Chapter 13
THIRTEEN
Devon
Every time I blinked, I expected her to vanish. I prepared for her to disappear like she always did each time I’d pictured her the past two years.
But she didn’t. She was there, as alive as I was.
Blakely was there . She’d been missing for two years, yet she was sitting right in front of me. Right in front of all of us.
And she was telling us a story we’d all longed to know for as long as she’d been gone.
A torrent of emotions warred through me.
The initial shock of seeing her at the door was still weighing down every one of my thoughts. It was just as I’d dreamed it. Actually, it was better than any dream I’d had because, in each of them, she’d been weak and fragile. She looked like she’d been gone for two years, with dark circles under her eyes and gaunt cheeks.
But she didn’t. She was healthy, almost glowing. Her dark, curly hair hung past her shoulders, and her gray eyes were light.
I couldn’t stop staring at her.
Her hands were clenched tightly in her lap, and her knee bounced nervously. Even from across the room, I could see the unshed tears shining in her eyes. But she powered through every word, no matter how much it likely pained her to do so.
My heart hammered in my chest, and every one of my muscles tensed.
The longer she spoke, the more everything made sense. Pieces began falling into place. Like why, when Valerie showed back up, Blakely had such an intense reaction and why she hadn’t gone to the police.
What I hadn’t been prepared for was the realization that Valerie had gone as far as to use my mom to keep Blakely in line. Anger like I’d never felt vibrated through me.
Part of me didn’t want to believe her, but I did. Blakely kept a lot of information from us back then, but I still knew the woman in front of me, no matter if she’d been gone for two years. When it came to my mom, she wouldn’t have fucked around with a threat like that.
I shouldn’t have been surprised that Valerie would go to those lengths. She was bound and determined to ruin Luke and Hazel’s relationship and ensure they never had the opportunity for anything more.
But to pull my mom into it was on a whole new level of insane. She was in Houston at the time, fighting for her fucking life, and Valerie used her like a throw away pawn in her sick game.
My hands were wrapped around the back of the couch. It creaked under my grip, but my legs felt too weak to hold my weight. And to hold the weight of all the new information.
My eyes flashed back and forth from Blakely to my mom, who was still playing with Zach. I’d been terrified to lose my mom, but I never imagined it would be something other than cancer that would do it.
I was furious I hadn’t known about it or figured it out sooner, but whoever Valerie found to keep tabs on her was no slouch. They’d done well to stay inconspicuous .
My thoughts were spiraling. Locked in my own mind with no sense of which way was up or out, I considered everything that had happened during that time. Every interaction I’d had with Blakely and every time we’d gone to visit my mom. I scanned through the faces I remembered, trying to recollect their distinct features and remind myself if someone looked suspicious, but I came up blank every fucking time.
“What?” someone exclaimed, not hiding their shock from whatever was just said. I straightened and considered each person around the room.
One of Amanda’s hands was covering her mouth, and Josh and Reed both looked genuinely shocked. Across the room, Hazel looked on the verge of tears, and Luke, who had been almost statuesque beside her the entire time, had fallen back into the couch.
James and Ivy clung closer to one another.
“Someone—” Amanda choked out as my eyes flashed to Blakely. “Someone took you, too?”
Blakely was already looking at me. Devastating gray eyes filled with honesty and silently pleading. I didn’t know what she was trying to convey, but it was there.
Our eyes still locked, she nodded, answering Amanda’s question. Her tongue peeked out, and she nervously ran it over her lip.
It took a moment for my brain to catch up, but when it did, it was nearly impossible not to cross the room. My teeth ground against each other, and my skin was growing warmer by the second.
My worst nightmare was that she’d died. But kidnapped? It wasn’t a possibility I’d even considered. I don’t think any of us had, based on our similarly shocked reactions.
Blakely rolled her shoulders back and squared them. Any uncertainty I noted in her expression was masked with bravery and determination.
“When I woke up…umm…I had no idea where I was, but appa rently, I was in Colorado. I didn’t figure that part out until months later because all I knew was the basement he kept me in.” She spoke like the words physically pained her. Knowing the types of memories she was likely reliving in front of us, I was sure her pain was as real and vivid as it was that day.
“I can’t—I still have a hard time, you know, talking about.” She struggled for the words, nervously tucking her curly hair behind her ears and staring at her black boots. “Anyway, I’ll spare you all the details. But I was in that basement for… months.”
Being hit by a car would have felt better than how I felt when her voice broke. Her voice wasn’t laced with pain, it was agony that drenched the word. Like her wounds were still too new and raw not to feel the depths of them.
“As far as I know, it was one man, and who knows how long I would’ve been down there. A group of teenagers looking for a place to party stumbled on the house,” Blakely said in one breath, finally raising her eyes to quickly glance around the room.
Her eyes hesitated over me, but she looked back down. Silently, I willed her to look back up, to look at me.
“They called the cops, and it was finally all over.” Her words said one thing, but the way she spoke them said something else. Like she didn’t actually believe that that was the end.
“Wait,” Reed said, leaning forward and bracing his elbows on his knees. “I’m still—I’m having a hard time wrapping my head around this. This just sounds so…”
“Unbelievable?” Blakely supplied without missing a beat.
No one spoke. Silence stretched between all of us like it was never going to end. None of us were going to agree, but we were all thinking the same thing. It wasn’t that we didn’t believe her—it was just hard to wrap your head around.
“That makes sense,” Hazel said, glancing over at Luke, her brows drawn close together. “An officer came and spoke with Luke and me a few months after…everything. He wouldn’t tell us exactly why, but based on his questions, it was likely right after you were found.”
They hadn’t told any of us about getting another visit from the police. And I couldn’t help but wonder why they hadn’t.
“But either way, you could say the same thing about what happened to me—what happened to us,” Hazel added quietly, gripping one of Luke’s hands tightly while the other motioned to her husband and then over to her brother-in-law, Josh. “If y’all hadn’t lived through it with us, it would’ve been hard to believe.”
“Shit, that’s not what I meant,” Reed quickly said.
“I get it,” Blakely murmured.
Josh sat forward and glanced at Reed over Amanda’s head. “It’s not that we don’t believe you, Blake,” he said. “I think we’re all just in shock.”
“Did they catch him?” James asked abruptly.
Blakely raised her head and appraised him with emotion-filled eyes. Her throat bobbed as she swallowed and readjusted her position at the edge of the chair. She cleared her throat before she spoke.
“Yeah,” was all Blakely said.
“Who—who was it?” Josh asked.
Blakely sucked in a shaky breath, and I could see her energy depleting before our eyes. I knew she wouldn’t last much longer, and it was on the tip of my tongue to stop it all. But she powered on, fisting her trembling fingers in her lap.