Chapter 12
The living room felt smaller than it had an hour ago, as though the walls had shifted inward while we weren’t looking.
I sat on the far end of the couch, knees drawn in, hands wrapped around a mug of coffee that I hadn’t touched since pouring it.
The liquid had gone ice cold; everything had.
The fire burned low again, giving off more smoke than heat, its light uneven and unreliable.
Jake sat in the recliner, his body rigid, eyes fixed on a point beyond the fireplace, past the flames entirely. He hadn’t blinked in a while.
“Why would he do that?” Jake asked, like the answer was already obvious and he was waiting for me to catch up.
I squinted. “Who said he did?”
Jake turned toward me slowly, as if surprised I’d interrupted his thought. “He went to take a shower, and then we found him dead with a knife in his hand.”
“Noah didn’t kill himself.” I didn’t raise my voice. I didn’t need to.
Jake stared at me, eyes bloodshot and unfocused at the edges. “So you’re saying someone did that to him.”
“I’m saying he wouldn’t do that to himself.”
Jake’s mouth twitched. “You didn’t know him like I did.”
He wasn’t defensive. He was certain, like he was laying claim.
“I knew him,” I said.
Jake leaned forward, placing his elbows on his knees. “You don’t know what grief does to people, Blair. Sometimes it doesn’t look the way you’d expect.”
Before I could respond, Ricky came in from the hall, wiping his hands on a rag already streaked dark. He looked older than he had an hour ago.
“The bathroom window was unlocked,” he said. “And it’s big enough for someone to crawl through.”
“You think someone came in through the window?” I asked.
Ricky hesitated. “Maybe.”
“The door was unlocked,” I added.
“I would have seen someone walk in through the front door and down the hall with a knife in hand.” Jake jumped in, quick to extinguish that theory.
The fire popped, a loud, sudden crack that made us all flinch. Then it guttered. The flames sank, folding inward, light collapsing on itself like it had been pinched out.
I stood and crossed the room, crouching in front of the hearth, my hands already reaching for the logs.
The stones were colder than they should’ve been.
I fed the fire until it finally caught again.
The room flooded with harsh light, and shadows snapped back into place.
The fire always seemed to burn too fast, and I felt like I was constantly feeding it.
When I turned, Jake was watching me. Not the fire. Me.
“You’re looking at me like I did something,” he said.
“I’m not.”
“You are.”
The silence stretched.
Then Jake smiled. “Funny how you were awake when Maddie went missing.”
My pulse jumped. It wasn’t an accusation. It was a test to see who would accept it.
Ricky straightened. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Jake shrugged. “Just an observation.”
“You were awake too,” I said.
He shook his head. “No. You said I was sleepwalking. That’s not being awake. So what is it that you were doing?”
Ricky shifted uncomfortably.
“I told you, I heard the front door open and close, and I came out to check, only to find you seated at the kitchen table like a fucking weirdo. And you were the one here with Noah when he—”
“So you think I killed him?”
“What? No. I didn’t say that.”
But the thought was already there now. No one had made that leap, at least not out loud. And now I couldn’t unhear it.
“I’m just saying,” I added, slower now, “Noah wouldn’t do that to himself. Something is wrong here, and pretending it isn’t doesn’t make us any safer.”
Jake lifted the whiskey bottle that seemed to suddenly appear in his hand and drank like he was bracing himself, not numbing pain, but feeding something that wouldn’t stay quiet otherwise.
He closed his eyes, breath locked in his chest, as if stillness might keep whatever was happening to him from getting worse.
Ricky scrubbed his face with both hands. When he dropped them, his expression was equal parts fear and fury. “We just need to survive the night.”
That was when the water started softly running again, a steady hiss from down the hall.
“What’s that?” Ricky asked.
“. . . the shower,” I said.
Then the water shut off on its own. No one moved.
The fire burned too bright now, throwing off more heat than we needed, light we didn’t trust. Jake didn’t blink. I watched him from the corner of my eye—the way his foot tapped, then stopped. I watched Ricky watch him too, even if he didn’t realize that was what he was doing.
There were three of us now, just three. And it became clear this wasn’t about surviving the night. It was about deciding who you were willing to survive with.