Chapter 81
Brooke
My therapy session with Dr. Feldman is quieter than the others.
Nothing erupts, and nothing unravels. The truth settles in me, and it finally feels quiet.
Surprisingly she still wanted to treat me after everything.
After the headlines, the murders, the fire that was supposed to end it all.
When I reached out months later, using a new name, and a story so close to the truth it barely qualified as a lie, she didn’t hesitate.
She looked me in the eye through the screen and said, “I know who you are, Brooke. I’m still here. And your secret is safe with me.”
The screen loads. Her face appears like it always does, serene, patient, a soft lamp glowing in the corner behind her but everything feels different. Or maybe I do. I sit cross-legged on the couch, fingers knotted in the hem of my sleeve, but not because I’m unraveling.
Dr. Feldman waits, as she always does, without pressure just giving me space.
I exhale slowly. “I still have nightmares about the manor.”
She nods, and doesn't write it down.
“I still miss the girl I was before everything,” I sigh. “Not in a sad, desperate way. Just… sometimes I grieve her. The version of me who didn’t know what it felt like to kill someone, or be hunted, or tortured.”
Dr. Feldman’s voice is calm. “Do you wish she could come back?”
I shake my head. “No. She wouldn’t survive this world. I think she had to die for the rest of me to live. But sometimes… I miss not knowing. I miss the version of life where monsters were abstract. Where survival wasn’t a strategy.”
“That’s an honest answer,” she responds. “Painfully so. You’ve carried a lot of guilt about who you had to become.”
“Because part of me liked it.” I meet her eyes through the screen. “Not inflicting pain. But the control, rage, the vengeance. I’m not ashamed of surviving. I’m just scared of what parts of me survived with it.”
Dr. Feldman leans in slightly. “Do you think those parts define you?”
“I think they protect me, but they don’t have to lead.”
She studies me for a moment, then nods. “And now?”
I look down at my hands, then toward the window. “Now I want a life. One that’s real. Even if it’s strange or messy or hidden. Even if we have to build it from nothing.”
“That’s good,” she says. “The desire to reclaim something normal. The key is redefining what normal means for you.”
I laugh under my breath. “I don’t think normal even exists anymore. But peace? Safety? Love? I think those can still happen.”
“And Seth?” she asks gently.
I smile a little. “I choose him. Every version of him. The broken one, the violent one, the one who would burn the world down for me. He’s mine. And I’m his. That’ll never change.”
Dr. Feldman watches me carefully. “And do you feel safe with him?”
“Yes,” I say without hesitation. “Undoubtedly, he’s the only person I feel completely safe with. He knows who I am. He doesn’t ask me to pretend. He’s the only person who never looked away from my flaws.”
She smiles. “That sounds healthy.”
“It feels like it,” I reply.
Dr. Feldman closes her notebook softly. “You’ve done the work, Brooke.
You clawed your way out of something most people couldn’t survive.
You lost things. You let parts of yourself die.
But you’re still here. You’re still choosing love, you’re choosing yourself.
That isn’t only healing. That is transformative. ”
I blink hard, trying to fight back tears. “Thank you.”
“You don’t owe me gratitude,” she says. “You did this. I’m just glad to be here to witness your journey.”
I nod.
Dr. Feldman watches me for a moment, then her tone shifts, gentler. “Before we end, tell me one thing you’re going to do tonight that is for you.”
I stare at my screen, thinking of a hundred answers that sound good and mean nothing.
“I’m going to breathe, I’m going to let myself feel okay for five minutes without worrying.
“Good,” she says. “Keep it small. Keep it real. And Brooke, when the urge to punish yourself shows up, name it. Don’t feed it.”
I swallow. “I’ll try.”
“I know. We’ll talk again soon.”
The call ends.
The screen goes dark, and for a second I just sit there with my phone in my hand. I set the phone down on the couch and stare at the blank television screen.
Footsteps come down the hall.
Seth appears in the doorway, shirt sleeves pushed up, hair a mess, eyes locked on me in a way that says he has been listening for my tone since the call started.
“You done?” he asks.
“Yeah, I’m done.”
He comes closer and stops in front of me. He doesn’t touch me yet. He studies my face first.
“How bad?”
“Not bad,” I say. “It was good. Annoyingly good.”
His mouth twitches. “That’s my girl.”
He shifts his weight and looks me over again, like he’s trying to decide what will keep me from spiraling tonight.
“What do you want?” he asks, voice low. “Tea, a shower…my dick?”
I snort once, because of course he would say that.
“Something else actually.”
Seth’s brows lift slightly. “Talk to me.”
I stare at him for a second, and I can feel my pulse pick up. A need that won’t settle.
“You wanna know something fucked up?”
His eyes narrow just a little. “Always.”
“What if we go dig him up,” I look up at Seth. “Grant. I keep seeing his face in my dreams. I keep thinking about him under the dirt. I want to look at him and know how really dead he is.”
Seth holds my gaze for a beat, then nods once like it’s a simple plan.
“Okay…I’ll get the shovel.”
That should scare me, how fast he agrees. It doesn’t, it calms me.
He turns toward the back closet and pulls it out, the one we kept for practical reasons and never talked about. He slings it over his shoulder like it weighs nothing. I grab my jacket and my boots without thinking.
Outside, the night air is cold and clean. Gravel crunches under our steps. My thoughts won’t stop replaying it, the way we buried him fast that night, adrenaline in our veins, hands shaking, blood drying on our skin. We dug. We dropped him in. We covered him up. We left.
Tonight we come back.
The forest smells damp. The ground looks undisturbed in the way nature always does, even when it is hiding rot.
Seth grabs the shovel. I take a flashlight. We walk in together, following a path neither of us ever marked. That night burned itself into my head.
We reach the spot.
We didn’t leave a marker. But we remembered exactly where we put him.
Seth plants the shovel into the earth and starts digging. I kneel beside the hole and help clear dirt as it comes up, hands working fast, breath coming short.
The dirt is heavier than I remember. It resists in stubborn clumps. The cold makes the soil hard, packed tight. Every time the shovel bites down, it sends a jolt up my arms.
Minutes pass, maybe more. My sense of time turns useless.
Then the shovel hits something solid.
Seth stops immediately. He doesn’t speak. He just changes the angle, digs slower, careful now. I crouch and brush loose soil aside with my gloved hands, peeling dirt away in small, shaking motions.
Then we see the crate. Seth hops in and pries it open.
Grant isn’t a man anymore.
He is a ruined thing beneath the earth. His skin is darkened to a sick, mottled gray, split wide in places where it has pulled apart, sagging in others where the tissue has collapsed inward.
What is left of his face barely holds its shape.
His mouth is stretched open too far, lips torn and peeled back, teeth exposed in a permanent, broken grimace that no longer resembles anything human.
There are holes eaten straight through him where insects burrowed deep and stayed. The flesh around them is soft and caved in, wet with decay. Parts of him look hollowed out, like something worked through him from the inside and left nothing worth keeping behind.
Rot clings to him. The kind that glistens under the dirt, where the body has started to break down into something unrecognizable. The sour, putrid smell hits hard. I breathe through my mouth so I don’t gag, but it barely helps.
I stare anyway. I need my brain to see it. I need the truth to land where the fear kept living.
Seth looks down at what’s left of him. His expression stays cold.
Then Seth unzips his jeans and pisses into the grave.
“Rest in piss, motherfucker,” he says.
I laughed, a real one. Head thrown back. That sharp, dangerous joy that made my chest twist.
Seth glances at me. “Better?”
“Yes,” I reply.
We don’t give Grant more attention than that. We start filling the hole back in. Dirt thuds down. Leaves fall. The ground starts looking ordinary again. The forest takes its secret back.
When we finish, Seth presses the shovel into the dirt once more, firming it down. He wipes his hands on his jeans and turns toward the Jeep.
I follow him through the trees, the flashlight beam bouncing with every step. My chest still aches, but it feels quieter now. It feels manageable.
Seth keeps walking like nothing happened, like we didn't just open the earth and look at something that used to terrorize our lives. He reaches the Jeep first and opens the rear door.
I stop a few feet behind him and cross my arms, watching him dig around in the back like he’s looking for a jacket.
“I think my methods of torture might be better than yours at this point,” I taunt.
Seth pauses and glances over his shoulder. “Excuse me?”
“I’m just saying. I did a lot of the killing. And torturing. Like… a lot.”
He turns more fully toward me, mouth twitching. “Oh so you think you’re a better killer than me?”
I smirk, “I don’t think. I know.”
He gives a dry laugh, then faces the Jeep again. He grabs the duffel we tossed in the back, unzips it, and reaches down.
He pulls out the black skull mask.
The scratched edges catch the flashlight beam. That mask has seen too much of us.
“Interesting,” he murmurs. “Let’s see if your survival skills are still intact, final girl.”
I grin, biting my lip. “You gonna give me a head start?”
Seth flips the mask once in his hand, then looks at me. “You still fast?”
I raise my brows. “Are you asking because you care, or because you want to watch me run?”
His mouth curves. “Both.”
My pulse jumps.
He slips the mask on.
“Run.”