Chapter 28
APRIL - WILMINGTON, NORTH CAROLINA / THE REED LAND, NORTH CAROLINA
Now playing: Him & I - G - Eazy, Halsey
We landed in Wilmington that afternoon, the tires hitting the tarmac with a jolt that rattled my teeth and sent a fresh spike of adrenaline through my veins. My nerves increased with every moment that inched us closer to the reality of what was about to be our new lives. Together.
I hated flying into Wilmington. It was fucking horrible.
Wilmington was a beach town, a tourist town, and flying in during April, right when the weather turned perfect and the snowbirds started flocking down, was a nightmare.
The airport was small, chaotic, and smelled faintly of humid air, overpriced coffee, and the distinct, coconut scented sunscreen that every tourist seemed to bathe in before they even left the terminal.
And to top that all off? We still had a forty-five-minute drive to the Reed land, and that was hoping traffic out of this hellhole wasn’t atrocious.
We made our way to the rental car desk, navigating through a sea of families in matching shirts and college kids already drunk at two in the afternoon.
I was vibrating, and Cal saw it. He kept brushing his arm against mine as we walked, a grounding tether.
I hadn’t panicked, thank fuck, and honestly, I didn’t really feel like a panic attack was coming, yet anyway.
Just immense dread. The kind that sits heavy in your gut like you swallowed a stone.
The rental car center was located in a separate garage, the air thick and stifling. We walked up to the counter, where a woman named ‘Brenda’, according to her bedazzled nametag, looked far too cheerful for a Tuesday.
“Welcome to Wilmington! Business or pleasure?” she chirped, typing furiously on her keyboard.
“A little of both,” Cal answered smoothly, leaning against the counter. He flashed that charm smile, the one that usually got him free upgrades.
“ID and credit card,” she said, popping her gum.
I reached for the paperwork she slid across the counter, needing something to do with my hands. If I wasn’t doing something, I was going to start scratching at my skin.
Cal snatched the keys Brenda placed on the counter before I could even touch them.
“Nope. Your ass isn’t in the spot to drive,” he said, walking ahead of me toward the automatic doors leading to the rows of cars.
“The fuck, Cal?” I groaned, jogging to keep up with his long strides, dragging my carry on behind me.
The wheels clacked loudly on the concrete.
“You don’t even know where the hell you’re going.
Give me the damn keys back.” I protested, reaching for his hand, but he held them high above his head like I was a toddler.
“Good thing there’s a GPS and you know how to give directions,” Cal smarted off, not even looking back at me. He walked straight to a black beast of an SUV parked in the third row. He popped the trunk and tossed his bag in with an ease that was annoying.
“I hate driving rentals,” I muttered, hoisting my bag into the back. “They smell like industrial cleaner and other people’s bad decisions.”
“Well, you’re in luck, Prince,” Cal said, slamming the trunk shut. “Because you’re riding shotgun. Get in.”
There was no use in arguing with him. I wouldn’t win this battle, and he knew I wouldn’t. Cal was driving us home.
Wait. Home? Was this home now?
For the first time in my life, it actually kind of felt that way. Not because of the place, I had a complicated relationship with the dirt under my feet here, but because he was going there with me.
We climbed in. The car did, in fact, smell like industrial lemon cleaner. Cal spent five minutes adjusting the mirrors and the seat, muttering about legroom, while I stared out the window at the concrete wall of the parking garage, feeling the walls closing in.
We started the hike towards no man’s land, and of course, the traffic was stupid.
It took us twenty minutes just to get out of the city limits. Bumper to bumper tourists trying to find the beach or the historic downtown. Cal mumbled and bitched the entire time through it, slamming on the brakes every time a minivan cut us off.
“Who taught these people to drive?” Cal growled, gripping the steering wheel. “A blind guy?”
“Welcome to the South,” I said dryly, resting my head against the cool glass. “Lane markers are just suggestions.”
I reveled in his misery a little bit. Payback sucked.
But eventually, the strip malls and hotels faded away.
The concrete turned to asphalt, and the four lanes narrowed to two.
The manicured palm trees were replaced by towering pines and oaks draped in Spanish moss that looked like old, gray beards hanging in the humidity.
We were on the highway now, that long stretch of nothingness that would lead to the Reed land.
The Reed land sat in basically nowhere. We were forty-five minutes from Wilmington, and there was nothing around.
No neighbors. No stores for at least thirty minutes.
The GPS always said we had a Currie, North Carolina address, but to me, it was always just…
nothing. It was the space between the world and the silence.
“Jesus, Silas,” Cal muttered, tapping the dashboard screen aggressively. “My GPS lost signal three miles ago. Where the hell do you even live? Where the fuck am I even going?” Cal finally asked after driving towards nothing for thirty minutes.
I shrugged, looking out at the dense treeline that hugged the road. It was like a green tunnel, suffocating and beautiful all at once. “Technically Currie? I think? It’s just Pender County. And it’s just… here. Unincorporated county land. We don’t really have neighbors.”
“You don’t have neighbors because you live in a murder forest. Seriously, look at this place.
It looks like the set of The Conjuring,” Cal said as we started down the long two-lane road that would inevitably lead to the land.
The shadows from the trees stretched long across the hood of the car, blotting out the afternoon sun.
“Oh, yeah. Cool movie.”
“I’m saying it’s creepy, Si,” Cal said with a glare, glancing at the dark woods that seemed to go on forever.
“No, I mean literally. They filmed it like ten minutes down the road. The house is right over there past the creek,” I said honestly, pointing vaguely into the darkness of the trees to our right.
Cal slammed on the brakes, the car skidding in the dirt shoulder, dust billowing up around us. He turned and looked at me, wide eyed, like I was fucking insane.
But I wasn’t. We really did live near the Conjuring house they filmed the movies in, and yeah, we were by that creepy ass river too. And I guess I never actually mentioned that to him now that I thought about it.
“You’re fucking joking.”
I raised a brow, fighting a smirk. “No? I think I Know What You Did Last Summer was around here too. It’s good land for it. Swampy. Gothic. Good for hiding bodies.”
Cal stared at me. He was legitimately kind of nervous now. My city boy didn’t know what to do coming out to my woods, and it was actually kind of adorable. He looked at the woods, then back at me, calculating the risk.
“Oh my god. You are serious. I am sleeping in the car. I am locking the doors and sleeping in the car.”
“Suit yourself. But the mosquitoes will eat you alive. And the bears. Oh, and did I mention the cryptid sighting that happened on the Black River which is basically in my backyard? Some people say it’s a giant lizard man, others say it’s just a mutated gator,” I said with an evil grin, feeding his anxious energy like the jackass I was.
“I hate you. I hate your state. Whatever I said back then about wanting to live in the woods? I take it back,” he said as he started to drive forward again, his knuckles white on the wheel. “If I see a lizard man, Silas, I am feeding you to it.”
“Fair,” I laughed.
The laughter died in my throat as the trees got thicker and the landmarks became familiar. The old broken tractor in the field. The leaning mailbox three miles out. The silence in the car shifted from playful to heavy. The reality rushed back in, displacing the air in my lungs.
As we hit the giant iron gate that surrounded the outer ring of the land, my stomach dropped. The reality sank in. This was happening, and we couldn’t turn back once that gate opened.
I put my hand on Cal’s arm as we crept towards the gate.
“Stop,” I said, my voice barely a whisper. My nerves bubbled over the surface, hot and acidic.
He did as I asked and put the car in park, noticing the shift in me almost instantly. The engine hummed in the quiet afternoon.
“Hey, baby, look at me,” he said, reaching over to grab my chin, pulling my attention away from the rusting metal gate. I couldn’t look away from it, and I hadn’t even realized it until now.
I finally managed to rip my eyes away and look to Cal. He was calm, confident, being the anchor he swore he always would be for me. His thumb brushed my cheekbone.
“We are going to be alright,” he promised. “If you don’t want to tell him today, you don’t have to—”
I cut him off. Cal clearly didn’t know how my family worked. Lucky fucking him. “We can’t wait. My dad and Scott both would show up to the house the moment they noticed a car down there. And I’d rather them not just, like, walk into that.”
Cal nodded, understanding the logic even if he hated the pressure. He squeezed my thigh, then let a small smirk tug at his lips, trying to break the tension.
“Besides,” Cal teased softly. “If we wait at your place… knowing us? Your dad would walk in on something way worse than a conversation. We can’t keep our hands to ourselves for five minutes when we’re alone.”
I let out a shaky breath that was half laugh, half sob. “Yeah. Let’s not traumatize my dad with that visual.”
We rolled forward to the gate. I told Cal the code, and it swung open slowly, screeching on its hinges like it was taunting me. Welcome back, boy. Hope you’re ready.