Chapter 3
Nobody told us to run. Nobody needed to.
We were already moving, the whole group of counselors surging toward the path in a collective lurch that sent someone's beer can spinning off a log and into the dirt.
The fire shrank behind us as we plunged into the darkness, phones out, flashlight beams cutting erratic white slashes through the dark.
The screaming had stopped, which was in some ways worse than if it had continued.
“Hello?” Jesse called out ahead of me. “Who is that? Are you okay?”
“I think it’s Noura!” someone else shouted.
We came around the bend where the path widened into a small clearing, and that was where we found her.
Noura was standing completely still in the middle of the path, arms held slightly away from her body in a rigid posture. In the combined beam of half a dozen phone flashlights, the substance coating her hair and the front of her shirt was dark and unmistakably red.
“Oh my god.” Wren pushed forward. “What happened?”
“It’s okay. I-I'm not hurt.” Noura’s voice was shaky. “I was walking up to use the bathroom and something… I don’t know. I guess there was some sort of wire or rope? I must’ve caught it with my foot and then—” She gestured at herself. “A bucket of blood dropped on me. But… that’s not all.”
She pointed to her right.
I followed the beam of the nearest flashlight as it climbed the trunk of a towering tree, and a cold knot formed in my stomach.
A knife had been driven into the wood, pinning a single sheet of paper beneath it. Something had been written on it in the same red liquid splashed across Noura's clothes, the letters large and deliberate.
I KNOW WHAT REALLY HAPPENED LAST YEAR.
For a moment, nobody spoke. Then, from somewhere at the back of the group, came a sound I hadn't expected.
A laugh.
I turned. Rhys had his head tilted slightly, and the expression on his face wasn’t one of fear or shock or even mild concern. It was pure amusement.
“C’mon, guys. This is obviously a prank,” he said. He stepped through the cluster of counselors and looked up at the note. “Someone's been watching way too many nineties slashers. I mean, that's a blatant ripoff of I Know What You Did Last Summer. All we’re missing is a guy in a rain slicker.”
Sutton frowned. “But what about all the—”
“Blood?” Rhys cut in, cocking a brow. “I bet you it’s not even real.”
With that, he reached up and pulled the knife free from the trunk in one clean, practiced motion. He turned the blade over in his hand, examining the dark substance coating it, then brought it to his nose.
He looked at it for another beat, something unreadable moving across his face. Then he licked the blade.
Several people gasped.
Rhys lowered the knife with a grin. “I fucking knew it,” he said. “Corn syrup. With a little food dye, probably.”
A collective exhale moved through the group, but the relief lasted all of ten seconds before Garrett spoke.
“Who did this?” He looked around the group, flashlight swinging. “And why?”
Nobody answered.
“We've all been at the fire,” Maren finally said. “All night. Every single one of us. And the rest of the staff are all asleep.”
“The cabin checks,” Jesse said, snapping his fingers. "Someone could’ve rigged it up then.”
“But why the hell would anyone do this?” Grace said sharply. “It’s not funny! Only a total psycho would think it is!”
Rhys lifted his palms in a silent gesture for calm and order. “Who did the most recent cabin check?”
“Brad and Knox,” someone called out.
“We didn’t do this!” Brad shot back.
“No one’s saying you did,” Rhys said evenly. “I’m just trying to figure out how and when this thing was set up. When was your check, exactly?”
“Almost twenty minutes ago,” Knox replied. “But there was nothing here then. We would’ve seen it.”
“April and I were due to go next,” a girl named Stevie piped up. “But we didn’t get the chance, because that’s when we all heard Noura screaming.”
“Okay.” Rhys lifted a palm again. “Who else left the fire over the last twenty minutes?”
No one said anything.
Rhys let out an irritated sigh, raking a hand through his hair. “Okay, well, I did. About fifteen minutes ago, I went for a piss in the woods. And Logan, I saw you go too.”
“That doesn’t mean I did this,” Logan snapped.
A guy named Levi put his hand up. “I left to take a leak too. But I swear, I had nothing to do with this bullshit.”
“I went too,” Garrett volunteered. “Although… I think I might’ve actually gone about twenty-five minutes ago. I wasn’t really looking at a clock, y’know?”
Rhys’s gaze swept over the gathered counselors before narrowing on some girls in the middle. “You four went off into the woods about ten minutes ago, and you were all giggling about something,” he said, cocking a brow.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake, are you serious?” Delia put her hands on her hips. “We just wanted to have a private conversation! That’s all!”
“Do you really think any of us even know how to rig up some weird blood bucket?” Piper added.
“Again, I’m not accusing anyone of anything,” Rhys said.
“I’m just pointing out that at least eight of us had the opportunity to pull this prank, including myself.
Nine if you think Noura did it to herself.
” He let that land before going on. “Point is, there are so many potential suspects that we could end up out here all night flinging accusations around and never getting anywhere. Unless we get a confession.”
“That’s true,” someone muttered behind me.
“Anyway, I know I didn’t do it,” Rhys went on. “So does anyone else want to ‘fess up?”
Silence reigned once more. I could only assume that the guilty party didn’t want to come forward because the prank had gone over like a lead balloon.
“Well, clearly no one wants to admit it because no one found it funny,” Rhys said, voicing my exact thoughts. “So let’s just take it as a sign to put the fire out and call it a night.”
“Good call. Reveille is in seven hours, and tomorrow will be a big day, so we need some sleep,” Sutton added, batting her eyelashes in his direction. Then her head swiveled. “Oh, and Noura, I have some clarifying shampoo that should help wash all that stuff out.”
Jasmine nudged me. “I still need to shower too,” she whispered. “Want to come with me, or are you going straight to bed?”
“I’ll come.”
I fell into step beside her on the path as the great counselor exodus from the woods began.
The walk back to the campgrounds was quiet, the earlier energy of the night thoroughly extinguished. People peeled off toward their respective cabins in small clusters, voices low, the corn syrup revelation having done little to shake the lingering unease of seeing those words on the sign.
Jasmine and I carefully slipped into our cabin with a lot of slow door-handling and exaggerated tiptoeing across the floorboards. In the main section beyond the partition, five small shapes were arranged in their bunks, snoring gently. We grabbed our towels and toiletries and crept back out.
“Let’s go to the western bathroom block,” Jasmine said, pointing down the path on our left. “Most people prefer the other one because it’s newer, but the western one has hotter water.”
“Sold,” I replied. “Nothing better than a steaming hot shower after a long day.”
She grinned. “Exactly.”
Truth be told, after my conversation with Rhys tonight, I could think of quite a few things that would feel better than a hot shower. None of them were appropriate to mention in casual conversation, though. Or most conversations, for that matter.
While we were on our way down the path, my phone buzzed in my pocket. I slowed my pace a little and pulled it out, wondering who would be texting me after midnight.
It was a message from a contact I’d saved simply as ‘PF’.
Apologies for messaging you so late. Been very busy here. How did your first day at Blackpine go? Any progress yet?
I tapped out a reply. It was fine. A few people have mentioned what happened, but their story is the exact same as the one we already heard. BTW: C’s best friend is here again…
The response to that came in under a minute.
PF: Talk to her if you can. But remember: ethics. She’s just a kid.
Me: I’ll be as careful as I can.
“Everything okay?” Jasmine asked, glancing over at me.
I nodded, stashing my phone in my pocket. “My sister was just asking how everything’s going here.”
The women’s section of the western bathroom block was empty when we arrived, fluorescent lights humming over a row of sinks and curtained shower stalls.
Jasmine claimed the shower at the far end, and I took the one next to it.
A minute later, the sound of running water filled the space with soft white noise.
I stood beneath the hot spray and tried to unwind, but it was useless.
I couldn’t stop thinking about Rhys and that knife.
The way he’d yanked it free from the tree trunk was effortless, like violence sat so naturally in his hands that he barely even registered it.
And then there was the way he’d lazily turned the blade over between his fingers before dragging his tongue along the flat of it, not even knowing whether the blood was fake or real.
It was… disturbing. Beyond disturbing, really. And yet it was somehow one of the sexiest things I’d ever seen.
I tipped my head back against the tiles, hot water sliding down my throat while my pulse thudded harder and harder beneath it.
My brain kept circling back to the knife-licking memory no matter how many times I tried to shut it down, imagining Rhys’s tongue applied to contexts that had nothing to do with corn syrup or knives.
Stop it! I told myself for what seemed like the hundredth time since I’d met him. But I kept thinking about him anyway, unable to help myself.
A shaky breath escaped me as my hand drifted downward through the water. I hesitated for barely a second before my fingers slipped between my thighs, finding warmth and slickness already waiting there.
My middle finger moved slowly against my clit while more dark, dangerous thoughts crowded in.
In my imagination, Rhys had followed me into the shower.
He’d shoved the curtain aside without warning and backed me up against the tiled wall, one black-gloved hand wrapped tightly around my throat while steam curled around us both.
The knife from earlier rested in his other hand, the silver blade gleaming beneath the fluorescent lights as he dragged the tip lightly against my skin.
Not enough to hurt. Just enough to remind me it could.
My breathing turned uneven as the fantasy sharpened in my head, vivid enough to make my stomach twist. Rhys forcing me to face the wall. One hand planted against the tiles above my head while the knife hovered beneath my jaw.
“You like this, don’t you?” he’d murmur against my ear, voice low and rough enough to send heat flooding through me. “You like knowing exactly what I could do to you.”
My fingers moved faster, and I bit down hard on my lower lip, trying desperately to stay quiet while pressure coiled tighter and tighter low in my stomach.
When the orgasm finally hit, it tore through my body intensely enough to make my knees almost buckle beneath me. I tried to keep my mouth firmly clamped shut so I wouldn’t make a sound, but a tiny whimper managed to eke its way out anyway.
“You okay in there?” Jasmine called out.
“Yeah, I’m fine,” I called back in an embarrassingly-strained voice, heart still pounding like crazy. “I just… I almost cut myself shaving.”
“Ugh, I hate when that happens! These tiles are so slippery.”
There was a beat of silence from Jasmine's stall, followed by the sound of her shower shutting off. I turned mine off too and stood there with my forehead resting against the tile, catching my breath.
It’s out of your system now, I told myself. So you can go back to being normal.
A few minutes later, Jasmine and I emerged from the bathroom block into the cool night air. As we passed by the men's section, the door opened.
Rhys stepped out, and my plans for normalcy died a quick, unceremonious death.
He had a towel slung around his neck, and he was wearing low-slung grey sweats and absolutely nothing else above the waist, which my nervous system registered with the primal efficiency of an animal in heat.
He was built in a way that made it almost impossible to maintain a neutral expression, with a mouth-wateringly muscular chest and stomach that tapered into a perfect V-cut. A line of dark hair lay there, disappearing below the waistband of the sweats.
“Hey.” His voice was low, roughened slightly from the late hour, and he was looking at me with the beginning of a smirk pulling at one corner of his mouth.
I gulped. “Hi,” I managed.
“Hey,” Jasmine muttered in a sullen tone.
Rhys’s eyes moved over my face for a long, assessing moment. His smirk didn't grow exactly, but it deepened somehow, became more certain of itself, like he'd just had a suspicion confirmed.
And suddenly, I had a horrible, skin-prickling sense that he knew exactly what I’d been doing in the shower… and that I’d been thinking about him the whole time.