Chapter 6
Joy stared at the ceiling, the faint glow of the streetlamp outside casting shadows across a tiny bit of cracked paint in the corner of her bedroom. The bed beneath her was familiar—she’d slept in it for years. But now, it felt foreign. Like a place she no longer belonged.
She turned onto her side, her fingers gripping the edge of the comforter like it was a lifeline. Sleep had never come easily for her, not even as a kid. Her mother used to joke—half exasperated, half in awe—that Joy had been born running. Naps had been a lost cause before she was even a year old. Sitting still had been an impossibility.
Now, stillness was all she had. And it was suffocating.
She squeezed her eyes shut, trying to will herself into unconsciousness. The exhaustion was there, thick and pressing, but the moment her body started to relax, the memories came clawing back.
Shouting. Hands grabbing her. Pain .
Her chest tightened, breath hitching as the darkness around her seemed to shift, pressing in. She forced herself to count—inhale, one, two, three—exhale, four, five, six—just like Bear had taught her when she’d been a kid and had gotten scared by a thunderstorm one time.
“You control your breathing, you control your fear,” he’d told her, his voice steady even as lightning cracked the sky. “Count with me, Bug.”
Bear didn’t know she did this every night. Didn’t know his voice, even just in her memory, was the only thing keeping her from drowning in the panic.
But still, the house creaked, and her pulse jumped, even though it was just the wind. Just the house settling against the November chill. She knew every sound this place made, had grown up with them. But now, each noise sent her heart hammering, every flicker of movement in the shadows had her bracing for something— someone —that wasn’t there.
The world had always been her playground. Fear had never been part of her vocabulary.
But now? Now, she lay awake in her own bed, in the home she’d lived in her entire life, and she had never felt more like a stranger.
She clenched her fists in the sheets, her body stiff as a live wire. The air in her bedroom felt thick, pressing down on her like she was buried alive. She knew this was irrational—knew she was safe, locked inside her house. But logic didn’t stand a chance against the voice echoing in her head.
Let’s see what that smile would look like without your teeth.
Her breath came in sharp gasps as she squeezed her eyes shut. No, no, no. It wasn’t real. Jakob Kozak wasn’t here.
But the words slithered through the darkness anyway, curling around her like a noose.
You know your smile would have made a wonderful trophy. It is such a shame to see it wasted on a corpse.
Joy slapped her hands over her ears, pressing hard enough to hurt. But it didn’t help. The voice didn’t come from the outside. It lived in her now, burrowed deep, like a parasite feeding on every ounce of confidence she’d ever had.
It didn’t matter that the voice belonged to a dead man. Her mind kept him alive.
“Stop,” she whispered, the sound barely audible even in the silent room. “Please stop.”
A strangled sob clawed its way up her throat. She couldn’t do this. She’d been trying for a month, trying to force herself back into this house, back into some semblance of normal. She’d plastered on fake smiles, laughed in all the right places, made everyone believe she was fine.
She wasn’t fine.
But she had to find a way to sleep here inside her house. She had to find a way to be okay. Winter was coming—it was already cold outside—and her current situation wasn’t sustainable.
The thermometer outside her window had read thirty-eight degrees when she’d gotten home tonight. Not cold enough for snow, but cold enough to be damned uncomfortable in a place not built to keep out the elements.
She needed to stay inside her house. But a few minutes later, skin clammy and tremors shaking her whole body, she gave up. She couldn’t stay in the bed any longer.
Maybe, like when she was a kid, it was about wearing herself out. She dropped onto the floor and started doing push-ups, ignoring the ache in her shoulder where it had been dislocated. One. Two. Three. Her arms quivered with each rep, the muscles protesting.
“Come on,” she hissed through gritted teeth. “Keep going.”
Ten. Fifteen. Twenty.
But her body exhausted long before the jittery panic left her system. She got up and lay back down on the bed, panting, sweat cooling rapidly on her skin.
Panic still climbed over her, slimy and slick. She couldn’t get rid of it. And the truth pressed against her.
She couldn’t stay here. Once again, she had failed.
A small sound creaked out of the living room window. Joy’s breath seized in her throat. It could have been the house settling, the wind against the old siding. But in the silence, it was deafening.
She clamped her hands over her ears and squeezed her eyes shut, shaking her head hard enough to make herself dizzy. But it didn’t help.
Ever since the Polar Plunge last week, everything had spiraled. She was getting worse, not better. Every shadow felt like it had eyes. Every creak, a threat.
She hadn’t gone to work in the past three days, had ignored Amari’s texts, Sloane’s calls. And Bear…
God, Bear.
He’d knocked on her door yesterday, his deep voice calling her name. And she’d hidden like a coward, curled on the floor, silent.
“Joy? You in there? Hudson says you haven’t been to work.”
His fist against the wood had been gentle but insistent. She’d pressed her hands harder against her mouth, afraid even the sound of her breathing might give her away.
“I’m worried about you, Bug. Just…let me know you’re okay.”
She’d waited, knees drawn to her chest, until his footsteps retreated, until the sound of his truck engine faded into the distance.
She couldn’t let him see this.
She forced herself out of bed, her legs unsteady beneath her as she crossed the room. Every step felt like moving through quicksand, her body fighting her, screaming at her to stop.
The hallway was dark, but she didn’t bother flipping the switch. What was the point? Light hadn’t helped her that night either.
That night, she had walked into this very room, full of fire and fury, convinced she could take on the world. That if she just fought hard enough, swung hard enough, she could win.
A truth she’d lived by her whole life.
She’d been wrong.
Moonlight streamed through the window, casting jagged shadows across the living room floor. Her eyes landed on the cracked plaster by the staircase. The place where her body had hit the wall.
Her stomach twisted.
She could still feel the impact. The shock of pain as her ribs took the brunt of it. The helplessness that had swallowed her whole as she crumpled to the floor.
She had barely gotten one swing in. One useless, pathetic swing.
Her grip had been too loose, her stance too open. And Jakob Kozak had plucked the bat from her hands like she was a child. Then he’d thrown her.
She wrapped her arms around herself, nausea rising in her throat as her gaze moved to the stairs.
That was where Nikola had held Sloane. Knife pressed to her skin. The silver blade glinting in the dim light of the hallway. Sloane’s terrified eyes. The small, involuntary whimper that had escaped her friend’s lips when the metal pressed deeper, way too close to Sloane’s unborn child.
Joy had still been conscious then, still had fight left in her. She’d tried to crawl toward them, tried to reach Sloane, but the room had been spinning, her body screaming in protest.
Nikola had only laughed. Stay down, little girl. You’ve done enough.
She had thought she could stop them. Thought she could help. It had never once occurred to her that she would fail.
But she had.
Miserably.
The two men who had broken in to her house had taken Sloane. If Callum hadn’t saved the day, Sloane wouldn’t be alive. Her baby wouldn’t be alive.
Joy sank onto the couch, pressing the heels of her palms into her eyes. She had spent a month trying to push the memories down, trying to pretend she wasn’t falling apart, but sitting here, staring at the proof of her own failure etched into the walls, she couldn’t deny it anymore.
The walls of the house seemed to press in. The weight of it all—the cracked plaster, the memory of her body slamming against it, the mess swallowing every inch of space—was too much.
Dirty dishes piled in the sink, clothes strewn across the floor, half-empty mugs of tea growing mold on the coffee table. She couldn’t bring herself to clean any of it.
She stared at the casserole dish on the kitchen table, the one Mrs. Fuller had brought over after what the older woman insisted on calling “the incident.” The food inside had long since spoiled, but Joy couldn’t throw it out. Couldn’t bring herself to wash the dish and return it, because that would mean seeing people. Talking to them. Pretending she was fine.
She couldn’t stay here.
Her breath came in short, sharp gasps as she stumbled toward the back door, tripping over an overturned box. The trash, the rotting flowers, the half-opened cards—all reminders of Oak Creek’s kindness, of the people who had tried to help.
The thought made something inside her snap.
Joy shoved through the back door, the cold night air hitting her like a slap. But she almost enjoyed it.
Outside, the weight on her chest loosened just enough for her to drag in a full breath. She kept walking, barefoot, shivering, but free, toward the small structure at the edge of the yard.
Her playhouse.
The grass was stiff, brittle, like tiny knives against her skin. By the time she reached the playhouse, her feet were numb, but she didn’t care.
She pushed open the door and stepped inside, her pulse still hammering but slowing, finally slowing. This was the only place she seemed to find any peace.
A child-sized reading chair sat against the far wall, its once-bright fabric faded and threadbare. A cot—small, but sturdy—was pushed against the opposite corner, its blankets rumpled from all the nights she had already spent here.
The walls…
She let her gaze trace over them, and for the first time in hours, the panic receded just a little.
Rainbows. Flowers. Tiny animals.
Her father’s uneven brushstrokes mixed with her own clumsy, childish ones. She had been ten when they painted them, standing on an old crate, giggling every time her dad added some ridiculous flourish—a too-tall giraffe, a bunny with an eye patch, a squirrel that somehow looked more like a potato.
“What kind of squirrel is that supposed to be?” she’d asked, already laughing.
“A potato squirrel,” her dad had replied without missing a beat. “Very rare. Only found in the backyards of little girls named Joy.”
It had been the best day. One of her favorites. She wished her parents were still here now, but they’d died in a car accident a year ago.
She’d certainly had her differences with her parents, neither her mother nor father able to figure out where her zest for life and endless energy had come from, because it certainly hadn’t seemed to be from their genes. But they had loved her. Would’ve done whatever they could to help her through this.
Not that it probably would’ve made much difference.
Her throat ached as she ran her fingers along the faded paint. It was ridiculous that she felt safer here, in a glorified shed, than in her own house.
No electricity. No heat. She could see her breath in the air, a wispy cloud that dissipated almost as quickly as it formed.
But she could breathe.
She dragged the small reading chair across the floor, the wooden legs scraping against the old planks. She wedged it firmly against the door—her nightly ritual, her makeshift security system.
Only then did she allow herself to climb into the cot, tucking the blankets tight around her, like armor, like protection. Three blankets, all of them too thin for the Wyoming cold. But she’d rather freeze out here than suffocate in the house.
She let out a slow breath and tipped her head back, staring at the ceiling.
The glow-in-the-dark stars were still there. Faint, but present. Little smudges of light in an otherwise dark world.
She remembered painting them, her father lifting her onto his shoulders so she could reach. Back then, the world had felt limitless. She had been fearless. Unstoppable.
“Make a wish on each one,” her dad had told her. “And when they glow at night, that means your wishes are being kept safe.”
She’d been young enough to believe in wishes and magic and a world where nothing could hurt her.
Now, she just wanted to make it through the night.
She closed her eyes and whispered to the stars, to the memory of who she used to be.
“Please, let me find her again.”
The words hung in the frigid air, a prayer to a universe that had already taken so much from her. She didn’t know if anyone was listening. Didn’t know if it even mattered anymore.
But as she drifted into an uneasy sleep, her breath clouding above her in the freezing playhouse, one thing was clear: she couldn’t keep living like this.
Something had to change.