Chapter 23 - Fern
The knife presses harder against my throat, and I know I’m running out of time.
Robbie’s eyes have gone dark, completely black, like something has swallowed the man I used to know and left only this monster behind.
The veins on his neck pulse with that same inky darkness, and his grip on me tightens until I can barely breathe.
Every instinct screams at me to fight, to claw at his arm, to do something.
But I’ve been trained for situations like this.
I’ve sat through hostage negotiation seminars.
I’ve read case studies about victims who survived by keeping their captors calm.
So I breathe. I force my racing heart to slow. And I do what I do best.
“Robbie.” I keep my voice steady, even though my heart is hammering so hard I’m sure he can feel it. “Look at me. Focus on me.”
“Shut up.” His voice comes out layered, like two people speaking at once. “Just shut up. I need to think.”
“Okay. Okay, I’ll be quiet. But can you loosen your grip a little? You’re hurting me.”
For a moment, nothing happens. Then his arm relaxes just a fraction, and I suck in a grateful breath. Good. He’s still listening. He’s still responding to reason, even if that reason is buried under whatever sickness has taken hold of him.
Through the hole in the door, I can see Connor watching us. His face is a mask of fury and fear, and I know he’s seconds away from tearing through what’s left of that door, whether it kills me or not. I give him a tiny shake of my head. Not yet. Let me try.
“Robbie,” I begin softly, “I’ve been thinking about what you said. About going home with you.”
“Don’t lie to me.”
“I’m not lying. I’ve had time to think, standing here with you, and maybe… maybe you’re right. Maybe I did give up too easily. Maybe I should have stayed and worked things out instead of running away like I always do.”
The knife wobbles against my throat. “You’re just saying that because you’re scared.”
“I am scared. But that doesn’t mean I’m lying.” I swallow hard, wincing as the blade bobs with the movement. “We had good times, didn’t we? Before everything went wrong. Remember that trip we took to the coast? The little bed and breakfast with the terrible coffee and the creaky floors?”
“The owner kept calling me your husband.”
“And you didn’t correct her. Not once. You just smiled and went along with it.”
Something flickers in those black eyes. A memory, maybe. A piece of the real Robbie fighting to surface through the corruption that’s eating him alive.
“I wanted to marry you,” he muses, and his voice sounds almost normal for a moment. Almost human. “I had a ring picked out and everything. A princess-cut diamond, because you told me once that was your favorite. I was going to propose on your birthday.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“Because you left before I could ask. You took that away from me. You took everything away from me.”
“I’m sorry.” The words taste like ash in my mouth, but I force them out anyway. “I’m sorry I didn’t give you a chance to explain. I’m sorry I ran instead of talking to you. I was scared and hurt, and I didn’t know what else to do.”
“You should be sorry.”
“I know. And if you put down the knife, we can talk about it. We can sit down like two adults and figure out where things went wrong and how to fix them. Isn’t that what you want? Isn’t that why you came all this way?”
“I want you to come home with me.” His arm tightens again, just for a moment, before relaxing. “I want things to go back to the way they were. Before you ruined everything.”
“Then take me home.” I turn my head just enough to meet his eyes without pressing my throat harder against the blade.
“Put down the knife, and we’ll walk out of here together.
Right now. We’ll get in your car and drive away from this town and never look back.
Just the two of us, like it used to be.”
“You’re lying.” But his voice wavers. There’s doubt there now, fighting against whatever dark thing is whispering in his ear.
“I’m not. I’m tired of running, Robbie. I’m so tired.
I’ve been looking over my shoulder for months, jumping at every sound, never feeling safe anywhere I go.
I can’t live like that anymore. If going with you is what it takes to make this stop, then that’s what I’ll do. I’ll choose you. I’ll choose us.”
Through the door, I see Connor’s face twist with anguish. He knows what I’m doing. He knows I’m saying whatever I have to say to survive, that none of these words are real. But knowing doesn’t make it any easier for him to hear me promise myself to another man.
“What about your boyfriend?” Robbie asks. “The big guy with the muscles. The one who’s been sniffing around you like a dog in heat. You’re just going to leave him?”
“He’s not my boyfriend. He’s just someone I met here. A security guard who got a little too attached.” I make my voice dismissive, bored. “He doesn’t mean anything to me. He never did.”
The lie burns, but I keep my face neutral. Robbie has always been good at reading me. During our relationship, he used that skill to manipulate and control me. Now I have to hope that the corruption clouding his mind has dulled that ability enough for him to believe my performance.
“I don’t believe you,” he barks out.
“Then don’t. But ask yourself this: why would I lie? You have a knife to my throat, Robbie. You could kill me in a heartbeat. What possible reason would I have to make things worse for myself by feeding you false hope?”
He considers this. I can see the wheels turning behind those corrupted eyes, the logic fighting against whatever darkness has taken root in his brain. The black veins pulse slower now, like the thing inside him is thinking too.
“If I put down the knife,” he starts, “you’ll come with me? Willingly? No tricks?”
“Yes.”
“And you won’t try to run the second my back is turned?”
“No.”
“And you won’t scream for help or signal your friends out there to attack me?”
“Robbie.” I let my voice soften, pouring every ounce of fake sincerity I can muster into the words.
“All I want is for this to be over. I’m exhausted.
I’ve been exhausted for months, ever since I left New York.
If going with you means I can finally stop running, finally stop being afraid, then yes.
I’ll come willingly. I won’t run. I won’t scream. I’ll just… let go.”
The knife lowers an inch. Then another. Hope ignites in my chest.
And that’s when the room fills with golden light.
It happens so fast, I barely have time to process it. One moment, we’re standing in my office with only the fluorescent overhead for illumination. The next, something bright and warm floods through the broken door, washing over us like a wave of sunshine.
Robbie goes rigid against me. His whole body locks up, every muscle seizing at once, and the knife clatters from his fingers to the floor.
“What—” His voice comes out strangled, barely recognizable. “What’s happening to me? I can’t move. Why can’t I move?”
I don’t have an answer. I don’t know what’s going on any more than he does. All I know is that his arm is still wrapped around my waist, but his grip has loosened enough that I might be able to pull free if I tried.
“No.” Robbie’s head jerks to the side like he’s listening to something I can’t hear. His face contorts, cycling through confusion and fear and rage in rapid succession. “No, I won’t. She’s mine. She belongs to me. You can’t have her.”
A pause. His body trembles, fighting against whatever invisible force has locked his muscles in place.
“I don’t care what you are,” he snarls at the empty air. “I don’t care what you want. She’s coming home with me, and there’s nothing you or anyone else can do to stop—”
He cuts off mid-sentence as his body seizes again. A sound escapes his throat, something between a gasp and a scream, and the black veins on his neck start to pulse faster than before. Brighter. Like something is burning them from the inside.
“Stop it.” His voice has changed now, all the rage replaced by naked terror. “Please, stop. It hurts. It hurts so much. I’ll do anything, just make it stop.”
Another pause. Another one-sided conversation with something I can’t see or hear. Robbie’s face goes pale beneath the web of dark veins, and tears stream down his cheeks.
“Fine.” The word comes out through gritted teeth, forced and unwilling. “Fine, I’ll let her go. Just make it stop. Please. I’m begging you.”
His arm falls away from my waist like a puppet whose strings have been cut. I stumble forward, putting as much distance between us as the small office allows, and spin around to face him.
Robbie stands frozen in the middle of the room with his arms hanging limp at his sides.
The black veins are still there, still pulsing, but he makes no move to grab me again.
His eyes are fixed on something behind me, something near the door, and whatever he sees there terrifies him more than losing me ever could.
“Fern!” Connor’s voice cuts through the haze, and I hear wood splintering as he forces his way through what’s left of the door. “Fern, are you okay? Talk to me.”
I try to answer him. I try to tell him that yes, I’m okay, I’m fine, Robbie let me go, and I don’t know why, but I’m not going to question it.
But my legs have stopped working. The adrenaline that’s been keeping me upright drains away all at once, leaving nothing but exhaustion and relief in its wake.
I feel myself starting to crumple, my knees buckling beneath me.
Connor catches me before I hit the ground.
His arms wrap around me, strong and warm and impossibly gentle for someone so large, and he lowers us both to our knees on the cold tile floor. I can feel him shaking against me. Or maybe that’s me. It’s hard to tell where I end and he begins anymore.
“I’ve got you,” he assures me. “I’ve got you. You’re safe now. He can’t hurt you anymore.”
“Connor—”
“I’m so sorry.” He pulls back just enough to look at my face, and I’m startled to see moisture gathering in his eyes.
Connor, who always seems so strong, so unshakeable.
Connor, whom I’ve never seen cry. “I’m so sorry, Fern.
I promised you’d be safe here. I swore on my life to protect you, and I failed.
He got to you anyway. He hurt you anyway, and I wasn’t here to stop it. ”
I reach up and press my palm against his cheek. His skin is so warm beneath my fingers, and a day’s worth of stubble scratches against my palm. He leans into the touch like a man starving for contact, and something in my chest aches at the sight.
“You’re here now,” I tell him. “You came for me.”
“Not fast enough. I should have been faster. I should have—”
“You came.” I manage a weak smile despite everything. “I’m safe now, aren’t I? You said so yourself. I’m safe because of you.”
“Fern, your throat. Your face. He hurt you, and I—”
“I’m okay, Connor.” I stroke my thumb across his cheekbone, wiping away a tear he probably doesn’t even realize he’s shed. “I’m okay. I’m alive. And that’s because you didn’t give up. You broke down that door even when everyone told you to wait.”
He doesn’t look convinced. His gaze travels over my face, taking stock of every injury—the bruise on my cheek, the thin line of red across my throat where Robbie’s knife bit too deep.
I can see the guilt eating at him, the self-recrimination that’s going to haunt him for days if I don’t stop it now.
“It’s not your fault,” I say firmly. “None of this is your fault. Robbie is sick. Something happened to him, something I don’t understand, and it made him worse than he’s ever been. But you found me. You came for me. That’s what matters. That’s all that matters.”
“If anything had happened to you—”
“But it didn’t.” I press my fingers to his lips before he can spiral any further. “It didn’t because you were here. Because you refused to let me face this alone.”
Connor takes a shaky breath, and some of the guilt drains from his face. Not all of it—I don’t think all of it will fade for a long time—but enough that he looks less like he’s about to shatter.
And then the nausea hits.
It crashes over me without warning, a wave of dizziness and sickness so strong that I have to close my eyes against it. The room spins even behind my eyelids, and I feel myself swaying in Connor’s arms.
“Hey.” His voice cuts through the fog, sharp with concern. “Hey, stay with me. Fern? What’s wrong?”
“I don’t feel good.” The words come out slurred, distant. “Dizzy. Nauseous.”
“Fern—”
“I think I’m going to—”
But I never finish the sentence. A wave of darkness crashes over me, dragging me under, and the last thing I hear before everything goes black is Connor screaming my name.