Chapter Thirty-Three
The basement’s been good to me. Quiet. Dark. No mirrors.
Max calls it brooding. I call it not throwing a fist through drywall every time I blink and see her crying.
At first, he kept bugging me to fix him dinner. When that didn’t work, he started leaving meals at the door. Like I’m something he’s trying to tame.
Mom sticks to the living room. Vodka in her coffee mug. Leftover Snickers. TV loud enough to keep the ghosts at bay.
She hasn’t asked how I’m doing once. Probably just waiting for me to end up like her.
The knocks today are louder.
I ignore them.
“Yo. Letter for you.”
I don’t answer, but Max knows I’m up. Knows I’ll come to the door eventually.
“It’s got one of those seals on it. Says Official Police Business.”
That gets me moving. Mostly because I’m picturing Payton’s name on some coroner’s form—cause of death: stubbornness.
I tug on a thin white T-shirt. Stretched out. Probably hospital-issued.
The sweats hang low on my hips—gray, worn, stiff at the knees. I’ve slept in them, bled in them, wiped my hands on them after digging through broken glass.
I shuffle to the door. The gut wound healed fast. It was the shoulder surgery that wrecked me—splinted and stitched.
I didn’t want it. Told them to close the knife hole and move on.
The surgeon insisted. Sadist. Didn’t even have decent painkillers.
I unlock the door. Crack it open.
Max squints past me into the basement. Wrinkles his nose.
“You look like a cave troll.”
I take the envelope and start to shut the door.
“I’m going over to Payton’s later,” he adds. “She asked if I could help with some boxes. You wanna come?”
“No.”
“You know she’s moving, right?”
Of course I knew.
She went to Kristy’s funeral but skipped Lana’s. Gave a statement to the police three separate times—once with a lawyer, once without, once to ‘clear something up.’ Turned down the press. Didn’t want to be some survivor mascot.
She canceled her trash pickup last week. The plants she watered every Sunday? Gone from the porch.
And I know I turned off the cameras since the For Rent sign went up. Two days ago.
Because watching her pack is worse than not seeing her at all.
Five weeks is long enough to heal.
Long enough to know when you’ve lost.
“Kade?”
“Yeah. Enjoy your Oreos, buddy.”
The door clicks shut before he can run his mouth again.
The letter’s bureaucratic bullshit—official notice I’m not a suspect.
Payton’s off the hook too. That’s all that matters.
The Verge’s been shut down. Assets frozen. Records seized. Everyone who worked there is either missing, lawyered up, or under investigation.
Eight out of fifteen hunters dead.
Wesley’s one of them. Because he gave a damn.
Somehow, all the Ghostfaces survived, including Trevor Meeks. The guy I patched up with a blindfold and a gas station Fireball shot. I thought he was toast. Turns out the other two Ghostfaces—Lucas Pryce and Ryan Voight—dragged Trevor out before Derek sealed the gates.
But those bastards didn’t call for help. They simply dumped Trevor outside Silverton’s ER, barely breathing, still in costume. No names, no details.
Twenty staples and a news interview where he called me ‘the rogue Ghostface.’
Payton sent me the clip with zero context. Just a skull emoji and the quote:
‘He said it was holy water. I believed him. It worked.’
Eleven out of thirty prey dead. Twelve, if you include Lana. Not that anyone’s lighting a candle for her.
I chuck the notice into the garbage.
The TV competes with Max slamming cupboards upstairs. Mom probably hasn’t left the couch all day.
I flop back onto the mattress—one leg bent, the other stretched.
Everything hurts.
It gets bad on days like this. When the past sneaks up and the only cure is sleep. Even that comes with nightmares.
Usually, it’s Payton. Bloody. Broken. Begging for her life.
There are also memories I didn’t make. The ones where I walk out those gates with Payton in my arms, Wesley and Kristy beside us.
But every time, I’d wake up hollow—when we fucking won.
My hand finds the bottle by the mattress. I crack it open, shake two pills out.
The label reads:
PRN—Do Not Exceed Six In 24 Hours.
I toss both in. Let the chalky-dissolve hit my throat. Chase it down with tepid water.
Five minutes to kick in. Long enough to sit here, trying not to hate myself for failing. For leaving a part of me in that hellhole with her.
For losing the girl who saved my life—
Even though I never really had her to begin with.
Payton Reed was just another part of my fucking mask.
The ceiling tiles swim. I count the cracks like stars. Five. Ten. Twenty.
… fifty.
This is what dying feels like, little fox.
***
knock. knock.
The basement window’s gone dark. No moon or streetlamp. The kind of night that swallows everything.
I groan and shift upright. Limbs leaden. Mind cotton-packed.
“Kade! Open up. You got a visitor.”
Max, with his eleven-year-old smugness.
I drag myself to my feet—joints popping, shirt stuck to my skin.
I crack the door.
Max grins at me like it’s any other night.
“Tell them I’m not doing goodbyes.”
Max clears his throat and steps aside with a dramatic little flourish.
I’m not wearing glasses, but yeah. That’s Payton.
Standing on the stoop like she has the right. Holding a box.
Fuck. Every part of me prickles under her stare. I must look like some damn wounded thing.
Meanwhile, she’s still fucking gorgeous in that effortless way. Shoulder-length hair loose, pushed behind one ear. Dark jeans. Fitted tank. Eyes just the right side of bloodshot.
Max backs up the stairs, smirking. Little shit knows exactly what this is. “Cool. I’ll, uh … go eat Oreos in peace.”
She gives him a tight smile, watching him bound away before turning back.
“Hey, stranger. You look like hell. How do you feel?”
The old me would fire back, maybe offer her a smirk.
“Been worse,” I say flatly, ignoring the twist in my gut.
“Well, um. This is for you.”
I take the box from her and head back inside. Leave or follow, the choice is hers.
The door snicks closed behind me. No footsteps yet. But my skin’s too tight and the air’s full of her.
If she came to tell me goodbye, I can do her one last favor.
Let her go.
“Open it,” she says behind me.
I place the box on the desk and peel back the cardboard flaps.
Cameras. The ones I installed everywhere at her place. Wires coiled, lenses dark. Dead now. Just parts.
But I remember what they saw. What I saw.
“I believe these are yours.”
“They are.”
Her gaze sweeps over the rest of the basement—bare mattress, unwashed sheets, computers, the makeshift gym where I fought my daily battles.
The old me would’ve devoured this.
Her. Down here. In my den.
Where she should’ve been all along—safe from the world and completely fucking mine. I’d have chained her and shown her all the ways I can ruin her—the kind of worship that leaves marks.
Now all I want is to sink into that mattress and will the pills to do their fucking job.
“You doing okay?”
“Peachy.” I roll my shoulders, hoping she takes the hint.
And she does.
That’s it. She’ll vanish. I’ll go back to playing corpse until I’m nothing but a stain no one scrubs out. We’ll both go on pretending none of it meant a damn thing.
She stops near the door and turns. “What?”
What can I say? That she was the reason I didn’t die? That I can still smell her on me and it’ll never fade? Could even swear I’d never tell a soul. That what we did in the chapel stays sealed between me and the ghosts.
Instead, I shrug. “I didn’t say anything.”
She goes taut. Eyes blazing. “So, that’s it? Not even a ‘Sorry, I was a creep for spying on you?’”
The pills have turned my blood to ice. Numbed everything but the burn in my throat.
“Don’t recall owing you anything. I’m not sorry I watched you.”
I’d do it again. Every fucking second. Because if I hadn’t, I wouldn’t have followed her into hell.
She scoffs. “You got what you wanted, and now you’re done?”
My jaw tightens. If she had any idea what I really wanted …
“You have no fucking clue, Payton. This bullshit? Not it.”
Her voice cracks. “Bullshit?”
“Look—” I drag a hand down my face. “It’s better this way.”
“Better?” She laughs—raw, broken. “For who?”
“You’ll survive.”
Her breath catches—the way it did when my fingers were inside her.
“You asshole.” Another shaky laugh. “You’re still hiding in your fucking basement, too scared to even look at me. But yeah. Sure. I’ll survive just fine.”
My body reacts—some Pavlovian shit. She spits venom and all I want to do is pin her down, fuck the fury right out of her until all that tremble melts under my mouth.
I stay frozen. Not because I’ve evolved. If I touch her now, I won’t be able to let go.
“I’m not the one running.”
“Oh yeah?” Her glare sharpens. “Then why the fuck aren’t you chasing?”
My hands flex from memory—her under them, above them, around them.
“I offered to go to Kristy’s funeral with you.
You said no. I would’ve sat through every cop interview—what’d you say?
You needed space. I brought you groceries and you told me to leave them on the porch like I was some fucking delivery guy. ”
Silence.
“Every time I asked how you were, you texted me some one-liner shit.”
Her shoulders tighten. But she won’t back down.
Never does.
I shove off the desk. My fingers itch for something—my keyboard, a knife, anything to take the edge off.
What I really want is her. Against me. On her back. On her knees. I want all the sounds I didn’t get to hear when she came—when I could barely see through the static and my only goal was to get her the fuck out of there.
I stalk past her. Breathing in vanilla and rage.
A few steps more and I turn—
—we’re inches apart and she’s trembling as if I touched her, said the things I won’t say. As if she were fucking mine.
Her lips part, but she stays silent.
“Say it,” I grind out.
She blinks. “Say what?”
“That it didn’t mean anything to you.”
She swallows. “I didn’t say that.”
“No. But you sure as hell made it feel that way.” A deep breath. “What do you need, Payton? An apology? A goddamn thank you? Would that get you out the door?”