Chapter 5
CHAPTER FIVE
CLOVER
Stress-cleaning my kitchen is not as relaxing as the famous influencer made it seem. Now I’m keyed up and possibly high from the weird mix of baking soda and vinegar—and I smell like a french fry.
It’s because the house is too quiet.
Normally, Savvy is next door boxing to Eminem by now.
Today, it’s…silent.
Even with the lights blazing, shadows seem to press against the windows. I keep glancing at the back door, certain I heard something scrape against the porch a few minutes ago. It’s probably a tree branch. Or a cat. Probably.
I’m about to drop the sponge into the bucket of water when someone pounds on my front door as though they’re trying to knock it down.
My heart tap dances its way into my throat. I stand frozen, every muscle locked, and the sponge falls from my hand with a wet slap as I mentally seek out potential hiding spots.
Grounding. That’s what I need.
Glancing around my kitchen, I breathe in the scent of coffee grounds and vinegar. Touch the bright teal hand towel that’s always slightly askew. Listen to the low hum of the refrigerator.
But now my coping mechanisms feel like a cage I keep reinforcing, even though I’m alone, safe in my isolation, exactly as I planned.
“Clover Danforth, open this door right now or I’m using the spare key!” Madi’s voice cuts through my haze of panic, and I realize I’d stopped breathing altogether.
Relief floods me so fast my limbs buckle, and I’m thankful I’m already clutching the counter for balance.
I allow myself three breaths. Just three. Enough to manage the terror before I face my friend. Then I wipe my eyes, paste on something that might pass for composure, and push myself off the counter.
“I know you’re in there. I can practically hear you counting,” she says.
Nothing shocking there. Madi’s known me long enough to recognize the sound of my survival mechanisms through a solid steel door, so I make my way to the front of the house.
I trace each deadbolt out of habit, then unlock them and drag the door open.
Madi stands on my porch with her arms crossed, still in yesterday’s clothes, mascara smudged under her eyes as if she’s been crying. Elle is beside her, looking equally wrecked, holding two massive Walmart bags and wearing pajama pants with tacos on them.
“You look terrible.” I don’t mean to say it, but my filters are exhausted.
“Don’t you know you’re not supposed to tell a pregnant lady she looks like crap?” Madi eyes me up and down. “But back at you, babe.” She pushes past me into the house, her round baby belly leading the way. “When’s the last time you slept?”
Fourteen years ago—give or take. But I stay silent and inch out of the way so Elle can enter. I do, however, scan the cars outside. Rip is still where I left him, but Valen’s car is now abandoned.
The emptiness of loss hits me hard.
Then a prickling sensation crawls across the back of my neck—that familiar, terrible feeling of being watched by someone who is not my bodyguard. I scan the street, but nothing moves. Just the morning light and the quiet hum of a town waking up. Still, I jump back faster than necessary.
“That’s what I thought,” Madi tuts, while Elle kicks the door shut behind her. It would’ve smacked me in the face if she hadn’t tugged me out of the way at the last minute. “We’re staging an intervention.”
I busy myself with engaging the locks. “I don’t need—”
“It’s not up for debate.” Madi’s already in my kitchen, pulling things from Elle’s bags. The closer I get to them, the more my stomach rumbles. She has breakfast burritos in three different flavors, tissues, face masks, and an assortment of drinks I can’t see through my blurry eyes.
Then she pulls out a weighted blanket in a shade of blue that coordinates with my couch—the exact one I’ve had in my online shopping cart for three weeks.
My throat tightens. “You guys—”
“Don’t.” Elle holds up a hand. “We’re not talking about it yet.
First, we’re going to sit down, eat our feelings, numb the sadness, and pretend like the world isn’t falling apart for exactly twenty minutes.
Then we’ll talk about—about Savvy. And then—” She sniffles, and her gaze cuts to the window where we all know Valen’s team has taken up residence.
“Then we’ll talk about your mysterious lover who suddenly showed up out of nowhere. ”
“He’s not—”
Madi’s glare stops me mid-sentence.
“Kitchen table. Now.” She points with one hand, holding up her belly with the other. Geez, late-stage pregnancy makes her bossy. “And if you try to tell us you’re fine one more time, I’m calling Braxton and having him physically carry you to my inn.”
I slump into a chair across from her as she takes ownership of my house and carries three plates to the table because arguing when she’s in mama-bear mode is like arguing with a hurricane—pointless and likely to end in property damage.
Elle sits beside me, immediately wrapping the new weighted blanket around my shoulders. It settles over me like a hug, and I bite the inside of my cheek to keep from crying.
Madi’s hand rests on my forearm, filling the emptiness with something other than my fear, and my body slowly falls out of the flight part of fight-or-flight.
“Better?” Elle asks softly.
I nod, unable to form the words of gratitude that should fall effortlessly from my lips.
I’ve spent years trying to feel safe on my own, behind the castle walls I built, but safety is an illusion because I was spiraling until the moment these two crashed through my front door.
Madi pushes a plate across the table. The scents of bacon and cheese waft to my nose, causing my stomach to rumble as though it’s ready for its wrestling debut.
“Eat, Clover, please. I can only handle one incapacitated friend at a time.”
Savvy.
The bravest of us all. Our eyes drift to the fourth seat at my table—Savvy’s spot.
For the next twenty minutes, we sit together in the silence, staring, praying, begging God to fill that chair once again.
Elle breaks first.
“Grey called on our way over here.” Her voice cracks. “They’re keeping her in the coma for at least a week. Maybe two. The swelling in her brain—” She swallows hard. “They said the next seventy-two hours are critical, but they’re only allowing Grey in with her for now. He’ll keep us updated.”
Madi’s fork falls to her plate with a clatter that has her scrambling to pick it up. “She’s going to be fine. Just fine. Savvy’s too stubborn to die on us.”
“I know.” Elle wipes her eyes. “But Grey sounded so…broken. I’ve never heard him like that.”
“He loves her,” I whisper, my chest tightening to the point of pain.
“We all love and need her,” Elle agrees. “Which is why she’ll pull through. She’d never leave us like this.”
I wish I believed that.
But I’ve seen too much to believe in fairy tales. Everyone leaves eventually, and love is not always enough.
“Riley’s in custody,” Elle says after a moment. “They’re charging him with attempted murder, assault with a deadly weapon, stalking…” She ticks them off on her fingers. “He’s not getting out of this one.”
“Good.” The word hits the air with more venom than I’ve ever shared.
“Grey said they already found evidence that Riley had been planning this for months. He was tracking her movements, just waiting for the perfect moment.” Elle’s face is a shade of white that’s so unnatural it’s scary. “If we hadn’t been at the fair. If Roman hadn’t been watching—”
“But we were there,” Madi cuts in firmly. “And Savvy’s alive. That’s what matters.”
Silence settles again, heavier this time.
It stretches to the point of being uncomfortable with everything we can’t fix. Elle clears her throat, and I instantly back away from her expression.
She’s desperate to talk about something, anything that won’t make us cry. “So,” she says, her voice carefully light. “Valen’s back?”
Despite everything, the heat crawls up my neck as I nod.
Madi leans forward. “What we don’t know is why he called you Honeybee at the fair. Or why you fainted like you were starring in a romantic comedy when you saw him. Or”—her eyes narrow—“why you’ve been avoiding our calls since then.”
“I haven’t been avoiding—”
“Puh-lease.” Elle sighs. “We know when you’re hiding.”
One. Two. Three. Four. Five.
This is the trouble with letting people in. They really know you.
I have been hiding.
Sure, I’ve told them the sanitized version of Valen, but what I haven’t told them is what we went through together. How do you explain growing up in a cult? How do I tell them about the boy who saved me, the man who forgot me, the ghost who’s been haunting me ever since?
I decide to just dive in. “He—he was my only friend. At Roots of Salvation. The cult.”
Shame. It has a direct connection to my past, unfounded as it may be.
My friends fall very, very still. They know that my parents took me there and died soon after without even a funeral to mourn them and that I’ve written to Valen ever since. But they don’t know what that place did to me, to us.
“The cult,” Madi repeats slowly. It’s a hard thing to wrap your brain around. I lived it, and I still haven’t figured it out.
“That you still have nightmares about,” Elle adds.
“Yes.” I pull the blanket tighter.
“He was there. Every summer,” I say while allowing my mind to wander to safer spaces.
“I met him when I was six, sometime after my parents died. I’m not sure how long I’d been there when he arrived.
But he came every summer and some holidays.
” The words sit like stones in my throat.
“He was—he protected me. From his mother. From the…” I drop my chin to my chest. “The punishments. They were usually easier on me when Valen was there. He saved me from…everything.”
“His mother?” Madi’s eyes are wide. “She did something to you?”
“Terra Stone,” I say tonelessly. “She is—was—” How do I explain Terra? “Evil,” I settle on. “She was evil.”
Even though I know Terra’s dead, her spirit still darkens my soul.