Chapter 15 Wren
Everyone has a claim to fame.
Mine isn’t a cool anecdote, a humble brag I can pepper on small talk at parties. It’s a stain that won’t wash out, no matter how hard I scrub.
Scrolling through the camera roll on my cell, I select the new photos added to the album titled “Wren’s Good Deeds” and send them to my laptop. There’s one of me sweeping up debris in the port, another where I’m pushing my candy cart through the hospital hallways.
I attach them to a passive-aggressive email, along with a local news article about the explosion, and fire it off. Then I close my laptop and flop back on the bed, the weight of that unfinished sentence pinning me to the mattress.
Sometimes, I wonder why I poke the hornet’s nest. Because sending all this evidence to Damien Asshole Cross isn’t me righting a wrong, it’s just me finding another way to bury it.
Lungs tightening, I roll over and bury my face between the pillows, waiting for the guilt to pass.
It always comes in waves. They ebb and flow and pull me under. Back to the butterflies, the letters, the bar. Back to the house with the flowers and perfectly striped lawn. Back to her.
Her cackling laugh plays down my spine, and I burrow my head deeper, my ragged breaths damp against the sheets. I breathe until it hurts, and when I can no longer stand the pain, I drown out and distract.
I flip over and grab for my laptop again.
ABBA on. Google open. My search history is made up of a million variations of “Incidents in Devil’s Cove”, but I’ve found nothing that reveals the fate of the creepy phone booth guy.
This time, I have every intention of typing “Dogs meeting puppies for the first time” into the search bar, but my forefinger has other ideas and strikes the letter G instead.
A. B. R. I. E. L. V. I. S. C. O. N. T. I.
My hands hold a tremble as I tap the Enter key.
I scroll through the search results. Raphael’s and Angelo’s Wikipedia pages are at the top, and below, there’s an obituary page for a guy in Italy, another for a man in Australia. I keep scrolling and scrolling, but there’s nothing about Gabriel Visconti himself.
I click on the “images” tab because surely, I’ll at least find a mugshot.
There’s no way in civilized society a man like him can go through life without spending some time behind bars.
But it’s all smiling pictures of Rafe at fundraisers and scowling paparazzi shots of Angelo leaving shiny buildings.
It’s like the internet has no idea they even have a brother.
I didn’t either until our eyes locked across the dance floor at Rory’s bachelorette party, and now I wish I was still blissfully ignorant.
With Google letting me down, I grab my cell off the side table, open the Instagram app, and type his name into the search bar.
Nothing.
So how the hell was he looking at my Instagram page?
Something between frustration and fear prickles behind my eyeballs, and a lump the size of a golf ball forms in my throat.
I loathe that man. From his buzzcut to his steel-capped boots and everything between. I hate his stare and how it sours when it touches me. Hate his shadow and how it looks on the edges of mine.
I hate he was the one to save me from the creepy man in the phonebooth, hate the lecture that followed.
Hate that he tossed me into his trunk like I was destined for a landfill, just to prove that he could, and that he showed no remorse or sympathy when he finally let me out, a crying, blubbery mess.
I hate that his cryptic words—If it happened in the dark, it didn’t happen—echo around my head when it’s quiet. Hate that they fascinate me, and that black hole in the center of my soul swells at the sound of it.
Most of all, I hate myself. Because now he’s consuming my thoughts. He floods through my veins and fizzes in places he shouldn’t.
It feels all too familiar.
Before I can spiral, I stab the volume key on my laptop and turn “Does Your Mother Know” up to full blast. Then, before I can stop myself, I go back to Google and type in another name.
The Boogeyman.
My heart pounds in my ears as I wait for the Wikipedia page to load. And when my eyes skim over the first sentence, it slows to a stop.
The Boogeyman is a shadowy, amorphous ghost who hides in dark places to frighten unsuspecting victims.
Unease works its way down my back, chilling every knot on my spine.
His power is neutralized by bright light.
I read the page from top to bottom, back to front.
Then I go back and click on all the other search results too, working my way through fables, myths, cautionary tales.
I stare at every sketch of ominous figures seeping out of dark corners, until I swear, I see green eyes, ink, and scars within their black mass.
Until they leap out of the screen and climb my own walls.
When the “low battery” sign blinks on the corner of the screen, I glance up to the window for a respite and realize that so much time has passed darkness has swallowed the sun.
Blowing out a trembling breath, I reach for the lamp on the bedside table and turn it on.
Nothing happens.
I click it again, and when it still doesn’t work, I roll over to try the one on the opposite side.
Nope.
Muttering under my breath, I get up and try the main switch.
A quiet click—no light.
A whisper of fear raises the hair on the back of my neck, but I force it aside.
The power cut has nothing to do with my Google search history and everything to do with the fact that the wiring in my house is in shambles.
The kitchen light only turns on if I punch it, and the other day, I switched on the stove and the shower upstairs started running.
God bless Uncle Finn, but if he did build this house, he built it with a YouTube tutorial, sticky tape, and good intentions alone.
Shuffling into the hallway, I feel my way along the wall and press every light switch my fingers brush over, to no avail.
Dammit. I consider going back upstairs and grabbing my cell to call Finn but decide I’ll walk over to his house instead. I’ve been horizontal for hours; I could use the exercise.
I descend the stairs and awkwardly hop around on the welcome mat, tugging on my rain boots. As I slide into my puffer jacket, a sense of foreboding crawls up my shoulders and squeezes my nape.
No.
Dread moves through me like a slow-moving tide. I fight against its current to lift my gaze to the door, though in my heart, I already know what’s behind it.
Who’s behind it.
Gabriel’s outline is unmistakable. His broad shoulders spill out beyond the perimeters of the glass panel, and his glare burns through the double glazing like a blow torch.
My head swims and my knees buckle. If my arms weren’t stitched to my sides, I’d reach up and smack myself on the head, because Christ, what was I thinking opening my big mouth?
It seemed like a good idea in the cold light of day. I’d woken up stewing after the events of the night before, fueled by anger and the burning need for justice, and stomped out of my house and over to Rory’s.
I’d knocked on her front door with the intent to tell her everything.
From the night three years ago, to the breaking and entering after her bachelorette, but the tongue he threatened to cut out wouldn’t work.
I found myself skipping over the creepy phone booth guy too, mainly so she wouldn’t get distracted, or worse, take Gabriel’s side.
Instead, I focused on the issue at hand.
Between sobs, I regaled how he picked me up and plonked me in his trunk.
How he stood there, silently, as I kicked and screamed and begged to be let out.
How he didn’t even hang around once he freed me; he just disappeared into the woods and had his stone-faced colleague frog-march me home in the beam of his headlights.
But more fool me.
Because the Boogeyman has come back to bite me on the ass.
The air throbs with my terror as we stare at each other through the glass for three restless heartbeats.
He rattles the door handle.
Smirks when he realizes it’s locked.
My relief is fleeting and doesn’t stick, because without breaking eye contact, he slowly lifts an inked hand into view and slides on a leather glove.
Then he curls it into a fist and draws back his arm.
“Wait!” I yell, bolting forward and unlocking the door before he can smash through the window.
The moment the icy wind slithers through the gap, I regret my haste. It must be all over my face too because Gabriel wedges his boot between the door and the frame, stopping me from slamming it shut again.
Well, then. There’s nothing left to do but accept defeat. I drag my gaze up to meet his and side-eye him with trepidation. “What do you want?” I sniff.
Jeez. It’s so easy to forget how large he is when I’m not shriveling in his shadow.
He’s broader and blacker than the night sky behind him, and though he’s part monster, I realize he does an excellent job masquerading as all man, and in its rawest, most primal form.
It’s in his stillness, his strength, his stance.
I know his blood runs as hot as his temper, because even with two feet of space between us, I can feel his warmth.
Tonight, he’s carved from stone and clad in leather biking gear. When he lazily reaches up to rest his forearm on the top of the doorframe, leather chafes leather, and annoyingly, something primal stirs within me too.
He looks down at me with a steady gaze. “You ever heard the expression, ‘Snitches get stitches’?”
A tremor runs through my bottom lip. “If you don’t leave, I’m calling the police.”
Amusement flickers over his features, as though I’m a petulant toddler who’s announced they’re running away from home.
“Hit me.”
I stare at him, confused at the sudden change of conversation.
Jaw twitching with impatience, he nudges the door all the way open with his foot and fills the frame.
My eyes narrow. “I’d need to hit you with a frying pan to make us anywhere close to even.”