Brittany
I should’ve known it wouldn’t stay quiet. Nothing in Hell ever does. Why would it here?
The lake’s been wrong all day, too still and too loud at the same time.
Boats moving in tight circles. Men combing tree lines.
Radios crackling. Royal snapping orders at prospects who look like they’d rather believe in a monster than admit someone human might be hunting girls in their own backyard.
Everybody’s on edge, and the day feels like it’s holding its breath.
Oaks hasn’t looked at me once. Not really.
He’s been in motion since dawn, like if he keeps moving he can outrun whatever’s tightening around us.
Radio in hand. Boots in mud. Mouth firmly shut.
Every time I catch his profile across camp, he looks carved out of duty and iron, and I hate that part of me still watches him like he might glance back and soften.
Like the other night meant something he can’t fake his way out of.
He doesn’t. Just like he didn’t come back last night, and I slept alone in a crumbled bed that smelled like I made a huge mistake.
By late afternoon, the heat turns heavy and mean. The sun dips, but the humidity won’t break. I can’t stand another second of the whispers and the stares and the girls who smirk when I pass like they know exactly where I’ve been and what I’ve done. I need air that ain’t filtered through judgment.
I walk down toward the water alone.
The shoreline’s quieter here, away from the cabins and the main fire pit, away from the radios and the men calling coordinates.
It’s just cicadas screaming from the trees and the soft lap of water against dock posts.
Herrington Lake looks harmless from here, shiny and blue, sunlight scattering across it like glitter, like it’s a tourist brochure instead of a crime scene with good PR.
I hear boots before I see her.
Bethany doesn’t announce herself. She doesn’t call my name or perform for an audience.
She just walks up and stops a few feet away, arms crossed, posture loose like we’re having coffee instead of a reckoning.
That calm is what scares me, because I’ve seen women like her in Hell.
They don’t need volume. They’ve got venom.
“You’re braver than I thought,” she says mildly. “Standing so close to that water.”
“I’m just getting air,” I answer, and I keep my voice even because I refuse to give her the satisfaction of hearing it shake. Although her words feel like a threat.
Her mouth curves. It ain’t a smile. “You think he’s chosen you?”
The question lands like a slap, sharp enough to sting. My throat tightens, but I hold my tongue, because if I speak I’ll say something silly. Something honest. That it’s obvious he hasn’t. Not really.
She steps closer, eyes ice cold. “He fucks. He doesn’t choose.”
My stomach twists. I try to breathe through it, try to remember I don’t owe her anything. She’s the one who came looking for me.
“You’re not special,” she continues. “You’re disposable.”
Each word is delivered like she’s discussing the weather, like she’s bored. Like she’s been practicing this speech in her mirror.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” I say, but it comes out thinner than I want.
Bethany laughs softly, sweet and wrong. “Oh, sweetheart. I know exactly what I’m talking about. I’ve been married to that man longer than you’ve been legal.”
That sentence burns. Not because it’s true, but because she wants it to burn, because she wants me to feel small and stupid and out of my depth.
“You think you’re the first girl he’s gotten curious about?” she asks, like she’s genuinely amused. “The first one who thought she meant something to him? The first one who he told he was claiming her.”
Something inside me starts to splinter, not because she’s convincing me, but because she’s poking at the part of me that already hurts.
“Then why do you care?” I shoot back.
Her expression changes. Just a flicker, quick enough she probably thinks I won’t catch it. But I do. Because she does care. She hates that she does. She hates that it ain’t as easy as it used to be.
“I don’t,” she says coolly. “But I don’t like being embarrassed.”
She steps into my space and shoves me.
It ain’t hard enough to knock me down. It’s hard enough to send a message. The dock creaks under my heels and the lake looks up at us like it’s waiting.
“Back off,” I say.
She shoves me again.
It’s clear she’s fixing to shove me into the water. To my death. Green water engulfs me in my mind, pulling me under.
My patience snaps. My pride snaps. Something in me that’s been swallowing insults since the diner, since the pawn shop, since the first time Hell decided I was the kind of girl you can talk about like an object, that thing finally breaks.
I shove her back.
It ain’t graceful. It ain’t planned. It’s pure instinct.
Bethany’s face hardens. She grabs my hair.
Pain explodes across my scalp as she yanks me forward, and my eyes water so fast it makes me dizzy. Her nails bite into my skin.
“You think you can just stroll in here and take my biker?” she hisses. “Trailer park trash. Backwoods whore.”
Then her hand cracks across my cheek.
The sound echoes over the water, loud and ugly, and for a second all I can hear is the slap and my own breath. My face burns. My vision narrows.
“Gold digger,” she spits.
Something in me goes quiet.
Not fear. Not panic. Quiet like a door shutting. Quiet like my body deciding it’s done being pushed around.
I rip my hair free and stumble back, scanning blindly for something, anything, because I can’t beat her with hands alone.
She’s bigger than me and mean in a practiced way.
She’s always been the kind of woman who knows how to hurt without leaving marks that matter.
But now she’s crossed a line into new territory.
Near the edge of the dock, there’s a loose board where repairs were half-finished earlier. Weathered wood. Splintered on one end.
I don’t think.
I grab it.
Bethany lunges again, fingers reaching for my throat, and the world tunnels down to her hand and the water waiting behind me like a mouth.
“Skank,” she sneers.
“It’s Brittany, bitch,” I say, and I swing.
Hard.
The crack of wood against bone is louder than I expect. Not like in the movies. It’s sickening. Real.
Bethany drops.
One second she’s upright and furious. The next she’s flat on her back in the gravel, eyes rolled halfway, body slack like someone cut her strings.
The board falls from my hands.
The world goes silent, and it’s a different kind of silence than camp at dawn. It’s the kind that makes your stomach flip because your brain finally catches up to what you did.
I stare at her.
Waiting for her to move.
She doesn’t.
“Oh my God,” I whisper.
My cheek throbs where she hit me. My scalp screams. My hands shake so badly I have to press them against my thighs to steady them. I drop to my knees beside her, fear crawling up my throat.
“Bethany?” I say, and I hate that my voice sounds like I’m begging.
Nothing.
A thin line of blood trails from her temple into her hair.
I swallow hard and lean closer, terrified to touch her, more terrified not to. Then I see it.
Her chest rises.
Slow.
But it rises.
Relief hits me so hard it makes me dizzy. I let out a breath that sounds like a sob and a laugh at the same time.
“I didn’t mean,” I whisper. “You grabbed me. You hit me.”
She doesn’t hear me. Or she does and she’s choosing not to. I don’t know which is worse.
The lake laps against the dock like it’s applauding.
I stand and spin, scanning the tree line.
No one saw. No one came running. The generators and the radios and the men shouting orders must’ve swallowed the sound. Camp is far enough away that the lake kept our fight to itself.
I look back down at her.
If I leave her here and she wakes up alone, she’ll say whatever she wants.
If someone else finds her first, they’ll decide what happened before they even ask.
If she wakes up and staggers into camp screaming that I attacked her, it won’t matter that she started it.
It won’t matter that she grabbed my hair, slapped my face, tried for my throat.
People in Hell don’t love truth.
They love a story that fits what they already believe.
I take a step toward camp.
Then I stop.
I can’t just leave her unconscious at the edge of the lake. My stomach turns at the thought of her rolling into the water. At the thought of something in that water, real or not, finding her before anyone else does.
I kneel again and shake her shoulder gently.
“Bethany,” I whisper. “Wake up.”
Nothing.
Her skin looks pale in the fading light. Her lips are slightly parted. The blood at her temple is darker now, sticky against her hairline.
A thought flashes through me so fast it makes my head spin.
Something could drag her in.
Something has dragged other girls in.
The image hits like a punch. I see pale hands slipping under water. I see hair fanning out. I see her mouth open in a scream that the lake swallows whole.
I jerk back from my own imagination and stand abruptly.
“I’m getting help,” I say out loud, like she can hear me, like it matters.
I run.
Gravel crunches under my boots as I sprint back toward camp, lungs burning, cheek throbbing, panic rising in ugly waves. Halfway there, I slow down, because reality catches me.
What am I about to say?
That the VP’s wife attacked me and I knocked her out with a board?
That I defended myself?
That I might’ve just detonated whatever fragile truce was holding this lake camp together?
I turn back.
I don’t know why. Instinct. Guilt. Terror.
When I reach the dock again, my breath tears out of me.
She’s gone.
The gravel where she fell is empty. The board lies where I dropped it. The faint smear of blood is still there, dark and undeniable against the dirt.
But Bethany ain’t.
My stomach lurches so violently I have to grab the dock railing to keep from falling.
“No,” I whisper.
The water is dark now. Too dark. Nothing.
“Bethany?” I call, louder this time, and my voice cracks.
Nothing answers.
Not from the trees. Not from the water. Just the steady, wrong hush of Herrington Lake swallowing sound.
My heart slams against my ribs because I know two things at once.
I didn’t kill her.
And no one is going to believe that.