Chapter Forty-One #3
He snorted, all patience gone. “You shouldn’t have to.”
I didn’t argue, because he was right.
But I didn’t block the number, either.
That night, just past midnight, the phone buzzed again. I’d left it on the nightstand, face-down, hoping that ignoring it would make it go away.
The name flashed on the screen. I answered without thinking.
“Livi?” Nate’s voice was raw, slurred. I could hear music in the background—something angry, distorted. “Why are you doing this? Why are you with him?”
I didn’t answer.
He kept going. “He’s never going to make you happy. You said that yourself, remember? You told me he was dead inside. That you felt like you were sleeping with a corpse.”
I winced, because it was true. I’d said exactly that, once, in a moment of drunken honesty. I’d never imagined it would come back to haunt me.
“You need to let me go, Nate,” I said, voice low. “You need to get help.”
He laughed, bitter and broken. “You don’t get to tell me what to do. You’re not my fucking mother.”
Cam had come into the room, drawn by the noise. He watched me, eyes narrowed, as I put the call on speaker.
Nate’s voice grew louder. “You’re going to regret this, Livi. You’ll see.”
I looked up, met Cam’s gaze. His jaw was clenched so tight it looked like it might shatter.
Nate kept talking, the words dissolving into threats and curses, his rage so wild I couldn’t even make out the meaning.
I ended the call, heart thudding.
Cam didn’t say anything. He just walked to the front hall, grabbed his keys from the ugly blue bowl, and slammed the door behind him.
The sound echoed through the house, rattling every picture frame and loose glass on the shelves.
For a second, I just stood there, staring at the silent phone, trying to breathe.
Then I realized what Cam was about to do.
And I was terrified for all of us.
∞∞∞
The house was so quiet I could hear my own heartbeat, a wet, arrhythmic thump echoing in my ears.
I paced the living room, eyes flicking to the front window every time a pair of headlights swept past. It was raining hard, the kind of rain that erased all boundaries, turning the street into a river and the sky into an endless gray bruise.
I called Cam, once, then again. He didn’t answer.
I left a message, voice shaking. “Please, Cam, just come home. Don’t do anything stupid. Please.”
There was a kind of cosmic joke in how quickly I’d become the woman waiting up for her man, praying he wouldn’t come home in handcuffs or a body bag.
The phone rang at 1:00a.m., startling me so badly I nearly dropped it. I expected Cam, or maybe even Nate. But it was Rachel.
“Livi,” she said, words spilling out in a rush. “Where’s Cam? Jackson just called. He said Cam left him this weird voicemail about ‘taking care of things’ and then hung up. I’m freaking out.”
I could hear voices in the background—maybe Jackson’s, low and tense, maybe the TV. I pressed the phone tighter to my ear.
“He’s gone,” I said, voice small. “He heard the call. From Nate. He just… left.”
Rachel swore, long and creative. “You have to stop him. He’s going to do something dumb.”
“I’m trying,” I said, but even I didn’t believe it.
There was a silence, then: “Do you want me to come over?”
I shook my head, forgetting she couldn’t see me. “No. I— I need to go. To Nate’s. Just in case.”
Rachel’s voice dropped to a whisper. “You shouldn’t go alone.”
“I’ll be fine,” I lied. “Call me if you hear anything.”
I hung up before she could protest, grabbed my keys and jacket, and bolted into the storm.
The city at night had always unnerved me, but tonight the rain made it feel like a place I didn’t even recognize.
Streetlights flickered and went out, water pooled in the gutters, and every block looked the same.
I drove by muscle memory, eyes stinging, hands gripping the wheel so tight my knuckles ached.
Nate’s apartment building was in one of those half-renovated neighborhoods, the kind that never quite made up its mind between gentrification and collapse.
The parking lot was a black mirror slicked with rain, reflecting the strobing blue of the cruiser parked near the entrance.
Drops hammered the windshield in relentless percussion, the wipers struggling to keep up.
I sat in the driver’s seat, engine running, staring at the light show like maybe if I waited long enough, the police would get bored and leave.
I’d always thought of Nate’s building as the kind of place you could disappear—a faded brick fortress for the terminally unlucky or unremarkably strange.
Now it looked like the scene of a viral crime, the kind that strangers retweeted with performative sadness.
The cop car’s lights made everything look underwater and far away.
If there was a god, I half-hoped he’d send down a lightning bolt and just end the whole story, here and now.
But the universe had other plans.
Two more squad cars were angled across the far end of the lot, doors open, radios crackling static and code.
An officer stood under the awning, rain soaking through her cap and shoulders, talking into a walkie-talkie with the resigned boredom of someone who’d done this a thousand times.
A second officer leaned into the vestibule, one hand on the butt of his gun, the other gesturing for someone to stay put.
Then I saw the ambulance. Parked behind the main entrance, rear doors swung open, an emergency tech crouched inside pulling supplies from a tackle box.
The interior was flooded with white light, bright as a dentist’s lamp, casting sharp shadows on the wet asphalt.
A black shoe poked over the bumper lip. I couldn’t see the rest of the body, but the implication was clear.
I felt the world tip sideways, the car’s interior suddenly too close and too small, like a submarine with a leak.
My lungs wouldn’t inflate. I grabbed the steering wheel with both hands, anchoring myself to the moment, and forced my breathing to slow.
In, out. In, out. The wipers smeared a fresh set of blue reflections across the glass.
I replayed every step that had led to this: the calls, the voicemails, the night’s last words. “You’re going to regret this, Livi.” Had I sent Cam straight here? Had I set in motion exactly what I’d tried to avoid? The guilt was a cold stone in my gut, heavier than fear.
I opened the car door. Rain pelted my face, instantly flattening my hair and running into the collar of my jacket.
The air reeked of chemical adrenaline and the faint, metallic tang of blood.
My feet splashed through deepening puddles as I crossed the lot, each step pulling me closer to the vanishing point of my old life.
A small crowd had gathered under the awning—mostly tenants in pajamas or sweats, watching with the blank voyeurism of people who’d seen one too many emergencies but never expected to be part of one.
Someone held a trembling dachshund in a pink sweater.
Someone else smoked a cigarette, the cherry flaring with every nervous inhale.
I edged past them. The EMT by the ambulance looked up, her eyes flat and unreadable behind rain-smeared glasses. She blocked my view of whatever was inside, and for a moment I hated her for it.
“Is he—did someone—” The words wouldn’t line up. I gestured toward the open doors with a desperation I couldn’t hide.
She shook her head, not unkindly. “They’re still working on him,” she said. “You should wait inside.”
A second tech appeared, pushing a stretcher with a flailing, half-conscious form on it—Nate.
His face was a mask of blood and snot and tears.
He was fighting the restraints, cursing and sobbing, his voice hoarse and animal.
I started forward, but the officer under the awning stepped in front of me, hand gentle but firm on my shoulder.
“Ma’am,” he said, “are you Olivia?”
I nodded.
He guided me into the vestibule, out of the rain. “You’re not under any obligation to talk right now, but we will have some questions. Your husband is already inside.”
I followed the noise into Nate’s apartment.
The living room was a disaster: coffee table flipped, couch cushions torn, books scattered like shrapnel.
There was blood on the wall, a spatter that started at shoulder height and dripped in slow, lazy arcs to the floor.
Cam stood in the middle of it, hands behind his back, a cop reading him his rights.
Cam’s shirt was torn at the collar, and there was a shallow cut across his cheek, already scabbing. He looked calm, even bored, but the tips of his ears were red—always a tell.
He saw me, and for a split second, his whole face changed: relief, then guilt, then something close to shame. The cop finished the Miranda and shoved Cam toward the door.
I wanted to say something—anything—but the words stuck. I watched them disappear down the stairs, the cop’s hand on Cam’s shoulder, his own hands still cuffed behind him.
The apartment was empty now, except for me and the mess and the echoes of a thousand choices gone wrong.
I took a shaky breath and called Rachel.
She answered on the first ring. “Are you okay?”
“No,” I said. “But I think it’s over.”
She was quiet for a long time. “Do you want me to come get you?”
I looked around the ruin of Nate’s life, then at my own hands, smeared with rain and blood from the banister.
“Yes,” I said. “Please.”
By the time she arrived, the cops and EMTs were gone, the only evidence of what happened a patch of blood on the steps and the broken yellow tape, flapping in the wind.
Rachel drove me home, slow and silent, the radio turned low. She didn’t ask questions. She just kept one hand on my knee, squeezing tight every time my breathing hitched.
At the house, she made me tea, helped me out of my wet clothes, and tucked me into the guest bed. She stayed until I fell asleep, then sat in the armchair by the window, keeping watch like some avenging angel.
I dreamed of water. A sea with no shore, waves pounding and retreating, never letting me rest.
When I woke, the rain had stopped. The light was thin and watery, but the sky was clear.
Rachel was gone, but there was a note on the table:
You survived. Again. Call if you need backup.
I stared at the words for a long time, wondering if I deserved to survive. Wondering if any of us did.
I made coffee, watched the street fill with normal people living normal lives, and tried to imagine what happened to a story when all the main characters were broken.
I was still trying to figure it out when the phone rang, a new number lighting up the screen.
I hesitated, then answered.
“Olivia James?” said the voice on the other end, calm and official.
“This is she,” I replied.
“This is Detective Morales, with the city police. We have some questions about last night. Can you come in?”
I thought about saying no. About disappearing, starting over. But I was tired of running.
“I’ll be there,” I said.
When I hung up, I looked out at the city—my city, for better or worse.
I’d lost everything. But I was still here.