23. Wesley
WESLEY
Sean’s been gone an hour. That doesn’t sound like much to anyone else, but for him it’s a lifetime.
Sean doesn’t leave us waiting. He doesn’t disappear without an ETA.
He’s clockwork—exacting, measured, a man who eats, sleeps, and breathes on schedule.
Except tonight. Tonight he walked out the door with nothing more than personal business and pulled rank on me and Huck like we were recruits instead of his brothers-in-arms.
It’s not like him. Hell, it’s not like any of us. But this custody ruling has wrecked more than just Bailey. It’s thrown all of us off-balance.
I try to stay still, but I can’t. My leg bounces against the floor as I sit on the arm of the couch, and the second I notice it I shove off and start pacing. The den feels too small. The walls too close. My skin hums with restless energy I don’t know where to put.
I glance toward the dining room. Bailey sits at the head of the table, her back straight, her hands cupped around a mug gone cold.
She hasn’t taken a sip in at least thirty-four minutes—not that I’m counting—but she keeps her fingers around it like the ceramic is the only thing tethering her to the ground.
Her face is pale, eyes locked somewhere I can’t see, and I know—just know —if I ask her how she’s doing, the thin mental wall she’s holding up will come crashing down.
She looks like a woman on the edge of a cliff, waiting for the earth to crumble under her feet. And I can’t stop staring at her.
The silence stretches between us. I don’t break it. Not when I can see the storm swelling behind her eyes. If I press, if I ask her to name it, she’ll drown, and I don’t know if I’ll be able to pull her out. So I keep pacing, like movement can burn the tension in my veins.
Huck strides in, shoulders rolling with that restless energy that makes him look too big for doorways. “I’m checking the perimeter,” he mutters. It’s not even aimed at me. It’s a declaration, an excuse to get out, to feel the night air against his skin.
I don’t argue. Huck always feels caged inside. He’s got that outdoorsman’s soul—if the sky isn’t wide and the ground isn’t dirt, he starts to itch. Out there, he doesn’t have to worry about knocking over lamps or splintering furniture when he shifts in his chair. Out there, he’s free.
“Fine,” I tell him. My voice sounds clipped, sharp, but he doesn’t comment. He just grabs a flashlight and goes.
The door shuts behind him, and the house swallows the sound, leaving me alone with Bailey and my own gnawing unease.
I can’t stand this. Sitting here useless while Sean’s off doing God knows what, while Bailey sits breaking apart in silence, while Huck pretends the perimeter needs checking every half hour. I need to do something, anything, before I crawl out of my skin.
The attic.
It’s been nagging at me since we moved in.
Those dormer windows give perfect lines of sight over the driveway, the gate, even part of the street beyond.
We’ve got good coverage already, but redundancy never hurts.
And maybe if I’m up there installing cameras, I can trick myself into feeling useful instead of helpless.
I grab the case of cams and the drill, pop the ladder down, and climb.
The attic air hits me. Dry, heavy with insulation and dust. My flashlight beam cuts across old boxes, trunks, piles of forgotten things. The boards creak under my boots as I move toward the nearest dormer.
It’s easy work. Mount the first camera, angle it down, connect to my phone, check the feed. Clean. Effective. The lens drinks in the driveway, the faint emptiness of Sean’s truck gone missing.
The second dormer is trickier, cramped, but I make it work. Another feed goes live. Another slice of safety secured.
By the time I get to the third, I’m almost calm. The rhythm of the work steadies me—mount, angle, test. Practical steps. Predictable results.
That’s when I see it.
A box, half-collapsed, slumped against the far wall behind a trunk. There are a lot of boxes up here, but most of them are sealed. The tape on top of this one is peeling, edges sagging like it’s been opened and shoved back together more than once. Might be the oldest box in here.
What does someone like Bailey hang on to for this long?
She’s not the sentimental type, but it might be our old high school yearbooks or even an old stuffed animal. Maybe it’ll bring a smile to her face if I bring the contents downstairs. Fuck, anything to make that woman smile again after today’s disaster…
I don’t think. I just pull it toward me, hope biting harder than common sense.
I kneel, set the box on my thigh, and tug the lid open.
Photos. Stacks of them. At first glance, I think they’re test photos—they’re glossy, like headshots.
They’re her face, mostly, but each one has a different odd mark on her.
Bruises, cuts, scrapes. A swollen lip in a few of them.
Old makeup tests? She’s been in projects where she needed to look roughed up.
I thumb through the first stack, and slowly my stomach drops.
There aren’t any other kinds of makeup tests here. Just injuries. They don’t look like they’re from that one zombie movie she did, and I can’t think of another role that would have required this extensive…
No.
The bruises aren’t neat. They’re ugly, mottled. Yellow and purple and black blooming unevenly across her cheek. Her lip split and swollen. Her eye bloodshot, rimmed in red. No pictures with anyone else in them. No smiles, no laughter.
Not makeup. Not staged.
I flip to the next. Her face turned away, but the curve of her jaw unmistakable. A mark circling her throat, the shape of fingers imprinted in skin.
I can’t breathe.
Another photo—her ribs bare, bruises blotched down her side in the unmistakable shape of a fist. I know that bruise. I’ve had it.
The stack trembles in my hands. My pulse slams against my temples. These aren’t props. These are records. Proof. Proof that says David Oswalt didn’t just shout. Didn’t just threaten.
He tried to break her.
The air in the attic presses against me, suffocating.
I shove the stack back into the box, but the images won’t leave me.
They’re burned into my head, seared into my blood.
I know violence. I’ve seen it. Overseas, in alleys, in war zones.
But seeing her —Bailey—captured like this, her pain printed in color, is something else entirely.
The ladder creaks under my weight as I descend. My grip on the box is too tight, my knuckles white, edges of the cardboard biting into my palms. Dust trails behind me, shaken loose by my urgency, falling through the shaft like ash.
When I step back into the hallway, the normal air feels wrong—lighter but also heavy with what I’m carrying. Every photo in this box is screaming at me, and I can’t quiet it.
The living room is dim except for the lamps we’ve left on.
Bailey hasn’t moved. She’s still at the table, mug untouched, staring at the wood grain like it might split open and give her an answer.
Her profile is carved in exhaustion, but her spine is rigid, defiant against the collapse waiting for her.
I stop in the doorway, box in hand, chest heaving. “Bailey.”
Her head lifts slowly, like she’s dragging it through water. Her eyes flick from me to the box, and I see it—the recognition, the flicker of alarm.
I set the box on the table with more force than I intend. It thuds against the wood, rattling her mug. My voice is rough, scraped raw from the rage burning through me. “What the hell is this?”
She doesn’t answer. Her lips press together, her hands curling tighter around the ceramic.
I pull out the stack of photos, fan them across the table between us. The images stare up at me again, accusing, undeniable. “What is this?”
She stares at the photos, her face pale, her breath catching. Her hand twitches once, like she wants to grab them and run, but she doesn’t move.
“They’re real, aren’t they?” I demand. “He did this to you. David did this.”
Her throat works. For a second, I think she’s going to deny it, shove it all back into some neat little box of explanations. But then she exhales, and the sound is sharp, broken. She nods.
That single nod detonates inside me.
My grip on the back of the chair tightens until the wood groans. My vision tunnels, red at the edges.
I thought I hated David before. I thought I knew the shape of that fury.
But seeing her like this, bruised and bloodied in still frames, knowing he put his hands on her—knowing he thought he could get away with it—makes me want to take him apart piece by piece and scatter what’s left so no one ever finds him.
“Why,” I grind out, “haven’t you used this? Why the hell haven’t you taken these to court? To the cops? To anyone who could end him?”
Her eyes snap to mine then, blazing with something hotter than the rage in my chest. “Because if I do, it becomes public record.” Her voice shakes, not with weakness but with fury.
“Do you understand what that means? My kids will grow up. They’ll Google his name.
They’ll Google mine. And these will be waiting for them.
Photos of their mother beaten half to death by their father.
Headlines. Court transcripts. That’s not a story I’m handing them.
Not while they’re still children.” Her hands move fast, snatching the photos off the table, shoving them back into the box with angry, trembling motions.
I reach out, my hand closing around her wrist before I can stop myself. “Bailey?—”
Her head snaps up. Her eyes are fire and glass, blazing and brittle all at once. “Don’t. You don’t get to tell me what to do with my pain.”
The words slice clean through me.
She jerks her wrist free, clutches the box tight against her chest, and storms out. Her footsteps hammer down the hall, sharp, furious echoes that fade into silence.
I’m left standing there, chest heaving, hands shaking, the empty space she leaves behind vibrating with everything unsaid.
I sink into the chair, the wood cool against my palms. The images keep flashing in my head no matter how tightly I squeeze my eyes shut.
Her face bruised. Her body marked. Evidence undeniable.
It’s one thing to know. To say David was abusive and let the word stand in for all the ugly things it could mean. She said he’d hit her. That could be a smack on the ass or…or what I saw in those pictures. Words can stay abstract.
It’s another thing to see . And now I can’t unsee.
The rage builds in me like a rising tide, overwhelming, unstoppable. It fills every corner of me until I don’t know where to put it. My hands itch for a weapon. My pulse drums with the desire to hunt.
And the worst part? For the first time tonight, I’m glad Sean isn’t here. Because if he saw what I just saw, David Oswalt wouldn’t live to see another morning.
A door slams somewhere down the hall, and I’m alone.
The silence that follows is unbearable. It presses on my chest, thick and suffocating. My hands are still shaking, empty now, but I can feel the weight of the photos like they’re burned into my palms.
I can’t stop seeing them. Her face bruised. Her ribs black and blue. The handprint around her throat. The kind of damage that doesn’t truly heal—it stays, echoes through every breath after.
I thought I hated him before. I thought I understood what he’d done. But I didn’t. Not until I saw it in color, captured, undeniable.
The word abuse is too small. Too polite. What he did was savagery. And he smiled through it, walked red carpets, played the doting father while she kept his secret to protect her kids.
My jaw aches from clenching so hard. My pulse is thunder in my ears. Every muscle in me begs for action—for violence, for destruction, for the satisfaction of ending him with my bare hands.
I want him gone. Not arrested. Not tried. Erased.
Annihilated.