Chapter 3
CHAPTER THREE
CLOVER
The world refuses to make sense.
I’ve been staring at my ceiling for six hours.
My mind is spiraling.
Not processing. Just labeling. Counting. Re-centering, then starting again as I scroll through my arsenal of coping mechanisms.
Facts:
Savvy’s in the hospital, undergoing her second surgery of the day.
Madi and the rest of my friends are pleading with me to stay with them at the inn.
I’ve never shared this side of my trauma, and I can’t start now.
Valen.
He sets fire to my survival strategies, so I focus on the table clock in the entryway that echoes up the stairs. Ticktock. Ticktock. Ticktock.
I haven’t been this dysregulated since I first escaped the cult. It’s a setback that may cost me more than I have to give.
Every light in the house is on. It reflects on the bulletproof windows through the crack in my blackout curtains—another reminder that someone out there wants to hurt me.
Survive, not thrive. It keeps me safe.
Your fortress hasn’t kept the monsters out though—it’s simply kept you alone. My therapist often tells me I told you so in my thoughts. He’s an asshole.
It’s also why Elle is foisting her giant one-hundred-pound untrained Bernese mountain dog on me now. Without Savvy next door in our duplex, they’re afraid I’ll become a house troll. They’ve never said as much, but I know them.
My phone buzzes on the nightstand, right next to my snow globe that blows constant glitter around an old-fashioned typewriter and gives off an ethereal glow I adore.
Ten missed calls. Eight from Madi. Two from Elle.
I silence it. Talking to them means I’d have to explain tonight. The town fair. The man who called me Honeybee and then pretended he didn’t know me.
He made my heart stop and my world implode in the space between one breath and the next.
Valen Stone—my first friend, my first love, my first loss.
Except he’s not mine. Perhaps he never was. My Valen never would’ve looked at me like I was a stranger.
Is it possible that I’ve made him all up in the safe places in my head? That the trauma of that place distorted fiction and reality so much that I made up an entire relationship that feels so real, I think my ribs are breaking?
Survive.
Standing, I pull on another compression shirt, enjoying the hug it offers my body, before wrapping my weighted fleece robe around my shoulders. The thing swallows me whole, but it’s the safe kind of lost that I enjoy.
One step leads to two, then three.
My heart thrums erratically in my ears, thumping like a bass drum the closer I get to the window.
Is he still out there?
One inch. Then two. I pull back the heavy drapes and peer out.
My nose hits the cool glass when I see the nondescript sedan parked a few cars down from Rip’s.
It’s 3:02 in the morning.
“What the heck do you want from me, Valen? Do you not sleep anymore either?” The words are loud in my head but barely make a sound as they leave my lips.
Good girls are seen, not heard, Miss Styx. And you want to be a good girl, don’t you?
My body trembles violently as the voice of a ghost rakes across my exposed skin. No matter how deeply I burrow into my robe, I still feel her words slithering across my body.
Her.
Valen’s mother.
She’s dead now, Clover.
How many times over the years have I reminded myself that she can no longer hurt me? How many times have I woken up gasping for the breath she tried to control?
He’s right there, Clover. Go ask him. Ask him where the fuck he’s been!
The evil voice, the one who guides the villains in my thriller novels through the dead of night, is dangerous in my ear now.
Sound whooshes through my house, and I drop to the floor like a trained military veteran. It was just the air conditioning kicking on. Instinct is what Chief calls it during my self-defense lessons.
But is it instinct if it comes from survival?
I release a heavy breath and knock my forehead against the hardwood floor three times.
“This is ridiculous, Clover.” I can’t imagine what people would say if they saw me like this.
Valen may not be the boy I once knew, but the man he’s become owes me answers. That particular voice sounds like Savvy.
She’s not wrong—I deserve answers.
I push to my feet, my weighted robe no longer offering the same comfort as I slide across the wall and creep down the stairs, holding my hands as though there’s a weapon in them.
I’m like all three versions of Charlie’s Angels without the weapons, the training, or the guts. But at least it makes me snicker at myself.
My fingers trace all three deadbolts. Rip is outside. Valen is outside. No one is getting in.
I’m safe.
Before I lose what little courage I have, I unlatch the locks and jump out onto my porch—ninja-style.
Oh shit. I didn’t really think this through.
Now what do I do?
Rip opens his car door and stands outside it, talking into a headset, but he’s too far away for me to hear his words.
My gaze swings to the car I know holds Valen, and our gazes connect. Surprisingly, my shoulders unclench and my stomach stops warning me that I might need a toilet soon. But my hands are locked in a child’s karate-chop motion that I can’t seem to get out of.
Valen’s head tilts, just an inch to the left in a gesture I recognize. The little boy I loved is still in there, even if he refuses to acknowledge it, but who he was is someone I’ll never forget.
Lowering my hand-weapons, I wave him over, though it comes out jerky and uncoordinated with the weight of my robe. I’m the cliché in every romantic comedy, and there’s nothing I can do about it.
He angles closer to the passenger side, and that’s when I notice he’s talking to someone—Roman.
Both doors open, and I swallow hard as they scan their surroundings, then cross the street and stand at the bottom of my steps.
“Everything okay, Clover?” Roman asks with a gentleness I appreciate, but my attention is stuck on Valen.
How can he possibly ask me that?
“Fine.”
Valen frowns as though he can’t hear me. He wouldn’t be the first to say so—my voice was stolen from me years ago, and I haven’t found a way to get it back.
Being quiet keeps you safe.
So why do I want to scream my throat raw right now?
“Miss Danforth?” Valen’s expression holds nothing but vague concern for a stranger.
“Why did you lie to me?” Something about Valen, even if he’s a stranger now, makes me bold—it always did. “Why didn’t you come back for me?”
He frowns and glances at his cousin.
“Clover, can we come inside?” Roman asks. “I’m sure you have a lot of questions, and I can give you an update on Savvy.”
That gets my attention, so I nod, stepping backward until my ass hits the doorframe, then I gesture for them to enter.
Roman crosses the threshold first, then Valen stands close—too close—as he scans the driveway. Close enough that I catch the scent of him. Cedar, coffee, and something darker underneath. His warmth radiates against my side, and I hate how my body leans toward it. Toward him.
“After you,” he says, his voice low enough to feel in my bones.
I follow Roman, regretting my stubborn decision not to stay with Madi.
“Where—” Roman stands in the hallway, but I quickly slip around Valen to engage all the locks, then scoot past them both, leading the way to my family room, where I sink into the overstuffed chair that billows out before settling in all around me.
If it was built for anxiety, it’s for me—that’s my motto these days. Everything in my home, from my clothes to my furniture, was designed with managing anxieties in mind.
Valen dwarfs my space when he enters, checks the perimeter of the room, then focuses on the details before finding me surrounded by a pillow fort of weighted cushions pressing in on me from all sides.
“Savvy was hit by a truck her ex, Riley, was driving,” Roman says.
Swallowing razor blades would be less painful than hearing this.
He must see my expression because he’s quick to continue, this time, a little more…tactfully. “She has extensive injuries and has been placed in a medically induced coma while she heals. Her attacker was apprehended immediately.”
He sits on the edge of the couch. “It’s possible that with him in jail, your threats will be eliminated too.”
“We know that Savvy’s ex doxed your personal information, so we’ll keep a close eye on things,” Valen says.
His tone indicates that he doesn’t believe Riley’s my only problem. Honestly, neither do I. The packages are too personal to come from my best friend’s ex—someone I’d never even met before he started terrorizing Savvy again.
No, someone else has been watching me—someone who knows things only someone from my past would know.
That’s part of the reason I haven’t told my friends everything about this stalker situation.
The packages I’ve been receiving are a new issue, but I think this started years before I met them, and I don’t want them involved in it.
As terrible as I feel, Valen looks worse. Tight lines pinch around his eyes, accentuating the dark circles, but somehow, he’s still beautiful.
“Miss Danforth,” he says, then winces when I glare at him. Can’t he hear how wrong that sounds from his lips?
“Clover,” I snap. “My name is Clover.” Less than five minutes in his presence, and my voice has found its backbone.
What the hell would happen if he…stuck around?
“Clover.” The sound of my name from his mouth makes my chest flood with hot lava, cracking it open in places I’ve kept sealed for years. “I have some questions for you.”
“I don’t think—”
“Please.”
That one word clogs my throat with emotion for the boy I loved.
He stands in my family room like he doesn’t quite fit. Too tall. Too solid. Too present.
His gaze sweeps the space—taking in my bee-themed throw pillows, the stack of books on the coffee table, the row of snow globes on the mantel, the framed photo of me with Madi, Savvy, and Elle at graduation.
“Do you want to sit?” I ask, needing to say something, anything, before my inner thoughts slip out.