breath was hot against my ear.
I didn’t answer.
“Tell me, Kenz. Do. You. Want. To. Fuck. Him?”
His hand slid down my leg, fingers digging into my thighs, slipping beneath my skirt. I froze, my heart pounding. The air around us seemed to pulse with menace, the room narrowing until I barely had room to breathe.
“I know you get fucking ideas in your head. When he calls you, don’t you forget who owns you.” His teeth grazed my earlobe, tugging hard. I grimaced, a surge of dread tightening in my chest.
I didn’t fight. I couldn’t. Fear had shadowed my life, but now it was different. This was terror, guilt, and self-loathing.
“You smell so good,” he whispered, his voice icy and dripping with malice. It sent shards of terror racing down my spine. “Like yellow flowers in a field," he hissed, a sinister edge sharpening his words.
I blinked, paralyzed by horror. My childhood memories flashed before me: daffodils in our backyard, my secret hiding place.
How could he know?
“So pretty, Kenz. Just like you.” My dad’s voice echoed cruelly in my mind, a twisted reminder of what I was supposed to be—a girl who reveled in this pain, a girl who deserved a monster like Jackson. The daughter of “the Butcher.”
“Do you think I’m pretty?” my voice cracked, trembling under the weight of pain.
Jackson leaned in closer, oblivious to my tears and trembling. His obsession was pure, deranged, and all-consuming.
“Yea... yeah,” he stammered, eyes blazing with an insatiable hunger that sent chills down my spine. "You know they picked you specifically for me."
My breath hitched, heart pounding. I clenched my teeth as a sharp pain shot through my jaw. What did he mean? Who had chosen him for me? What the hell was he talking about?
But then he pushed in deeper. I wanted to scream, to run, but I was paralyzed. The darkness within him seethed with a terrifying reality, Satanic and all-consuming, and I was ensnared inside it.
He was my nightmare incarnate.
I blinked into the dark, my heart racing from the memory. Since Jackson had registered for camp late, he ended up in a different cabin. Still, his presence made me uneasy. In the middle of the night, it was worse, like the shadows thickened with him.
If I dared to look out the window, I was certain I’d see two eyes waiting for me. I could almost feel his fingers dragging over my skin, phantom touches that made me want to claw myself out of my own body.
I stared up at the underside of Max’s mattress, gripping my blankets tight. I listened to his even breathing. Heavy. Deep. Max would never hurt me. I knew that. He was the only one who made me feel safe.
Jackson’s snapping was inevitable. If I gave myself to Max, if I let this happen, I knew I’d never escape it alive.
Jackson would probably kill me. I didn’t deserve someone like Max—not after everything that had happened.
He was too good, and I was already too broken.
I had watched my Dad murder people. That alone had shattered my soul.
I closed my eyes briefly, and the darkness closed in around me. Suddenly, I wasn’t in the cabin anymore. I was back inside my burning house in New York. Smoke clawed down my throat. Sirens wailed in the distance, but they were far, faint things.
“God, I dropped her,” Agent West’s voice echoed.
Then the growl of a motorcycle engine, growing louder, closer, until a voice cut through the flames.
“Mackenzie.”
I turned, and there was Max, standing inside the fire like he belonged to it. But he wasn’t the Max of today. It was him at twelve. His sunburnt cheeks, his baseball cap. His voice cracked, boyish and sure all at once.
“Wake up. Wake up, please.”
I shot up in my bunk, lungs clawing for air. My sheets had twisted to the floor, sweat drenching my skin. Big, steady, grounding hands were on my shoulders.
“Trouble. Jesus, are you okay?” Max’s voice was hoarse with panic. His face was pale, drained, his boxer briefs clinging to his hips. His eyes scanned me like he could find the source of my fear and rip it out.
“Yeah, I’m fine,” I lied, rubbing my eyes. “Just a nightmare.” My smile felt brittle, but he didn’t call me out.