Chapter 42 #3
“I didn’t know what he meant,” she murmurs. “But something inside me knew it mattered. So when Martha sedated him, I ran. No coat. No shoes. Just ran through the dark like something was chasing me.”
She drags a trembling hand through her hair, her other hand pressing to her chest like she’s trying to keep her heart from falling out.
“There’s only one tree house in this town, and it’s by a lake. Almost all the teens hang out there. So I went. I climbed up those rotted stairs quietly in the dark and—”
Her voice cracks. She has to close her eyes just to continue.
“And that’s when I saw it.”
She’s not crying now. Not really. Her voice is too flat, too hollow.
“Three boys. Teenagers. Standing in that cramped space, their shoes covered in blood, arguing over what to do… and who to blame. There was a body on the floor, and it belonged to a teenager, too; he was bleeding out with a knife still lodged in his stomach. Just lying there like a discarded animal.”
She opens her eyes, but the light is gone. Only emptiness remains.
“I didn’t make a sound. I didn’t breathe. Just stared at them. And then… I saw it, his camera, tucked between the window slats. Half-hidden behind the frame.”
She inhales sharply.
“They didn’t see me,” she continues. “So I took the camera, and I ran. When I got back to Martha’s, she told me Lucas was badly injured.
So badly that if he didn’t get surgery, he wouldn’t survive.
” She swallows hard, her fingers twisting in her lap.
“I was livid. Confused. Terrified. I didn’t want him anywhere near the police or a public hospital—one wrong question, one call, and everything would fall apart.
I didn’t want them taking my boy away. Martha…
she said she knew someone. An unlicensed surgeon.
A man whose license had been revoked years ago, but who still practiced in secret. ”
Her eyes flicker up to me, sharp with remembered fear.
“It sounded insane. Risky. Trusting someone like that? But Martha swore he was skilled, said he owed her a favor. And she… she cared for Lucas. So I believed her. I had no choice.”
Her voice cracks, “We did it. We brought him in through the back of this run-down hospital, no paperwork, no names. The kind of place that doesn’t exist on record.
They wheeled him straight into a room, and I—” she cuts herself off, pressing a trembling hand over her mouth.
“I paid everything I had. My entire life savings. It cost more than I could have imagined, but I didn’t care.
He was my boy. I just needed him alive.”
She exhales shakily, a mix of relief and grief in her voice. “And by some miracle, the surgery worked. Lucas survived. But that night…” her eyes glaze over again, “that night cost me everything.”
She finally looks straight at me. Her lips are pale, her eyes hollow, and in that moment, I realize—this is the turning point. For her. For Lucas. For everything.
“What happened in that tree house, Kathryn?” My voice is low and inpatient. My chest tightens, lungs burning from how long I’ve been holding my breath. “What did they do to Lucas?”
Her throat bobs, eyes shimmering as she stares past me. I watch her fight the tears, see her jaw tremble as she shakes her head and looks away.
My heart pounds.
No.
No, it shouldn’t be what I’m thinking. It can’t be.
“Fuck,” I mutter under my breath, fists clenching.
“I hate this,” Kathryn says abruptly, exhaling hard through her nose like she’s cracking under the weight of everything she’s carried.
She rises to her feet with an edge of panic.
Her eyes meet mine for a second, haunted and hollow—but she says nothing as she turns toward her trailer and disappears inside.
The door slams shut.
I stare at it, frozen, my mind spiraling into a place I don’t want to go. My stomach churns with dread. The air feels too thick. Too loud.
And suddenly, all I can think about is him.
Lucas.
I dropped him off this morning for his driver’s test. He started earlier this week. He was hesitant about it for weeks, but finally gave in and signed up. Now, I just want to find him. Hold him. Wrap him in my arms and never let him go again.
The door creaks open.
Kathryn steps out slowly, her movements measured but heavy, like each step is dragging something invisible behind her. My chest tightens the second I see what she’s holding.
A camera.
Something tells me it’s the same one she told me about—the one he loved, the one he carried everywhere. It’s in her hands now, like it’s made of glass and memory and regret.
When she reaches me, there’s war in her eyes. Grief and fire, battling inside her.
“Lucas called me two days ago,” she says, her voice soft, like the words are too fragile to speak loudly. “he rarely does that.”
She pauses, clutching the camera tighter, fingers trembling. She looks up at me, and something in her expression breaks.
“I thought he was calling to check up on me,” she says. “For a moment, I was… I was hopeful.”
She gives a sad, hollow laugh. “But that’s not why he called.”
My brows draw in. I feel the shift in the air.
“He called to tell me about you,” she says, and her voice trembles, cracking on the last word like it physically hurts. “He said he was in love with you.”
My heart melts.
“He said it terrified him,” she continues. “That it makes him feel alive and afraid and seen all at once. He said you look at him like you heard him, even when no one else did. That whenever he’s with you… He doesn’t feel broken.”
Something shifts inside me—tightens, then swells so fast it knocks the breath from my chest. My heart aches, the kind of ache that makes you want to get in a car and drive until you’re by the side of the person who needs you most. Every part of me is screaming to go to him.
To wrap him in my arms and remind him that I’m not going anywhere. Ever.
“But… he says he doesn’t feel complete.” Her voice cracks like it’s been holding that sentence back for too long.
“He’s afraid, Alexander. Afraid that when you find out the truth—what really happened to him—you’ll see the parts of him that are…
tainted. The damage. The shame. He thinks you won’t want him anymore, that you’ll look at him differently.
That you’ll stop seeing him the way you do now. ”
I clench my jaw, biting down on the fire rising in my throat.
“He says it’s not fair,” she continues, a broken breath escaping her. “That the boys who did this to him, who turned him into someone he can barely stand, are out there living their lives happily thriving. While he’s trapped in his own skin, drowning in self-hate and low self-worth.”
My hands curl into fists in my lap.
“I won’t disappear from his life.” My voice comes out low, steady, and sharp like cut glass. I lift my gaze to meet hers, every syllable heavy with promise. “I don’t care what happened. I’m not going anywhere.”
She studies me. For a long, quiet second, she doesn’t say anything, just watches me like she’s searching for something in my face, like she wants to believe me but part of her is still afraid to.
Then her eyes flicker down to the camera clutched in her hands, and I see the grief come rushing back into them like a wave.
“You’ll see the happiest moments of my son in here,” she says, her voice soft and cracking. “But you’ll also see the worst. The broken version of him. The scared and helpless version”
Her hands tremble slightly as she holds the camera out to me.
“And… you’ll see what happened to him that night.”
I hesitate.
My palms go cold. I stare at the camera like it’s something sacred and cursed all at once.
Do I really want to see this?
Do I have the right to step into that part of him? That sacred, splintered corner of his life that he hasn’t offered me himself? Would it hurt him to know I saw it without his permission?
But there’s something else, something stronger than hesitation.
Rage.
A quiet, consuming fury that is crawling beneath my skin like wildfire.
I want to know who they are. The motherfuckers who stole his peace. The ones who took his sleep, his voice, his safety, and walked away untouched. I want to know their faces, their names, their shadows.
Because I want to destroy them.
I want to make them feel it. I want to know how they did it so that I can punish and torture them ten times worse because no one—no one—hurts him and walks away like it meant nothing.
Not while I’m still breathing.
I reach out for the camera, but Kathryn doesn’t let go.
Her fingers tighten around it, knuckles white, trembling.
I lift my eyes to hers, my brow raised with quiet impatience, but what I see in her face stops me—grief, fear, hesitation. Her lips part as if the words pain her to say.
“Please,” she whispers, voice raw, “I beg you. What you’re about to see…
It’s not just disturbing, it’s devastating.
No one else has seen this. No one.” Her voice breaks as tears finally spill down her cheeks.
“Lucas doesn’t even know I still have it.
He thinks it was lost that night… or that one of those boys took it. ”
My chest begins to ache with a slow burn, the weight of what she’s saying tightening like a vice.
She swallows, wiping at her cheek, but it’s useless. Her tears are flowing now, years of silent suffering unraveling in front of me.
“I’m giving this to you because…” she hesitates, then meets my eyes, steady and serious despite the shake in her voice, “I saw what you did to Oliver. I know you’re capable of protecting him in a way the system won’t.
In fact, they might arrest Lucas, too, if this gets out to the police.
I need you to take care of this. Of them.
Give him closure. Let him breathe again.
Let him live without that shadow following him every time he tries to smile. ”
Her fingers finally loosen around the camera.