Chapter 18
Olivia
Ididn’t know where I was when I stopped driving. I didn’t look at the signs. I just drove.
I watched as the evening went from a dark blue to a pitch black. Headlights glared at me. I didn’t blink. I watched trucks slide past me, hauling lumber and crates.
The fog seemed to follow from Greyhollow, but even that started to fade away in the mirror. As I made a turn to the next highway, the last of it clung to the rearview. I pressed harder on the gas.
It was almost morning. Bizarrely, I didn’t feel tired.
My body was rigid, locked at the shoulders and wrists. Like it knew I was going to crash the moment I gave myself any respite. It kept me from thinking about anything that happened the night before. I cried most of it out two hours in.
After that, my eyes just dried up. I don’t think I could have handled crying anymore, anyway. My chest was sore and I had little to no voice left in my throat.
My mind was done. It had no more energy to spend recounting the exchange Caleb and I had, or the truth Elias had revealed before that.
The more clinical part of me would want to run calculations about money or my job, but it didn’t matter right now.
It didn’t matter anyway. Nothing mattered.
I kept driving.
When the sun finally started rising, I was further down south. The fuel light blinked. It was only then that I noticed just how heavy my eyes felt. Not from exhaustion, but from the puffiness of my eyelids.
I forced myself to slow down my driving as I reached a patch of stores and arcades.
In the corner, there was a two-pump gas station with a convenience store. Red lights flashed close by.
A tall pole extended into the murky sky. On the end of it, a sign screamed: MOTEL ROOMS 24/7.
I turned into the driveway.
The motel room reminded me of the cottage I stayed at more than a month ago.
The main difference was the peeling wallpaper with floral patterns. The blue blooms seemed to stare at me. I ignored them.
The bed was a moderate queen-sized bed with matching beige blankets and pillowcases. The towels sat on top of it. I remembered how Maureen would place towels on the reading chair instead. I shut that down.
I dropped my bags near the door and didn’t bother to unzip them.
The bathroom light flickered once when I turned it on before finally settling on a gaunt white light. The curtain over the window didn’t quite close all the way and let in a thin strip of parking lot light that cut across the floor like something left over from another guest’s problem.
Every shadow pulled my shoulders tighter. I tried to remind myself that there were no wolves here.
Once I was finally “settled in”, I sat down on the bed.
New place, same routine, I thought.
I sat on the edge of the mattress and tried to think. The thing about numbness was that it worked. I could process things from a distance without feeling any more hurt.
I tried to run through my head everything that I knew now about Northern California. I thought about how the animals moved so fast, I couldn’t identify what they were. I remembered my parents getting in front of me so I could run ahead of them.
I started counting what could’ve changed it. If I didn’t go up to chase that hawk, Caleb wouldn’t have seen me. If I didn’t make a sprint for the car, the wolves would have focused on me and spared my parents.
It wasn’t random. It was all because of me and my bond to Caleb.
I pressed my hands flat against my thighs. Tears came again. I cried quietly, letting the tears roll down my face as the rest of me dropped into the bed sideways.
Despite myself, I wondered how Caleb felt about my decision to leave.
“You’re free.”
There was no resentment in his voice at the time. And I was too shellshocked to register the somber, distant tone as possible sadness.
Everything there came back. Every intimate conversation. Every laugh. The small routines and rituals I established while I was there. Taking care of Jake. Stella and Donovan. The fireplace…
They probably all knew. It explained why, even after the night of the attack, things didn’t become fully open to me. I didn’t resent them. But it didn’t make the pain in my chest hurt any less.
I have nothing… It was the first time I truly acknowledged that. I used to be proud of that. But now, it was truly sinking in that the last seven years had nothing in them.
And now that there was something I cared about, even just briefly… It was taken away from me once again.
Angry sunlight slipped through the blinds and spread across my ceiling.
I don’t know when I fell asleep. I didn’t really care, either. Every part of me was sore; no doubt a repercussion of the overnight drive I made.
I tried to drag myself out of bed, but my arms felt like molasses. I closed my eyes again. When they opened, the sunlight was still there, but now more even.
I parted my lips to find them sticking together. I hadn't eaten or drunk anything, I realized. The nurse inside me kicked in.
I pushed myself up from the bed a second time. The blood from my head rushed downward and I wobbled.
After steadying myself, I grabbed the water. Nausea hit me, and I regretted it immediately.
I could make my way to the diner near the gas station and grab a quick bite to eat. I had no intention of staying there, or I would end up replaying the conversation with Elias in my head again.
Before anything else, though, I pulled up my phone.
There were several missed calls from the night before. I refused to look at the names, but I had a strong feeling it was Stella
After swiping the notifications away, I opened the agency site.
I would have to explain to Daisy why the current assignment didn’t work out. She wasn’t going to be pleased, but she would set me up again if I could transition fast enough.
A couple of months ago, taking on a new position usually excited me.
I got to see a new place, brush up my expertise on necessary skills, and figure out if the place had a nice view.
They excited me because I knew they would be fleeting, in the same way I knew that if I didn't like it, it would be over soon enough.
On the website, I saw several open contracts: a pediatric unit in Tucson, a cardiac floor in Sacramento, a trauma center in Indianapolis, a floating position for a medical-surgical ward, and a small clinic in — I closed the tab before I finished reading.
I needed air.
Functional was a generous word for the ventilation in the room. I didn’t open the window because of bugs, but right now I really needed an open space.
As I exited, I immediately saw the road and the line of trees across it. When the heavy feeling in my chest returned, I turned away.
The parking lot was empty except for two other cars and a truck with out-of-state plates. The diner was only a small walk away, but my legs gave out faster than I expected. I settled for finding a vending machine instead.
Two were propped right outside the motel office in paint-chipped blue and pink. I perked up a little when I realized one of them was a coffee dispenser. I lingered outside a little more as I drank the very bitter coffee and a protein bar.
The air was getting a little warmer even though it was getting later in the day, which I attributed to the building exhaust of the cars passing by. Eventually, though I didn't know when just yet, I would be joining those cars to my next destination.
I finished the last of my meal, and made my way back to the motel room.
Another window that hadn't been lit before glowed just next to the motel office. I peered inside and noticed it was a reading lounge. It was probably closed when I drove in earlier.
Looking in, I saw a reading nook by a small fireplace.
The chairs looked worn, and the fireplace wasn't so much there to warm people as it was there for set dressing. I could see a couple of newspapers and tourist magazines, too.
No books, I thought.
The pain in my chest welled up again.
It wasn’t the same, but I couldn’t help remembering it. I missed it.
No matter what uncertainty I felt at the Ashwood estate, those nights with Caleb were something to me I could always rely on. How quiet it was. How easy.
I thought about Caleb’s story again. This time not the subject matter, but the way he said it. He said his words slowly, pouring every amount of emotion he could into them without breaking the wall of the secret he was holding at the time.
Before any of that, he asked if I wanted to hear it. I saw it clearly then.
He didn’t pursue me in Northern California.
He waited for me to arrive at Greyhollow, instead.
He let me approach the fireplace. When I asked for things, like info about Jake’s condition, or later during the attack, he waited for my questions rather than forcing himself.
Our tender moments were never rushed. Each time we touched, we kissed, he let me come to him.
Those weren’t the acts of someone controlled by impulse.
I knew now, without a doubt, something I questioned since my arrival.
Caleb Ashwood truly loved me.
Two people inside sat by the reading nook and turned on its fire. It was small, but tinted the small area with warm light. They both sat next to each other on the loveseat and chatted animatedly.
I wanted that. Something chosen. Equal.
The heaviness in my chest turned into a sting.
I turned away from the lodge.
Even if Caleb’s feelings for me were true, there was still the broken promise. It didn’t change what he didn’t say.
But eerily, that wasn't what bothered me the most.
Caleb loves me, I thought. But can I say for certainty that I love him?
I went back to the room.
The phone was still charging on my bed. I didn’t book anything.
I sat on the edge of the bed and stared at the strip of light on the floor.
I was at a crossroads. In a moment, I was going to decide my next destination and firmly leave the one I left behind. Leaving used to be easy.
Whatever I was leaving had already finished becoming real before I walked out of it, so the walking out was just the formal version of something that had already happened. This was how things were for so long that I started to believe I preferred it.
I left because sitting made me anxious. I went to new places hoping that it would remind me less of the trees in Northern California.
I lay back on the bed without meaning to. The ceiling’s rough, beige, popcorn texture felt like it was pressing lower and lower. A parking lot light moved across it when a car passed outside, just once, and then the room was still again.
I was tired of it.
The thought arrived quietly, without drama, and sat in the room alongside everything else.
I was tired of it. I was tired of the go-bag on the shelf and the agency’s app and the exits I clocked before I unpacked.
I was tired of being someone who moved so well she’d convinced herself she wasn’t running.
I wanted the fireplace. I wanted the estate in the morning, when everyone was bustling around. I wanted to take care of Jake, and see Stella. I wanted Caleb.
I repeated it in my mind.
I want Caleb…
The idea wrestled with the lingering weight in my body.
I was still angry. I wanted to be clear about that, too.
It was going to need somewhere to go and that conversation was going to be hard and I wasn’t pretending otherwise.
But underneath it, something else had been sitting since I drove out of those gates and I’d been trying to mistake it for grief, but it wasn’t.
It was wanting to go back.
For the third time since I left, the tears welled up in my eyes. But even if that’s true, there’s no way I could go back now.
There was a loud knock on the door.
I sat up. I quickly wiped my nose and made my way toward it.
I could pull it together.
But I knew that grief was something that ebbed and flowed.