Chapter 32
Thirty-Two
Tessa
Work had been so busy, I hadn’t even stopped for lunch.
I was back at my house. Colin hadn’t been found, but I couldn’t stay there any longer.
And Dani had come back to stay with me when her meetings wrapped up.
I missed Maddy and Wyatt. Missed the touches Wyatt snuck in when Maddy wasn’t looking, and the middle of the night sex we’d been having in Wyatt’s bed.
I felt like a teenager again, sneaking around and trying not to get caught.
As I locked the clinic behind me, town felt wrong the second I stepped onto Main.
Not loud. Not obvious. Just tilted. Like everything shifted a fraction out of place while I wasn’t looking, and now the whole street was leaning.
I kept my head down as I crossed the sidewalk toward my truck. I could feel eyes on me from behind glass and doorways. I didn’t look back. If I pretended I couldn’t feel them, maybe they wouldn’t be there.
My hand shook as I unlocked the driver’s door.
Cologne hit me first. Too familiar. Too wrong.
“You always forget the back seat,” Colin said quietly.
My scream died in my throat before it ever reached the air.
There he was, sitting sideways behind my seat like he belonged there. Calm. Waiting. His phone lay in his palm, screen dark.
I froze with one boot still on the pavement.
“Get in,” he said.
“Get out of my truck.”
“You can,” he replied. “Or you can listen to me and make this easy.”
I stayed where I was. My pulse roared in my ears.
He lifted his phone and turned the screen toward me.
Maddy.
On the brewery porch. Backpack slung over one shoulder. Wyatt’s truck a soft blur behind her. The timestamp glowed in the corner.
Ten minutes ago.
Everything in me dropped.
“You’ve been near her,” I whispered.
He smiled. “Near is a generous word. Close enough is the truth.”
My body went numb. “If you touch her, I’ll kill you.”
“You won’t. You care too much about surviving to try.”
My breath came fast and shallow. I could hear my own heartbeat. I could barely feel the ground under my feet.
“Why? Why her?”
“Because you love her,” he replied easily. “And because he does. That makes her leverage.”
My vision tunnelled. “You leave her alone. I’ll do whatever you want.”
“That’s what I figured.”
I slid fully into the seat on instinct alone. The door shut with a soft, terrible finality. The lock clicked down the second it closed.
“I swear to God,” I said hoarsely. “If you’re lying about this.”
He slid the phone into the console and gestured with his chin. “Drive.”
I stared at him. “You’re out of your mind.”
“Probably, but you’re the one who’s going to take us wherever I tell you.”
My hands fumbled the keys. They shook so badly I dropped them once before I managed to start the engine.
“Don’t look for him,” Colin said. “Don’t call anyone. If I see a screen light up, I send a message, and it won’t be a picture.”
My chest constricted. “You’re sick.”
“You already told me that,” he replied. “Turn left.”
I obeyed.
Town slid past like a familiar dream turning wrong. The café. The corner store. The stretch of road that led toward the river bend and then further out into nothing. I didn’t speed. I didn’t stall. I drove like my body belonged to someone else.
My phone vibrated in the cup holder.
My sob broke loose as I saw Wyatt’s name.
“Don’t,” Colin said softly.
I didn’t touch it.
“You’re being smart. This is the part where you stop pretending you’re in control.”
The river disappeared behind us. Fields took over. Then scrub. Then gravel.
My thoughts kept skidding back to the same image. Maddy on the porch. Sun in her hair. A moment of normal I’d never see again the same way.
“You were at his house.”
“Briefly.”
“You followed a kid.”
“I followed your weakness.”
Rage flared hot through the terror. “You don’t even see what you are, do you?”
He shrugged. “I see what you made me.”
That landed cold and empty.
The road narrowed. The sky felt larger. Trees thinned. The sense of being watched replaced itself with the certainty of being alone.
He finally spoke again after several minutes of silence. “You almost had me convinced I couldn’t reach you anymore.”
“You never owned me.”
“I owned your doubt, that was always enough.”
The gravel changed under the tires. Deeper. Less traveled. The world grew quieter in a way that felt like being submerged.
I didn’t ask where we were going. I already knew the answer wouldn’t matter.
My phone vibrated again.
Wyatt.
My vision blurred. “Please,” I whispered.
Colin’s hand came down on the console between us. Hard. “You’re done asking.”
I swallowed the sound, trying to claw its way out of me.
The abandoned place came into view like a bruise on the land. A sagging structure set back from the road. Windows dark. The roof was broken in two places. The kind of property people forgot because it hurt to remember it existed.
“Pull in,” he said.
I did.
Gravel crunched under the tires as I brought the truck to a stop. The engine clicked and ticked as it cooled.
For a second, neither of us moved.
Then he reached across and shut off the ignition.
My hands slid uselessly in my lap. My muscles stayed locked. My heart felt too big for my chest.
“Get out,” he said.
“If you lied about her,” I whispered. “If you even scared her.”
He opened his door. “You’ll behave better if you keep believing she’s fine because of you.”
That broke what was left of me.
I stepped out onto the gravel. The air smelled like dust and rot and old rain. The sky over the roofline was pale and endless.
The truck door shut behind me.
Colin walked around the hood with lazy confidence and stopped a few feet away.
“Welcome to quiet,” he said.
And as the wind moved through the dead grass around my boots, the last thing I saw in my mind was Maddy’s face in that impossible slice of normal morning light.