Chapter 11
Chapter Eleven
Shae
One month later
I’m living in the kind of place people drive past on their way to somewhere louder—rural foothills outside Santa Clarita, California, where the sky is too big and the silence feels staged.
St. Mary’s is a defunct convent owned by the St. Mary’s Order of Carmelites, shuttered years ago and left to sun-bleach.
A house is attached—once used to “help” wayward women disappear for a while in the 1950s and 60s, the kind of help that comes with locked doors and holy shame.
The grounds are overgrown but beautiful: haunting gardens, cracked fountains, saints watching with stone eyes.
The bell tower anchors the property like a warning. It doesn’t chime anymore—until the breeze catches the old slats and the bell answers anyway, a thin ring that sounds like it’s clearing its throat.
I unpack nothing. My duffel stays zipped in the closet. The girl with no roots, the girl with secrets, the girl they tried to bury.
But I’m harder to kill than weeds in a churchyard.
This town doesn’t know me. Not yet. The charity director at Hearth & Hands googled my name on my first day—just enough to get misty-eyed over the podcast and praise me as “brave.” She doesn’t know about the hot coals. She doesn’t know about the basement. She doesn’t know about Brianna or Taylor.
She knows what I let her know.
“I just think it’s so beautiful how you’re turning pain into purpose,” Dawn gushes this morning as we sort donated clothes into piles of faded jeans and mustard-stained blouses.
I smile like I mean it. “Sometimes the worst moments in life give us the clearest direction.”
She tears up. My God. It’s like stealing candy from a baby.
The women at the shelter whisper when I walk by. Not because they suspect anything—no, that would require critical thought. They whisper because I’m the face they saw on a thumbnail beside tragic font and a tragic headline and a tragically filtered photo.
The podcast worked. The documentary worked. Evelyn’s slick cinematography. Harper’s shaky voice-overs. The sharp cuts from prison gates to protest signs to my thin, sad smile.
They branded me like a saint.
Now I’m their phoenix.
And tonight, Blake arrives.
I make iced tea because it feels like the kind of thing a redeemed woman would do. Lemon wedges. Mint leaves. A smile I could sell by the ounce.
He steps inside with his usual quiet swagger—dark jeans, stubble, a hoodie pulled halfway over his face like he’s allergic to attention but still needs it to breathe.
“Nice place,” he says, dropping his camera bag by the door.
“It’s humble,” I say, playing the part, “but I’m learning to appreciate the simple life.”
He grins. “You? Simple?”
I give him a look. “Don’t make me sharpen a toothbrush.”
We slip into an easy rhythm. I pretend to show him around—living room, kitchen, guest room that still smells like fresh paint. He follows, filming quietly. His lens doesn’t blink. Doesn’t judge. It just watches.
That’s what I like about Blake. He doesn’t need the lie to feel comfortable. He’s seen footage that didn’t make the cut. He knows Declan Ridge and I were working together on… something.
And Blake still chose to film me.
At dinner, he studies me over salmon and sweet potatoes like he’s trying to memorize my face. “You like it here?”
“It’s slow,” I admit. “Predictable.”
“Safe?”
I smirk. “Nothing about me is safe.”
He laughs—low, genuine. Not the kind you fake to disarm someone. The kind that says he sees me. All of me. And likes it anyway. Blake doesn’t flinch when I say the quiet parts out loud.
That makes him dangerous.
After dinner, we move onto the balcony. The night is warm and still, the garden below glowing in silver moonlight and sleepy. I sip my tea, watching moths commit suicide against the porch light.
“You ever think about starting over?” he asks.
“I’m doing it now.”
He shakes his head. “I mean for real. Not the performance. No cameras. No Harper. Just… a new life.”
I tilt my head. “You want me to run away with you, Blake?”
He doesn’t answer. But he doesn’t look away either.
That’s the thing about men like Blake. They don’t need saving. They need someone to match their rot. A mirror to hold up their shadows. He sees mine and smiles.
“The Watcher read letters from—”
“The letters are fake,” I cut in. “Forged for soundbites.”
“Maybe.” His voice softens. “But I know you’re not what you pretend to be.”
I lean closer. “Good. Pretending is exhausting.”
“Ironic, you landing at the convent after everything.”
I huff. “I’m thankful Evelyn could arrange it. I like the slower pace and I pay next to nothing for rent. I think The Order is just happy to have it occupied—keeps the squatters away.”
“You explored the church or cloisters yet?”
I shake my head. “All the doors are locked. Hinges are rusted and crumbling though, probably wouldn’t take much to get inside.”
Silence stretches between us, thick with understanding. Then he says, “I’ve done bad things too.”
I arch a brow. “Like what?”
He looks away. “Things I don’t film. Maybe someday I’ll show you my skeletons.”
It’s the most honest thing anyone’s ever said to me.
Later, I make up the guest room. He drops his duffel without ceremony and kicks off his boots. He lingers in my doorway half a beat too long, then disappears into his.
I lie awake for an hour listening to old pipes knock and the wind worry at the windowpanes. The Santa Clarita Valley sleeps like it has nothing to hide.
I smile.
Blake is useful. Loyal. A fellow deviant with just enough self-loathing to keep him pliable. He doesn’t need to be seduced—just seen. Understood. I can do that in my sleep.
And Hearth & Hands? A buffet of broken women desperate for purpose. Desperate women make mistakes. Tell secrets. Attach too fast.
By the end of the month, they’ll be calling me family.
By the end of the year, I’ll own them.
People think power is loud—shouts, guns, elections. But real power is quiet. It slips in wearing a kind smile and a borrowed past. It listens. Nods. Bakes brownies.
Then it rewrites the rules.
I am the storm they invited in.
And I’ve never felt more at home.