Chapter 38
Kai
I don’t remember getting into Rooke’s back seat.
Don’t remember the drive out of Ashwood Crossing or the forty minutes of darkness that followed.
One moment I’m watching our professor carve a man open like a fucking jack-o’-lantern. The next I’m here, in the back of his Land Rover, with blood on my hands.
I keep staring at the dark crescents under my nails. At the rust-colored stains in the creases of my knuckles. I carried a body tonight and shoved it into the trunk like a carcass.
I should be panicking.
I should be screaming, or crying, or calling 911.
Instead, I’m just sitting here, watching the streetlights blur past, and feeling absolutely fucking nothing.
“Take the next exit,” Haven says from the passenger seat. “Then left at the light.”
Her voice is eerily calm.
Rooke follows her directions without comment. His hands are clean—he wiped them on some wet wipes from the trunk before we left—but in my mind, they’re still drenched in blood.
When I close my eyes, I can still see the way the knife rose and fell, rose and fell, rose and fell. The mugger’s face when the blade went in. The wet, sucking sound as Rooke pulled it out. How the man’s body jerked with each thrust until eventually it went still.
My eyes snap open.
“How you holding up back there?” Rooke asks. I meet his gaze in the rearview mirror. The small frown between his brows could be curiosity or concern, because who the fuck knows with him?
“Okay,” I manage.
He holds my gaze for a beat longer, then returns his attention to the road.
I’m not okay. ‘Okay’ isn’t even on my radar.
But what am I supposed to say? That I’m having a moral crisis because I helped my professor murder a man who was threatening my girlfriend? That I’m terrified of how quickly I grabbed that guy, how easily I held him down, how I watched the life drain out of him without even trying to stop Rooke?
That some sick, twisted part of me is glad he’s dead because I thought he was going to kill Haven and now he can’t anymore?
The drive blurs together—exit signs and taillights and the occasional flash of headlights from oncoming traffic. Haven keeps giving directions, her voice never wavering, and I keep staring at my hands and wondering when I became someone who helps dispose of bodies.
At some point, the streetlights disappear.
The roads get narrower and darker. The asphalt gives way to gravel, then dirt. Branches scrape against the windows like fingernails on a coffin lid.
I’m not paying attention to where we’re going until Haven says, “Can you turn in here?”
There’s a note of laughter in Rooke’s voice when he replies. “And my broker said I wouldn’t need off-road coverage. Joke’s on him.”
Rooke steers the Land Rover off the road entirely, bumping over roots and ruts until the trees get too thick to continue.
He kills the engine.
The sudden quiet is jarring. No traffic noise, no city hum—just the tick of the cooling engine and the whisper of wind through the leaves.
And water.
I hear water.
My head snaps up.
The fog lifts, the numbness recedes, and I’m suddenly, violently here in this moment, staring through the windshield at a wall of trees that I know—I fucking know—as well as I know my own face.
“Wh-what?” The word comes out broken.
Haven turns in her seat to look at me. Her expression is unreadable in the dark.
“Kai—”
“No.” I’m already scrambling for the door, shoving it open, stumbling out into the night. “No, not here, not…”
The smell of damp earth and rotting leaves and the mineral tang of the creek hits my nose. Then that all too familiar sound of water rushing over rocks.
I know where I am.
Every tree, every rock, every bend in the creek. I spent half my childhood here with Haven, hiding from our families as we played pretend.
This is where I fell in love with Haven.
This is where I broke her heart…and mine.
“Hey.” She’s beside me now, her fingers slipping between mine. “Is this…okay?”
“Why?” I round on her, grabbing her shoulders. “Why here? Of all the fucking places—”
“Because it’s safe.” Her eyes meet mine, drenched with resignation. “No one ever comes here.”
“You don’t know that!” I shake her hand out of mine, swipe it through my hair. I lost Haven’s hair tie ages ago—probably when Rooke had me cornered in the Land Rover. My hair feels damp and warm with sweat, despite the chill in the air.
It’s been unseasonably warm for fall, but out here by the creek, it feels like the world is on the edge of winter.
“Trust me,” she murmurs, glancing at Rooke as he comes to join us.
“We need to move.” Rooke’s calm voice cuts through my confusion. “Standing around isn’t going to make this easier.”
He claps a hand on my shoulder and heads to the back of the Land Rover, opening the trunk.
I’m rooted to the spot, staring at Haven like I’ve never seen her before.
“What do you mean, trust you?” I scoff. “Have you been back here?”
She pulls away from my grip, turning toward the car. “Help me with this, and I’ll explain everything.”
“No.” I grab her arm, spinning her back around. “You’ll explain now.”
“God, Kai—”
“Now, Haven.”
She glares up at me. In the dim light filtering through the trees, her face is pale, her eyes huge and dark.
“I’m asking for a few minutes of patience. After everything—“ She cuts off, making an angry sound as she crossed her arms and glances away into the darkness pressing in around us. “That’s all I’m asking.”
I know what she meant to say.
After everything I put her through.
After everything I’ve done to her.
After everything I didn’t do.
The fact that she didn’t say it out loud, where Rooke could hear, makes me even more ashamed for acting like this.
She must see the struggle on my face, because she shrugs and goes to help Rooke, bumping into my arm when I don’t move out of the way.
“Big surprise,” she murmurs just before she’s out of earshot.
Yeah, big surprise.
Everyone’s fucking changed…except me.
Guess no matter what happens, I’ll always be the pussy ass bitch who’s too worried about what other people think, even at the expense of my own happiness.
And the woman I love.
I scrub my hands over my face, eyes squeezed shut as I try to wring some fucking courage back into my cowardly mind.
I want answers. I want this to end. I want it to be tomorrow, and none of this matters anymore.
Fuck, who am I kidding? It will always matter. All I’ll be doing is avoiding yet another nasty part of my history.
My past is littered with bad memories and terrible decisions. The only way I’ve managed to stay sane is by playing pretend…just like I did with Haven when we were kids.
Guess it’s time to stop pretending and start accepting.
We carry the dead guy through the woods.
Rooke takes his shoulders, I take his feet, and Haven leads the way with the flashlight Rooke gave her. The beam bounces off tree trunks and rocks and the occasional pair of glowing eyes that vanish as soon as the light touches them.
None of us speak.
The only sound is our breathing and the crunch of leaves beneath our feet and the distant rush of the creek, getting softer with every step.
I get a sinking feeling deep in the pit of my stomach when I realize where Haven’s leading us. The closer we get, the thicker the air becomes—heavy with memories I’ve spent years trying to forget.
The trees open up into a small clearing, its focal point a massive maple tree. The trunk is wider than I remember, the bark more gnarled, but it’s unmistakably the same tree.
Our tree.
The place where she offered me everything, and I turned her away.
“Here,” Haven murmurs. “We can dig here.”
She gestures to a spot a few feet from the trunk, where the ground dips slightly and the moss is thick.
Rooke sets down his end of the body without comment, pulling a folding shovel from the bag he brought from the car. The fact that he has a go bag for burying a body should be setting off alarm bells, but I wouldn’t expect anything less from him at this point.
“There’s another one in there,” he says, nodding toward the bag.
I find it. A matching shovel, compact and efficient.
We start digging.
The earth is soft here, loamy and dark, easier to move than I expected. Rooke works with methodical precision, each shovelful landing in a neat pile. I’m messier, more frantic, attacking the ground like it’s personally offended me.
Haven stands watch, arms wrapped around herself. She’s wearing Rooke’s suit jacket, and I don’t know when he gave it to her.
I try not to think about the body wrapped in a blanket, waiting to be dumped in the same spot where I used to dream about having a normal life.
It doesn’t work.
Every shovelful of dirt brings another memory.
Haven pressing her lips to mine for the first time.
Haven at sixteen, begging me to keep my promise that I’d be her first.
Me pushing her away.
I dig harder, my muscles already burning from the exertion.
“That’s deep enough.” Rooke’s voice cuts through the spiral.
“Fuck off,” I mutter.
“Kai—”
“I said fuck off!”
I slam the shovel into the dirt with more force than necessary, and it connects with something that isn’t earth.
Something solid.
Something that might have been a rock if it hadn’t sounded so…meaty.
I freeze.
Rooke freezes.
Haven makes a small, strangled noise, and the flashlight skips away from the dig site, throwing it into darkness.
“What was that?” I drop to my knees, brushing away the dirt with my hands. It feels different here. Greasy, almost. My fingers hook on something, and I try to tug it out of the ground, but it’s snagged on something deeper.
Fabric. Printed fabric—like a shirt.
“The light, Haven!”
“Just find a different spot to dig,” she says in a thick voice, pointing the flashlight to the area beside where we were digging.
“Give me the flashlight, girl…” Rooke’s voice moves as he stands up and goes over to her.
I scrape soil away from the area where I found the shirt, trying to unearth it like a fucking archeologist. I already know what it fucking is, but I can’t seem to stop digging.
“I’m sorry,” Haven whispers. “I thought I remembered where I—you can just dig somewhere else. There’s lots—there’s lots of sp-space.”
“I need the light, sweet girl,” Rooke coaxes.
It bounces around me, and I’m not sure if he’s trying to get it out of her hands or if she’s trying to bring herself to shine it where I’m digging. Either way, it’s too erratic for me to get a clear view of what I’m doing.
Haven whimpers. “I’m sorry,” she says again. “I’m so sorry.”
“It’s okay, girl. Nothing to be sorry about. Just give me the light so we can see what we’re doing—“
“No! But—please—just dig somewhere else…”
The light bounces up, then down, and stays pointed at the heap of freshly turned soil.
“I’m sorry!” Haven says through a gasp. I see her fall to her knees at the edge of my vision, but I’m too busy focusing on what’s in front of me to check on her.
“Fuck!” I fall back, flicking my hand to displace the beetle that made a mad dash up my arm.
But they’re everywhere, like I hit their nest.
If their nest was a dead body.
Not our dead body.
This one is much, much older.
At least, the arm I unearthed is.
And body is a bit of a stretch. Because as I fall back, the shovel hooks on the shirt and tugs the arm out of the soil.
I land on my ass. The arm hits my leg. Which wouldn’t have been possible if it had still been attached to the rest of the body.
“Jesus, fuck!” I yell, scrambling to my feet.
I shake off my clothing, stomping and slapping at myself because it feels like there are beetles crawling over every inch of my skin.
My heart slams against my ribs, my lungs too tight to draw a breath. But I somehow find the air I need to splutter out, “What the fuck?”
“I’m sorry—“ Haven starts mournfully, her hands on either side of her face as she stares at me with the same horror I feel burrowing inside my guts.
“There’s a fucking arm there!” I point to the decomposing limb. “Is there…is there another body here already?”
“Yes.” Her voice cracks, a lopsided, manic smile popping onto her lips. “Well, not a whole body.”
“What?” I yell.
She shrugs, showing me her teeth in an awful smile that looks closer to the edge of insanity than I feel right now.
“It’s not exactly in one piece,” she says, the words lilting like she’s trying not to laugh.
“Who is it, Haven?” Rooke asks, moving the flashlight so it’s between the three of us, pointing at the fresh grave instead of the grisly scene I unearthed.
She doesn’t answer. Her hands cover her face like she’s playing hide-and-seek but forgot to start counting.
“Who is it, girl?” Rooke asks calmly.
“L-Lenny. It’s Lenny. M-My uncle.” She makes a sound that might have been a giggle. “Was. It was Lenny.”
I stare at her.
Rooke has gone quiet, the shovel hanging loose in his grip.
“Lenny?” I manage. “You…you killed Lenny?”
Haven’s eyes flicker to me, shining wetly in the flashlight. “I didn’t have a choice.”
Rooke flinches, his shovel dropping from his fingers. But he says nothing—just uses that hand to wipe at his forehead like he’s clearing away sweat.
“He was going to—” Tears spill down her cheeks, glittering against her pale skin. “He—he would’ve—I didn’t have a choice! I didn’t—“
Her whole body shakes as she starts sobbing.
I should go to her. But I can’t move.
I just keep looking at the arm lying on the dirt, thinking about the Haven I met when we were so fucking young, realizing I never knew her at all.
“Tell us what happened.” Rooke’s voice is hoarse. When I glance over at him, he’s looking down at the fresh grave with unfocused eyes.
He looks more disturbed now than he did when he slammed that knife into the dead guy’s guts.
When Haven says nothing, he flicks the flashlight onto Haven’s squirming face.
“Now, girl.” His voice is cold and hard.
She starts talking, and I suddenly wish she’d just stayed silent.
“It was a few months before college,” she says, her voice trembling but growing stronger with every word. “Lenny made me drive him to the underpass to score. He still owed the dealer money from the last time, and instead of paying…”
She stops, her gaze drifting to the bundled corpse waiting for its shallow grave.
The dealer.
The one who claimed Haven hit him with her car.
“Instead of paying…?” Rooke prompts.
Haven lifts her chin, her voice dropping low. “Lenny told him he could fuck me.”