Chapter 25 Chloe
CHLOE
He’s gone when I wake up.
I roll onto my back and blink at the rectangle of sunlight spreading across the ceiling toward the fan. My throat burns furiously, like when I got sick a few years ago with a cough that stripped it raw. I swallow against the pain, testing it. Nothing seems broken.
It’s disappointing that Theo has left me alone, although I’m also not surprised. He’s a night creature, that’s for damn sure.
It’s a weekday. And going by the brightness of the sun in the window, I should be getting ready for work right now. The idea is absolutely too much.
So I grab my phone to fire off a message to my boss, telling him that I came down with a cold and will need the day off.
There are a few messages from Penelope in the group chat, too, asking about our next Zoom movie night.
No word yet from Abi, but I respond with an I’m in and a string of emojis.
I should probably tell Penelope what happened.
Or both of them. Abi really ought to know about Callie, too, although I can understand why Penelope doesn’t want to tell her.
Abi’s the county coroner down in a little beach town in Texas.
She has a professional obligation to report crimes.
I leave the phone on the desk and shuffle into the bathroom, the space between my legs aching. Memories of last night flash through my head, but most of all, I think of that moment right before I came.
I really thought, just for a second, that Theo was going to kill me.
And that’s what tipped me over the edge.
The orgasm that followed almost destroyed me, especially with how it kept going, longer than I’d ever had an orgasm last. I’d read about what a lack of oxygen can do, how it heightens pleasure, but I’d never tried it.
I always wanted to, of course. Like I told him, I would think about it incessantly, trying to make sex with my college hook-ups more tolerable.
But the real thing was like nothing I ever imagined. I’m swoony just thinking about it.
At least until I stumble into the bathroom. When I flip on the light, I cry out in shock.
My neck is almost black with bruises.
“Fuck me,” I whisper, staring at my reflection. My eyes are pink at the edges, too, and there’s the cut on my lip from where Theo bit me. But my neck is a nightmare. The imprints of his fingerprints are undeniable, long black bars caging my throat.
I tug my hair forward. It doesn’t do much to hide it.
A scarf? It’ll look stupid in the summer, but I don’t think makeup’s going to do much, either.
I wobble back into my bedroom and over to my closet, sliding through my clothes until I find a blousy bow collar shirt I haven’t worn in years. Better than nothing.
The doorbell rings.
The sound startles me, and I nearly jump out of my skin. Just leave it, I think, pulling on the shirt. It sits high enough up on my neck that it covers most of the bruising, especially with my hair down.
The doorbell rings again, three more times in quick succession. I frown. Penelope? Did she decide to come down here after all, completely unannounced? Her texts didn’t sound like she had left her sister’s place, but she would ring the doorbell like that, if for no other reason than to annoy me.
Could be Oliver, too, even though he’s never bothered to ring the doorbell before.
Usually just taps on my back door, although I haven’t seen him since the weekend he spent at my house while his parents were away.
Our last conversation was him thanking me for letting him spend the night, right before he made me swear not to come and talk to his parents. I agreed. Maybe I shouldn’t have.
I bustle downstairs and into the foyer. There’s no sign of anyone through the little stained glass window set in the door, and so maybe it’s not much of a surprise when I pull the door open, and it is, in fact, Oliver standing on the stoop.
“Hey, bud—” The words lodge in my throat.
He has a black eye.
“Can I come in?” he signs. “Please?”
“What happened?”
He’s zeroed in on the living room, though, brushing past me so quickly that the hairs on my arm stand on end. “Oliver? Are you okay?”
He sits on the edge of the couch, his knees pulled up to his chest. My heart thunders.
“Oliver, you know you can talk to me, right?” I kneel on the floor to look up at him, and he flicks his gaze over to me.
The bruising is around his left eye, making it look sunken.
The sight of that, a black eye on a child, makes my stomach twist around in angry knots.
“Whoever did that to you, you can tell me. Even if it was—” I swallow, knowing what I have to say it even though I don’t want to. “Even if it was Theo.”
Oliver gives me a disgusted look. “Theo wouldn’t hurt me.”
I breathe out. “Then who?” I feel like I know the answer already, though.
Oliver looks away from me, down at the floor. His brow is knitted up tight, and he hugs his legs in so close that it’s like he’s trying to make himself disappear. I honestly don’t know what to do. I have no experience with children. Certainly not with a child who is clearly being abused.
How the fuck did I not see it before?
“Oliver,” I say softly, brushing his hair back. “You came here for a reason.”
“They don’t care,” he signs around his legs.
“Who doesn’t?”
“My parents.”
A weight drops in my stomach. I suck in air, sharp and tight. “What do you mean? What don’t they care about?”
“Anything,” he signs. Then, with a single flick of his wrist, “Me.”
A cold, sick feeling works through my belly.
I hate myself for not making the connections earlier.
Because I’ve seen all the fucking clues, haven’t I, even if I didn’t want to face what they were?
His mother’s cold, angry voice when I came by to ask about his imaginary friend.
The shouting I heard when he would disappear inside his house.
The fact that he was left alone to fend for himself for an entire weekend.
“Oliver,” I say again, and when he turns his gaze over to me, I sign the rest of it. “Please. Tell me what happened.”
His face is hard and stony, and I don’t know what to do. I need a professional. Child Protective Services? Better safe than sorry, even though the last thing I want is for Oliver to tell them about Theo.
That doesn’t matter, I admonish myself. Theo can take care of himself.
“Please,” I sign. “I can’t help you if I don’t know what happened.”
Oliver swallows and slowly lowers his knees down until he’s sitting normally. “I want to see Theo,” he signs. “But Mom took my boat away.”
I take a deep breath. “We’ll find a way to get you over there,” I tell him. “Why did she take your boat away?” That seems a safe question, since he clearly doesn’t want to tell me about his eye.
“Because she hates me.”
I swallow, my throat dry. “Was it because of the camping trip? Because you spent the weekend with me?”
Oliver stares sullenly up at me. “They didn’t know about that.” His eyes gleam. “Can you take me to see Theo now?”
“Why do you want to see Theo?” I ask, feeling dizzy. I’m not prepared for this. In fact, I’m certain I’m going to fuck it up.
“Because Theo is my friend,” Oliver says. “And he told me that if anyone ever hurt me, I should tell him.”
I take a jagged breath. A million thoughts flood my head. Would Theo kill someone for Oliver? Surely Oliver doesn’t realize that, and I don’t think for a second that’s what he actually wants, to be the reason someone—his parents, it seems—should die.
“He’ll protect me,” Oliver says, his signs becoming fast and jagged. It takes me a second to parse what he’s saying. “But I can’t go across the lake without a boat. Can you drive there?”
With that last question, Oliver gives me a look of such pure desperation that I feel my heart crack in two. I know telling him no isn’t remotely a possibility.
“Let me check,” I say weakly.
Oliver draws his knees up to his chest again, squeezing himself up tight.
With shaking hands, I pull up a map of Hanging Lake on my phone.
The main road does seem to wind around the lake, dead-ending near the start of the peninsula.
It’s going to take a lot longer than rowing across.
Or even swimming across, for that matter.
But Oliver’s not in a swimsuit. To be honest, I’m not sure he even knows how to swim.
“It looks like it,” I say, and he jerks his gaze up to me. God, it makes my heart hurt to see the bruise around his eye. “But we’re probably going to have to hike over to his cabin.”
“We won’t,” Oliver says. “He’ll know we’re there.”
My heart flutters, although I don’t say anything.
“We need to hurry,” Oliver says, his eyes big and desperate. “Please. Before they realize I’m gone.”
The bruising around his eyes seems to swim out at me. All I can do is nod.
Ten minutes later, I’m winding down the lakeside road, my phone’s GPS glowing in the passenger seat. Oliver is curled up in the backseat, watching the trees flicker past us. It’s all trees out here, standing guard against the smooth blue waters of Hanging Lake.
This is a mistake. I’m sure it’s a mistake.
I should have told Oliver that I was calling CPS, that someone would come help him.
But I think about his big, pleading eyes and how excited he was for our little campout.
I think about kind Theo is with him, and how unafraid Oliver is whenever he’s around.
Callie saved me and Penelope, I think, squeezing hard on the steering wheel. She’s just like Theo, and she saved us.
By killing our attacker, though.
The road narrows as we come to the bend of the lake, heading toward the peninsula. Gravel crunches under the tire.
“Almost there,” I say, although I’m not sure if that’s actually true. The forced cheeriness in my voice makes me cringe. When I glance up in my rearview mirror, Oliver’s still staring out the window.
A yellow sign flashes ahead: Road ends .5 miles. I breathe out, trying to work out what I’m going to say to Theo. Don’t kill Oliver’s parents. That’s all there is to say, isn’t there?
Another sign. End of road. Trees crowd in tight, and I press down on the brakes, because the road literally does end, cutting off abruptly in front of a big red and white barrier fence.
A row of pine trees rises behind it. On one of them, rather conspicuously, is a large, battered sign reading DANGER. KEEP OUT.
Not that it stops Oliver. He’s already scrambling out of the car.
“Hold up!” I cut the engine and jump out after him, leaving my car parked in the middle of the road. Oliver looks over at me dolefully.
“Hurry,” he says.
“Don’t go in the woods by yourself,” I say. “Theo, um, might be able to know we’re here, but it’s gonna take him a while to get over to us, okay?”
Theo kicks at the gravel on the road, sending a few stones skittering into the underbrush. I look over at my car, sigh, and decide it’s fine where it is. No one should be coming down this dead-end of a road.
Oliver stamps his foot.
“I’m coming, I’m coming.” I look down at the map on my phone.
All I can see are splotches of green and splotches of blue.
There aren’t any trails, because, as I damn well know, it’s dangerous.
But I can see, more or less, that we’re standing on the edge of the peninsula, and I think I have a good sense of how I can get us over to the lake shore.
Oliver is right; Theo will sense us, and I’m sure he’ll come looking.
But it’ll be easier to walk along the shore than cut across the woods.
I take a deep breath and look over at Oliver. God, I hope I’m not making a huge mistake.
But I still plaster on a smile and say, “Are you ready to go find him?”