Chapter 41 Chloe
CHLOE
Theo wraps Oliver up in his jacket and carries him back to my car.
I trail behind them, my heart heavy with worry.
At least the trek back doesn’t seem to take as long as the trail to find him; in the end, Oliver was only about five minutes off from the freeway.
It had felt like hours, following behind Theo as he glided through the snow like a bloodhound.
I don’t let myself think of all the reasons why he was able to do that. All the lives he must have taken, learning how to track a scent. All that matters is he found Oliver before it was too late.
The car is waiting where we left it, sitting askew on the snow and ice. I blast the heat as high as I can as Theo settles into the passenger seat, Oliver still clinging to him. He looks at me over the snow-frosted mop of Oliver’s hair, his brow furrowed with worry.
“How is he?” I sign, and I hope Theo knows what I mean. He can sense things—heartbeats, breath. I know that.
Theo shifts his arms around Oliver, who’s still trembling in his thin jacket. “Alive,” he says.
I swallow, my throat dry. “Oliver?” His name comes out in a rasp. “Are you able to sign?”
Oliver stirs, which does make me feel a little better. But when he looks over at me, terror slams through me again. His skin is pale, his lips still vaguely bluish, his eyes sunken. He blinks.
I look at Theo again, and I wish I could know what he’s thinking. The urgency with which he tracked down Oliver—it was frightening, honestly, knowing how he knew to do it. But I’m grateful for it, too.
“What were you doing out here?” I ask gently.
Oliver lifts his hands, and that’s when I see the blood smeared against his knuckles. “Where’d you get those?” I gasp, pulling his hands toward me. They’re covered in cuts.
He pulls them back to sign, “Windows.” Then he says, “Can we go home now?”
My blood pounds in my ears. “You mean back to your foster parents?”
Oliver’s reaction is immediate. His whole body stiffens, and his eyes go wide, and he shakes his head furiously. Theo’s expression changes, too. It turns dark and stern and intense. I might have been scared in any other circumstance.
Around Oliver’s body, he signs, “He’s afraid.”
My heart thuds. “Did your foster parents do something to you, Oliver?” The heat blasts out of the vents, making the car feel too hot, too stuffy. At least for me. Oliver needs it, surely. He needs a hospital, truth be told.
“They hate me,” Oliver signs. “Like my parents. Please take me home.”
Theo meets my gaze, and for a second, I feel like I know what he’s thinking, the way he always seems to know what I’m thinking. Home is the peninsula. But I suppose my house will do.
“You’re hurt,” I say gently.
“Home,” Oliver signs, then buries his head into Theo’s arm. Theo wraps Oliver up protectively and stares at me, his eyes bright as the snow. “Take him home,” he signs against Oliver’s shivering back.
And so I do. I turn the car around, inch by terrifying inch, so that we’re driving away from Rockingstead. Away from a hospital. Away from the foster parents, whatever they did. I know I should call Sofia, but I tell myself I’ll do it when we’re back at my house.
The car rumbles across the half-melted ice. I squeeze the steering wheel. “Keep checking on him,” I say aloud to Theo, too afraid to take my eyes off the road. “If anything seems wrong—”
Theo puts his hand on my thigh, a reassuring pat. Yes, I will.
By the time I pull into my driveway, my skin is sheened with clammy sweat from the heater. Oliver seems better, though. He shifts around in Theo’s arms, and his face has much more color. Theo carries him carefully into the house, like he’s afraid Oliver might break, and sets him down on the couch.
Oliver clings to him, his little fists grabbing onto Theo’s jacket. But Theo makes a low, calming sound until Oliver lets go. “You’re safe,” he signs. “Chloe will help you.”
With that, Oliver looks over at me. The snow’s melted in his hair, turning it damp. He’s not shaking anymore.
But god, he still looks haunted.
I wrap a blanket around his shoulders and kneel to look at him. Behind me, Theo stacks logs into the fireplaces.
“What happened?” I sign.
Oliver studies me for a long time. “I don’t want to go back there,” he finally says. “I want to be a ghost, like Theo.”
My heart clenches, and I glance back to where Theo is stoking the fire with a match. It flares bright, the flames licking through the ashes.
“You can’t be like Theo,” I say aloud. I want him to hear it.
Theo’s back tenses, and I turn to look at Oliver again.
“Why not?” His eyes are big and sorrowful.
I breathe out. “Because you still have your whole life in front of you. Ghosts—ghosts have to die first.”
Tears shimmer on Oliver’s lash line. “I don’t want to go back to them,” he signs furiously, and I know I need to get my first aid kit to tend to the cuts on his knuckles. I also don’t want to leave him alone. “Don’t make me go back.”
“I won’t,” I say quickly.
“I want to stay with you and Theo!”
I feel Theo’s presence behind me, like a shadow falling across the room. He must have signed something I don’t see, because Oliver says, “You promise?”
I jerk my gaze over to Theo. “What did you tell him?”
Theo’s eyes fix on mine. “That I will always protect him.” Something flashes in his expression. “Same as I would you.”
I think about how quickly he found Oliver, tracking him through the snow and the cold. All that killer’s intensity, all that focus, narrowed in on the one thing that mattered.
Six months ago, Theo shattered my heart into pieces, and I hated him for it. Now, I can’t ever imagine hating him again.
“I have a first aid kit in my kitchen,” I say slowly. “Can you bring it to me? So I can patch up Oliver's hands?”
He nods, his eyes searing into me. Then I turn back to face Oliver, still snuggled down in this blanket. “Tell me what happened.”
Oliver’s expression darkens.
“Please.”
Theo walks into the kitchen, his footsteps heavy and ominous, the way they were that night six months ago. For me, at least. I’m not so sure those footsteps sounded ominous to Oliver. “I need to know what to tell your social worker, Sofia, so I can try and convince her to let you stay with me.”
I have no idea if it’ll work. But I have to try.
Theo steps back into the living room, holding the first aid kit. Oliver glances over at him and takes a deep breath. “They were mean,” he signs slowly.
“Your foster parents?” I take the kit from Theo and pull out some wet wipes and a tube of antiseptic.
Oliver nods, although he doesn’t meet my eye. “They told me I had to learn to talk.”
My throat tightens. “Not with your hands, I assume?”
He nods while I whip the blood off his fingers. “What did they do?” I ask once I’m done.
Oliver looks over at Theo again, who nods a little. Go on.
“They would make me do these exercises,” Oliver says. “And when I couldn’t do them, they would yell at me. Just like my parents did.” His eyes shine with tears, and I squeeze the roll of bandages in my hand. Maybe it wasn’t the right thing to ask him to tell me. Maybe I’m making it worse.
But then Oliver says, “And sometimes, they would lock me out of the house at night. In the backyard. It was cold and scary, and they wouldn’t let me come in, no matter how hard I knocked on the door.”
Theo stiffens beside me and makes a low, growling sound, his fingers clenching up into fists.
I put my hand on his leg the way he did mine in the car.
Breathe, I want to say to him, because I can’t have him stalking into Rockingstead and killing people, even if they probably deserve it. Not if this is going to work.
Theo breathes out. “How did you cut your hands?” he asks.
Oliver looks down at his knuckles like he’s surprised to see the blood. “Trying to get back inside. It was snowing.”
My heart cracks. It’s the only word for it: my heart cracks like it’s made out of glass, and I toss the bandages aside and pull Oliver into an embrace, burying my nose in his damp hair.
I don’t know what to say. All I can do is hold him and look over the top of his head at Theo, who watches us with a strange, uncertain expression.
Then he kneels down, and he wraps his arms around us both.
I ease the door open to my bedroom and peer inside.
Oliver’s fast asleep, curled up under the blanket and clutching the little stuffed alligator toy I dug out of storage for him.
My head is still buzzing from my conversation with Sofia.
Somehow, I managed to convince her to let him stay with me for the time being.
Putting Oliver on video chat to ask for it certainly helped.
Tomorrow I’ll get him in to see the doctor in Pinella. But for now, I let him sleep.
When I go back into the living room, the curtain that covers the picture window has been dragged open, revealing the snowy landscape outside.
White, blazing sunlight pours into the room, making me feel momentarily blinded after the last forty-five minutes I spent in the spare bedroom, talking with Sofia.
“Theo?” I call out, and then I see that he’s outside, pacing back and forth on the pier, his hair hanging in his eyes.
He’s worried.
That the thought surprises me, even a little, is unfair to him.
Of course he’s worried. He was worried when I said I was going to call Sofia, his face scrunching up like he didn’t want me to do it.
Like we could all just move into his cabin across the lake and hide there, off the grid, pretending the outside world doesn’t exist.
He can be a ghost. We can’t.
I go to him, stepping onto the back porch without bothering to put on a coat. The wind off the lake is sharp and biting and cold, but the sun gives enough warmth that I don’t care. He stops mid-pace and looks over at me, the wind making his coat flap around his legs.
A killer, watching from the pier.
“Oliver’s going to stay with me,” I call out, the wind catching my voice. “At least for the next few days.”
Theo lopes toward me, unnaturally fast, and we meet in the middle of the pier. The wind is so much harsher on the water.
“Why only a few days?” he asks, hands slicing emphatically through the air.
I sigh. “Because that’s how things work. But Oliver told the social worker he wants to stay with me. That he feels safe here.”
Theo scowls. “He is safe here.”
“I know. I told her that. This is the safest place for him.” I look up at Theo, at his harsh, worried expression.
“I couldn’t tell her about you, but—” I breathe out.
“I know it. And so does Oliver.” The wind gusts around us, and I step closer to him, put my hand on his arm.
“You’re the reason it’s safe here, for him. ”
Theo’s expression immediately softens, and he brushes my cheek with the back of his hand, his knuckles rough against my skin. It’s not until I feel his touch that I realize how wound up I’d been, too, and I fall against him, pressing my face into his chest.
“I’m going to fight for him,” I whisper, clutching at Theo’s shirt. He wraps his arms around my waist. “I’m going to try for custody. Okay? I promise. But I just—”
I look up at Theo, who’s listening intently, his pale eyes boring down into mine. This is the part that I know I need to say, even though I’m afraid of it. I’m afraid of what it says about me that this is what I want.
That he’s what I want.
“I don’t want to do it alone,” I whisper. “I don’t want to leave. I want to stay here.” I swallow, tears edging into my vision. “I want you to help. And so does Oliver.”
Something like astonishment washes across Theo’s face, and for a long time, he just stares down at me, the lake wind blustering around us. Then he says, “Are you sure?”
My heart squeezes. Part of me thinks I shouldn’t be sure, that I’m crazy for even considering it. Maybe I am. Maybe it doesn’t matter.
I cup Theo’s face, and he tilts it into my hand, his eyes fluttering closed.
“You asked me why you couldn’t protect someone you love.
” My voice trembles, and Theo’s eyes open and burn right through me.
“And I didn’t answer then, but—of course you can.
” I take a deep breath. “But so can I. Which is why you’ve got to promise not to kill Oliver’s old foster parents. I don’t want them hunting you down.”
Theo gives a little quizzical tilt of his head, then breaks into a smile, which is not remotely the reaction I’m expecting.
“You want to protect someone you love?” he asks. “You want to protect me?”
I nod.
“So you’re saying you love me?”
Heat blooms in my chest. In my cheeks.
“Yes,” I whisper.
Theo’s grin widens. Then he swoops me up in his arms and swings me around until I’m clinging to him, and all I can feel is that love, impossible and terrifying and exhilarating all at once.
When Theo sets me down, he kisses me, and it’s not angry or devouring. It’s sweet and gentle. The kind of kiss that Oliver could see.
“I love you,” I whisper against Theo’s lips. “I know it’s fucking crazy, and I still don't know how it can work, but—”
“It’ll work,” Theo signs against my chest. “I promise.”
And then he kisses me again, wrapping me in his strength and his warmth, as the cold wind swirls around us.