CHAPTER SEVENTY-NINE
Brett
One Year Ago
For a split second, I thought I killed him.
I thought I’d feel his blood spatter across my face and I’d stand over his dead body in triumph for being such a monster and putting me through years of hell. For a split second, I felt relief. Because to seek vengeance is to steal back something that was taken unjustly. I felt powerful, but it didn’t last. The high plummeted, crashing and burning in an inferno of abject horror, loss, despair, and hopelessness.
Because Colson isn’t the one I hate. Far from it.
And, when he didn’t fall away, when I realized he was still standing before me, unscathed, I could breathe again. Something sparked in my chest and I felt alive— really alive.
Granted, there was no way in hell I was going to tell Colson that right then. Especially after he’d been such an asshole and said all those god-awful things to me that made me want to shoot him in his goddamn face.
But afterward, I don’t know how long I stood in front of the mirror in the upstairs bedroom, staring through my eyes and into my own soul.
You would’ve done it. You would’ve killed a man. You would’ve killed him. You have it in you, and this is part of you now.
Maybe I shouldn’t shove this down and try to ignore it like so many other things in my past.
Keep it. You might need it for later.
I might’ve tried to kill Colson. But later, when I was laying in the dark, and things got quiet again, I found myself outside his door, asking him to let me inside. I’m used to being alone, it’s how I’ve lived for most of my adult life. I’ve also spent much of my adult life running from Colson. But last night, being on the other side of a hallway from him suddenly felt like the cruelest form of isolation imaginable.
And what happened after, when he let me inside, felt like pure redemption.
Maybe it was clarity. Maybe it was some kind of self-medication to dull what happened 48 hours ago. Maybe it was an attempt to steal back some kind of control, or maybe it was vengeance, pure and simple.
But I meant it. I meant all of it—everything I did and everything I said. And Colson knows it.
This time, once I fall asleep in the crook of his arm, tucked into the curve of his body, I don’t wake up until the sun glows through the white linen curtains. No one dragged me out of his bed, no one slammed me against the floor, and no one shoved a gun down my throat. I didn’t have to fight him. I didn’t have to flee. I didn’t even have to move.
When I open my eyes, Colson’s tattooed arm is still outstretched on the sheets, jutting out from beneath my neck. And when I roll over, he’s reclined on his pillow, leisurely scrolling through his phone. He tosses it back onto the table and curls his arm around my shoulder, pulling me close.
“What time is it?” I mumble as he kisses my forehead.
He runs his thumb up and down my arm, “Quarter of eight.”
I wrap my arm around his torso, feeling his familiar heartbeat against my cheek, “You should be gone to work by now,” I yawn.
“I’m not leaving this house until you’re packed up and safely on your way to Toronto.”
“What?” I jerk my head up, “I’m not going to Toronto.”
Colson looks down at me, his aquamarine eyes darker and more severe today, “Yes,” he says harshly, “you are.”
My eyes fall with a disappointment I don’t even try to hide, “Now that you finally got me here, you’re sending me away?” It’s absurd, but it feels like an affront, a slight of the worst kind.
“Baby, I’m not sending you away,” Colson gives a shake of his head, “I’m putting you somewhere safe where it’s harder for him to find you.”
“Putting me somewhere…” I snicker, “it sounds like you’re having me committed to an institution.”
“I already told you,” he looks down at me through amused eyes, “if you end up in an asylum, then we’ll be there together. I just need to know you’ll be safe until I can take you home with me.”
Home?
“I thought that’s where I was.”
Colson senses my irritation, but remains unfazed— unbothered. He throws back the sheet and rolls on top of me, “Brett,” a shot of dopamine rushes through my stomach as he settles between my legs, “your home is wherever I am, and vice versa. Today, it’s this house, but it won’t be by this afternoon. ”
I haven’t even been awake for five minutes and I’ve already had enough of his vague bullshit. “What the hell are you talking about?” I rasp up at him.
“There’s a house in Colorado,” Colson pauses with a shrug, “well, most of a house. It was supposed to be finished a month ago, but some asshole forgot to order enough metal roofing.” He looks down at me in exasperation, “Supply chain issues.”
“Supply chain issues…” I stare up at him, trying to make sense of his words, “you’re building a house?”
“I told you I’d build you a house to live in with me,” he replies with nonchalance.
My heartrate begins to climb with the gravity of his words, and suddenly, I’m back in college in this same bed, considering running off to Colorado with Colson Lutz. I didn’t have anything tying me down back then, and by some surreal twist of fate, I now no longer have anything tying me down here anymore.
Because of Bowen Garrison.
“You can’t stay here, Brett,” Colson says gently, “you were always going to leave here with me, but it was supposed to be under different circumstances. I can’t even bring myself to leave you alone in this house for an hour, so you’re going to leave here today, drive up to Toronto, and stay there until I come for you,” then he lowers his voice to nearly a whisper, “and I will come for you.”
I’m at a loss for words but, after a few moments, pull myself together, “I can’t just go to Toronto.”
“What are you going to do instead?” he asks. “Lock yourself in this house, right on the other side of his woods? Go back to Barrett’s? Go to work like nothing ever happened? Wait for him to find you?” Colson’s tone goes eerily calm, “Because he will find you.”
And then it dawns on me—he’s right, I don’t have any other options. This is how I get out of this.
Colson leans down and kisses my forehead. Then the bridge of my nose. And then my lips. “This is the part of our story where you trust me, I take care of you, and you accept it.”
●●●
I don’t want to let go of him. I don’t want to climb out of Colson’s bed or listen to him walk down the stairs to the kitchen. I don’t want to step into the shower and wash him off my skin or get dressed for a day of unknown horrors. I don’t want to leave the ancient wicker sofa on the deck with its worn, flattened cushions or carry my plate inside to the sink, still sticky with maple syrup from the orange cardamom pancakes.
Orange fucking cardamom …
I don’t want to put down this scratched coffee cup from Sedona with its faded 80’s screenprint of cacti and mountains and leave this old house in its half-renovated state. I don’t want to walk out of these woods, tucked away beneath the ashes and birches and maples, hidden from the nightmare I came from.
But I have to, because I don’t belong here. I never even belonged at the last house I came from. My life is reduced to two bags filled with anything within arm’s reach, everything else sealed in the tomb of Bowen’s house where I’ll never again set foot.
“I need a car…” I ponder as Pony trots up the deck stairs and comes over to sniff my hand.
Add booking a rental car to the growing list of things I don’t want to think about right now. Bowen is hunting me, Colson tells me I have to leave the country for an undetermined period of time, and I don’t even know how I’m going to get to Jo’s.
Oh, God, I have to tell Jo about all this…
I let out an exasperated breath as I run my hand over the soft fur behind Pony’s ears. It’s a long drive, I’ll have time to figure it out.
“Here,” Colson sits down next to me and dangles a blue carabiner from his finger, “take it.”
There’s a black key fob hanging on the carabiner along with two black keys. I recognize them because they look older than any other ones I’ve seen.
I shake my head, “I can’t take your Bronco.”
“Why not?” he furrows his brow, “Look, I know it’s not the picture of luxury, but it’s still in good shape. It’ll get you there, I promise.”
“It’s not that,” I let out a weak laugh, “I can’t just take your car.”
“Yes, you can. Just hold on to it until you get something else.” Colson shoots me a side-eye, “Besides, I know you want to drive it. I’ve seen how you look at it.”
I return his side-eye, and I can’t even keep a straight face. He’s not wrong. I take the keys from him without any more argument.
You trust me, I take care of you, and you accept it.
“OK, fine,” I sigh, “so in the meantime, what are you going to do?”
Colson leans back, gazing off into the tree line, “Run over to Dallas and Alex’s place, take care of some things. You’re not the only one who has to have a long talk with their sister. Which reminds me,” he reaches into his jeans and produces a black phone, “Bowen can still find your phone without spyware. I already migrated all your data to this one.”
I stare at the phone, stunned. It’s the same kind as mine, only black and without a case. I hesitate, not taking it right away. The last time I accepted a vehicle and a new phone from a man, it didn’t go so well…
But, this time, it’s not a chain. He’s making you leave.
“When did you do this?” I chuckle, “When I was sleeping?”
“No,” he says dismissively, “while you were showering. ”
“Speaking of phones…and sisters…” I trail off, turning the new phone over in my hands, “I did something last night,” I mutter dubiously.
“You mean more than you already did?” Colson snickers. “Like what?”
I open my texts and, a few seconds later, I hand him the phone, my thread with Hildy pulled up with a picture of Emily’s letter.
ME (8:43PM): (Attachment)
And then a few seconds later…
ME (8:45PM): Your brother is a goddamn serial killer. Did he show you all of Emily’s letter or are you covering that up, too? Bowen destroyed my book, assaulted me, threatened to have your husband rape me, locked me in the house, and then sent a fake resignation letter to my boss so NO ONE WOULD LOOK FOR ME. He has a box in the closet with this letter and Emily’s shirt with her rotten flesh stuck to it. You knew he gave me Emily’s ring and you DIDN’T SAY ANYTHING. And you know what else was in the box? EVIE’S HAIR!! Bowen chopped off her braid and KEPT IT IN A FUCKING BOX IN HIS CLOSET!!!! You know how I know? Her stepbrother told me…HER STEPbrOTHER COLSON!
ME (8:46PM): YOU’RE GOING TO PAY. ALL OF YOU ARE GOING TO PAY.
Colson studies the texts for a few more seconds and then slowly shifts his aquamarine eyes to me. A twinge of fear runs through my chest. Maybe I shouldn’t have sent it. I never do anything impulsive, why am I starting now— with a life and death situation?
But then a smile tugs at the corners of his mouth, “So, you’re the reason everyone was losing their shit at Bowen’s house last night.”
“I was just…” I take a deep breath, trying to quell the adrenaline seeping into my muscles as they begin to tense, “done. I want to see him hurt—him and everyone else who’s let him get away with it.”
“Wow, little Honeybee,” Colson bites his lip and gives me a once-over, “you do sting when you get angry.”
After a few moments, my smile fades and my gaze drifts across the grass, replaced by melancholy. Colson leans back with a faint smile, running his hand across the small of my back, “What is it?”
I peer at him over my shoulder, studying him for a few seconds, “That one night at your house, four years ago now, you told me that I’d eventually tell you I love you.” I look him up and down, “Why don’t you say it to me?”
“I have said it to you,” he replies, sounding mildly surprised .
“Yeah, when you were tormenting me,” I laugh bitterly.
My sharp tone seems to entertain him. He reaches up and pulls me to him, wrapping his arm around my shoulders and nestling me against the side of his chest, “I love a lot of people in different ways. I love Dallas and Evie because they’re my sisters. I love my parents and Dan and Lena. I love Alex because he’s my brother now and because he loves Dallas. And I love Pony because he’s my ride or die. But there’s something that you don’t share with anyone else. When I say you’re my only, it’s because you’re the one who gets all of me and the one for whom I forsake all else.” He takes a long, slow breath, those blue eyes staring straight into my soul, “I love you because, by definition, there can only ever be… one…only. ”
●●●
Six hours seems like a long time until you procrastinate for three of them. I finally call Jo at the Pennsylvania line and tell her I’m halfway to her house…and that my life is in shambles…and not to worry because I’ll only be staying with her and Omar until my stalker comes to fetch me.
Ultimately, I decide not tell her that last part. I haven’t totally lost it—yet.
Jo is surprisingly pragmatic about the whole thing, not the big sister on a rampage that I expect when she answers. Which is fortunate, because at this point, I prefer low-key disdain and loathing rather than outbursts and threats of violence. She’s always been more dramatic than me, but maybe this time she realizes I’ve had enough of that and need her to make lists, watch trash TV, and help me get my life in order so I can extract myself from the one I just fled. I need time to process, to think. And that’s also what a six-hour drive can offer.
I pick up the empty shaker bottle from the Bronco’s cupholder, the mango smoothie long gone, and I’m instantly bombarded with sorrow.
“I should’ve offered to make them for you from the start,” Colson said when he handed it to me, “without all that gritty shit in it.”
“I like that gritty shit,” I reply, unable to contain my smile.
“Whatever,” he says with a roll of his eyes, “if I had, you would’ve figured out what Bowen was up to the second you saw those bottles of nastiness in your refrigerator and car.”
It was clever of Bowen, trying to make it seem like Colson was leaving the smoothies in the house and in my car. But there are some things that can’t be picked up through phone speakers and spyware. Quiet things, like lingering stares and silent conversations that slowly spill out after years of distance.
It seems so long ago. It’s been less than three days and I’m beginning to lose Bowen—how he looks at me, how he feels, how he sounds. It’s all being replaced by what he was like the last time I saw him. I can only remember how his hands felt throwing me around on the bed, when he slammed me against the bathroom wall, and the sound of his voice while he told me all the vile things that would happen to me.
Part of me misses him—the Bowen I met at Salt Fork. That’s what I think about most when I’m driving north, across the border into Ontario. How can someone love so fiercely and exist in the same body as someone so cruel. And I keep thinking about it after I get to Jo’s and, by that time, it’s spilling out across her and Omar’s kitchen table, their living room sofa, their balcony while I try to explain how I ended up on their doorstep with no house, no vehicle, and no job.
Well, technically I still have a job. But I’ll need to figure out what’s happening with that sooner rather than later. I don’t even know how long I’m legally allowed to stay in Canada.
But with each minute, the more Bowen fades into a shadow of a memory. I know he’s still out there and he knows that I know what he’s done. My first night at Jo’s, I keep waking up thinking I’ll see his silhouette in the doorway, that he’s found me all the way up here. He’s already been to her house once…
I blocked Bowen’s number when I was at Barrett’s house after he texted me, so I don’t know how much he’s tried in vain to contact me since then. But the only thing I do know about Bowen, without a shadow of a doubt, is that he can’t keep the mask on forever without betraying who he is. And, according to Barrett, he’s not finished trying.
It’s early and the condo is silent, which is my favorite part of the day. If I’m not in my home, surrounded by my things, the next best thing is sitting in Jo’s bright living room in front of the window that faces the lake.
Just like when we were kids.
I take the opportunity and muster the mental fortitude to call Barrett. She knows I’m here, and that I’m safe, but I’ve yet to speak to her.
“Oh, Bowen came back alright,” she chirps as I sip my steaming cup of coffee, “I turned the GPS off the night I dropped you at Colson’s and he called me no more than an hour later. He asked where you were, put on this little show, so concerned because no one had heard from you…” Barrett continues with a sigh, “I told him maybe he should’ve made friends with Colson, then he’d be able to get ahold of you,” she giggles.
“ What? ” I shriek into the phone.
Even now, Barrett manages to slip in a few jabs and dig the knife in deeper.
“Fortunately, Clay and Dalton came down early for their friend’s birthday, so they were already at my house by then. So, then Bowen said he’d get the law involved, as if I’ve masterminded some grand kidnapping conspiracy. He must be getting desperate. I told him, please do, go tell gramps that I disappeared your woman. And then he did, of course.”
“He did what? ”
I can hear Barrett chuckling into the phone. Meanwhile, my heart is beating out of my chest. How can she be so calm?
“OK,” she says as she catches her breath, “so, it’s not illegal for him to put a GPS on a car that he owns, so I couldn’t say much about that. But get this, last night, I get another knock on my door and it’s two Columbus police officers. And that’s not all—there were five cruisers, lights flashing, sitting out front, blocking my street. They had officers surrounding the house. I’m shocked there wasn’t a helicopter.”
“Oh my god…” I murmur, staring wide-eyed across the floor.
“It was great, they put us all in separate cars, questioned us…freaking El Chapo on Hibernia…” she trails off with another chuckle, “it was bonkers. ”
“But why were they all there?”
“I don’t know what else Bowen told them, but he reported your Tahoe as stolen and gave them the last location from the GPS before I turned it off. That’s how they knew where to find it. But as soon as I explained to them why he reported your car as stolen and that I knew you were safe and I could get you on the phone if they wanted, they backed off. They don’t like being jerked around by other agencies and getting dragged into small-town drama. There’s too much murder in this city for that. But they did me a favor and took your Tahoe when they left, so I didn’t even have to figure out what to do with it.”
That part makes me smile. “Well, that’s a relief. I wouldn’t want to take up your garage space longer than necessary, so are you all OK?”
“Oh, yeah,” Barrett chirps, “just another Friday night on Hibernia! At least it gave the neighbors a show. Bowen might be good, but he’s not that good. You still have people in your foxhole…”
Bowen’s not that good, but he once was. Barrett’s right, my only saving grace is that I still have people in my foxhole, despite his best efforts.
Yeah…a trauma therapist and a stalker.
Still, other women haven’t been as lucky. Emily wasn’t as lucky. And Evie did have people—like Colson—but it didn’t matter…
After Barrett promises to call me when she leaves work, I set down my phone—now black instead of Drunk Tank Pink—and stare out the window toward the lake, feeling the silence.
Really feeling the silence.
And as I breathe, the oxygen gives birth to a spark, igniting something in the pit of my stomach. A slow burn begins and the events of the last year—not even one year—play over in my mind. I don’t know how long I sit there, staring out the window in a catatonic state. But when the reel ends, my fingers itch and there’s only one thing on my mind.
I set down my coffee cup and disappear into the spare bedroom, returning with my work bag—or what used to be my work bag. I dig out my worn-out copy of The Outsiders with its cracked spine and feathery dog-eared pages and begin leisurely flipping through it. I don’t know what I’m looking for. Maybe nothing. But when I finally get to the end, I begin reading a little slower.
Johnny and Dally saving all the kids from the fire. Johnny dying, Dally dying…Ponyboy left to pick up the pieces of his misunderstood friends, their voices drowned out by bias, misinformation, and lies. Ponyboy deciding he’s going to tell their side of the story.
Ponyboy…
Pony…
I set down the book and reach into my bag again, this time retrieving my laptop and nestling it into my lap. Then I open a blank document and stare at the blinking cursor for a few minutes.
Tell your story.
When I put my fingers to the keys, the floodgates open and everything comes spilling out. My fingers remain there for days because there’s nothing else to do, and it all has to come out somehow.
If the legends were true, I was on a journey to find monsters in the hills of Guernsey County...
Because, in the end, Colson was right. He and I are the same—we both ran away, woke up in Canada, and couldn’t let it go.