Chapter 7
Seven
Emory
My fingers traced the bullets on my coffee table.
I hadn’t loaded the gun. I was waiting. I didn’t know what for, but I felt like if I offed myself before I answered Enoch’s call, I was going to cause him more emotional damage.
The least I could do was give him this one thing, this last brief moment of my time.
Enoch wanted to talk. To me. To Shiloh.
I wasn’t an idiot. I knew that leaving the way that I did, faking my death by suicide, was going to be traumatic.
But I honestly didn’t think that four and a half years later it would still have such an impact on their lives.
I was young, and na?ve, and clearly way in over my head with everything going on in my life at the time, but sacrificing some of their happiness seemed like a fair trade for my own life.
I didn’t know that it was going to turn out like this when I agreed to Agent Nguyen’s terms. Everything happened so fast, and I wasn’t prepared for how much guilt it would leave me when I didn’t get to give them a proper goodbye. When Los Siete faked my death so that I could become Olivia Walsh.
It made me sick to think that even for one second they might have considered themselves to blame for my death. I wouldn’t wish that kind of guilt on anyone, least of all the only two people outside of my brother and Sebastian that I’d loved before.
I checked the time on my phone again. I only had an hour before Bradley was going to be here with the paperwork. Was that shitty of me? To let Bradley find my body. Should I leave him a note?
I scoffed. That didn’t seem to work out well the last time, did it?
I grimaced, my fresh cuts burning as I adjusted my position on the couch. I thought the high would’ve given me some sense of peace before killing myself, but it only served as a reminder of how fucked in the head I was. It was hereditary, I was sure.
I sighed.
Maybe Enoch had changed his mind. How much longer should I wait for him to call before I just stopped…before I loaded the gun?
The phone vibrated against the coffee table, rattling the bullets. I swallowed. The Florida area code had my heart racing in my chest.
I hesitantly swiped to answer the call.
“Hello?”
“Sh-Emory?”
I licked my lips. “Yeah.”
“Hi. It’s me…Nox.”
I dug my nails into the scabs on the side of my leg, wincing at the tingle of pain.
“Hi.”
An awkward pause ensued and I cracked my knuckles.
“Um…I…Shit. Sorry. I just, I, um, I’m still a little bit in shock, I guess.”
I nodded, waiting for him to continue.
He sighed. “Um, is it okay, like, can you talk right now?”
“Yeah. I’m not busy.” I eyed the gun.
“Um, so. You’re alive,” he chuckled softly and my stomach clenched. “H-how? I know, the deputy said that they faked your death, but um…I just, I’m just a little confused. Like…what happened?”
“It’s um…” I cleared my throat nervously. “It’s a long story. I don’t really know where to start.”
“I guess you can start with that day,” Enoch said. “You left us voicemails and then… we believed you killed yourself. There was a body. I…I guess I never saw it; it was a closed casket, the morgue said…said your face had been damaged from the shotgun you’d used.” Enoch cleared his throat.
“I never wanted any of that to happen. I swear I didn’t do anything to intentionally hurt you…
I was just trying to protect you both. It wasn’t my idea, the suicide, but they said it was the only way to make sure all lose ends were tied when I left.
When I left those voicemails, I didn’t think about how they would affect you…
I just wanted to be able to say goodbye. ”
I swallowed.
Fuck. I wasn’t planning to have to go into this much detail.
The silence dragged.
"How are you here now? Are you safe?”
I pulled the sleeves to my sweatshirt down around my hands.
“Y-yeah. I’m safe.” I fiddled with one of the bullets. “I’ve been in Anchorage for a while now. But…with you recognizing me, um, they want to move me again and I know you don’t want anything to do with—”
“No,” Enoch said roughly. “I just got you back. You can’t leave again.”
“It’s for your own safety. We shouldn’t even be talking, Enoch. I should go.”
My finger hovered over the end call button.
“Wait, you’re just gonna leave?” Enoch asked, making me pause.
“It’s what’s best for everyone,” I sighed.
“No, Shiloh, just wait a second. Please. I don’t…please.”
My heart skipped a beat at the crack in Enoch’s desperate voice.
I took a deep breath, clenching my hand into a tight fist.
“What?”
“When do you have to leave? I want to see you.”
I chewed my lip.
“Would it make a difference?” I asked. “I’m not the Shiloh you knew years ago.”
“And I’m not the same Enoch.” He challenged. “We’ve all changed. But that doesn’t mean that I wouldn’t want to get to know the person you are today.”
“Why?” I asked, genuinely bewildered.
“Because I care about you. Because I’ve missed you and our paths crossed again for a reason. Shiloh, this wasn’t a coincidence us meeting again. This was meant to happen. And I’m not letting this chance slip away.”
I balked at the idea, leaning back from the phone. I clenched my jaw and quickly blinked against the sting of impending tears.
Fuck. Don’t do this to me. You don’t care about me.
“You really don’t want to do this, Enoch. You don’t want to get involved with me. I’m not who you think I am.”
“I should get to decide that on my own, Shiloh. What are you so afraid of? You know me. I’ve always told you that my feelings wouldn’t change, no matter what you’ve kept from me.”
I shook my head, closing my eyes against the burning feeling.
“You don’t mean that. You don’t really want me to stay.”
“Do you have a choice? Will they let you stay here?”
I blinked. I could hear the hope in his voice. The worst fucking human emotion to exist.
“You want to risk your life to, what? Be friends?” I asked incredulously.
“If you’re willing to,” he pleaded. “I want the chance to rebuild our friendship. Just don’t leave because of us. You shouldn’t have to leave because we ran into each other.”
“You don’t understand, Enoch. There are terrible, horrible, awful people out there that want to hurt me. And they will. It’s inevitable. If they find out—”
“Shiloh, your secret is safe with me. With us. I promise. Just give me a chance, yeah?”
I stifled the urge to scream. I was torn, being ripped in two by the future I wanted and the past I couldn’t escape.
“I…I don’t want you to leave,” Enoch chuckled half-heartedly at himself, “and maybe that’s selfish, but I feel it in my bones, Shiloh. We were supposed to run into each other again. God put us on this path again—”
“God?” I parroted on a whisper.
“Yes. It’s the only explanation for how we’ve come to this point. And I’m not going to mess with His plans. I just…I feel it, Shiloh. I feel this connection and I don’t know what that means, or what that looks like, but I just know that I want to give this a chance.”
The hope in Enoch’s inflection was enough to make me pause. Fuck. He can’t be serious.
“But…Jae, he said you hated me. He said you wanted nothing to do with me.”
“I can’t speak for Jae, but hate is the farthest thing I feel for you, Shiloh.”
A kernel, a seed, it was there. Blooming in my chest like I deserved any right to have him in my life. Like I wouldn’t be better off dead. Like I might actually want to keep living. Like all the risks I was taking would be worth it to have him again.
It wasn’t supposed to go like this. I needed to load the gun and finish this once and for all. Why? Why did he have to give me some hope?
“Enoch,” I sighed.
“Can you at least agree to meet me in person one last time before you leave? Can we say goodbye properly this time?”
I rolled one of the bullets between my fingers.
“Fine.”
“Okay.” I could hear it. The excitement in his tone and the guilt had me dropping the bullet back to the coffee table.
One more thing. For Enoch, I could do this one more thing.
“When did you want to meet?”
“Will you still be here this weekend?”
Fuck. This weekend? That’s forever away.
“Sure.”
“Saturday evening? I’ll text you my address.”
I let out a silent scream. “Yeah. Okay. Bye, Enoch.”
◆◆◆
“I’m gonna miss you, kid. I’m…” Bradley took a deep breath.
“I’ll be thinking about you, hoping for the best for you.
Take care of yourself, okay? I mean it. Keep seeing your therapist and don’t waste away out here.
Keep safe, keep vigilant, and don’t be a stranger.
I know I can’t exactly help as a deputy, but I’m here if you wanna talk to someone who knows the truth about your past.”
I stared at my hands in my lap. The room had gotten dark at some point, as dark as it could get when the sun didn’t exactly set, and I was still glued to the same spot I’d taken when Bradley had left with the paperwork.
As I signed all forty pages, I kept replaying Enoch’s voice in my head, asking me to stay, telling me he wanted to get to know me, pleading for me to give him a chance.
Everything felt like a fucking nightmare I couldn’t wake up from.
I managed to curl up in a ball, my body drained and still incredibly sore from the accident, and I stared at the loaded gun on the coffee table.
Freedom. I had freedom for the first time in my life, and I was frozen.
Why did I have to run into him? Why did he have to show up back in my life? Why did I promise to see him again one last time?
Had I not been tortured enough? Had he not been tortured enough?
God, why are you doing this? I just want things to be over. I want this to end.
My phone began buzzing against the table and my muscles locked. Fuck. Is he calling me again?
I grabbed my phone and deflated against the couch when I saw it was Lottie.
I watched as the call went to voicemail. Only a moment passed before she was calling again.
I sighed, reluctantly answering the call.
“Hey.”
“Well, I was going to ask how you’re doing, but I don’t need to after that.”