Chapter Nine Violet
Chapter Nine
Violet
It had been a week since I found the heart.
Seven days of pretending I was fine. Of going to work at the coffee shop like I hadn’t buried something human in the woods behind my house. Of making small talk with customers and my coworkers while my insides twisted every time the bell above the door chimed.
Because each time, I thought that was the moment the Bleeding Ground had come for me at last.
It was also a week of falling even harder for Grayson.
It didn’t happen in big, cinematic moments. It happened in the small, stubborn spaces between fear and exhaustion.
First there were the texts. Short at first, with Grayson just checking that I’d gotten home safe after closing the coffee shop. I’d stare at the screen longer than I wanted to admit, thumb hovering, before typing back a single word: Yes. Then two words. A whole sentence.
When the silence in my house felt like hands around my throat, I sent the first message myself.
Are you awake?
His reply came in seconds.
Always.
That turned into late-night conversations about nothing and everything. He told me he hated the smell of flowers because they reminded him of funerals.
I told him I never opened the curtains all the way, because full sunlight was meant for somebody who hadn’t spent half her life bracing for the knock that ends everything.
He didn’t ask who that somebody was. He’d respond like he understood the difference between the light you let in and the light you survived.
One time he sent a photo of the moon over the lake and wrote, Thought you should see something beautiful tonight.
I stared at it until my screen went dark and my chest ached in a way that wasn’t entirely pain.
Then came the calls.
His voice was low in my ear as he asked about my day like it mattered. Like he genuinely cared.
He listened when I admitted I hadn’t slept through the night in years. He didn’t ask for details. He’d just say, “Then I’ll stay on the line until you do.”
The park meetings came next. Grayson would wait on the same bench. No coat, sleeves pushed up, forearms resting on his knees like he’d been there a while, just staring at the lake. We walked the trail slowly. He stayed half a step behind, close enough that I could feel him without being crowded.
When I stopped, he stopped, too. When I finally spoke about how the quiet here used to feel like drowning, Grayson didn’t rush to fill it. He just said, “It doesn’t have to be that way forever.”
I believed him. For a short, sweet moment in time, I believed him.
In between those calls and texts and walks, we’d have coffee.
Not at my shop, but at a tiny place on the edge of town with cracked vinyl booths, greasy tables, and burned coffee.
He’d sit in the seat across from me and we’d just talk about our favorite things.
Even now, I remembered when he reached across the table to brush a crumb from the corner of my mouth.
I let him, and something warm and terrifying bloomed under my ribs.
He never pushed for more than I offered. Never asked the questions I could see burning behind his eyes. Instead, he gave me small, careful pieces of himself.
Every time I left him, I felt the old but steady panic rise. They’ll figure out who I really am. Grayson will leave first. But every time my phone buzzed with his name, the fear shrank just a little.
I was starting to trust the sound of his voice in the dark. I was starting to believe—dangerously, stupidly—that maybe I wasn’t doomed after all.
That had been my life this last week, and despite the fear and worry and all-out dread I felt, Grayson was the calm in my raging storm.
And then, because I was unraveling or foolish—or both—I’d invited him inside after our third meeting. It was a quick visit, but he’d stayed long enough for me to remember what it felt like to not be completely alone.
I missed it. I hadn’t realized how isolated I’d actually become.
Now, as I stared at myself in the bathroom mirror, I wondered how far gone I really was. Because I didn’t just want to trust him anymore.
I already do.
I had no business feeling this way. There was something violent happening in Sweetwater Lake, and instead of keeping my head down to hide my connection, I’d let someone in.
Let Grayson in. I’d broken the very rules I lived by to survive.
I’d caught myself staring at him more than once. Watching the way he held his coffee. The way he was quiet, but not passive. I thought I found his controlled, watchful demeanor his most attractive attribute. He was intelligent, which made his moves and his thought process calculated.
And when he looked at me—really looked at me—I forgot how to breathe. It was like he could see into the deepest parts of me, the places where I kept those secrets buried.
I leaned both palms on the edge of the sink, trying to ignore the flush in my cheeks. It was a reaction I always had when I thought about how he made me feel.
It wasn’t just attraction. It was . . . consumption in the most complex way.
He was getting inside me, burrowing beneath my skin, weaving himself into parts of me that had only ever had scar tissue from old wounds. And the terrifying part? I wanted more. I wanted him to see everything about me.
The men in my past I’d trusted had been nothing but manipulators who were too ingrained in the cult. It had been everything to them, and they’d needed everyone involved to be as consumed as they were.
The scars of that need were carved into my soul and body, but Grayson was earning my fragile, breakable, but valuable trust. I didn’t know what that meant yet. But it meant something. And I wanted to explore it.
I was shaken by the dreams I hadn’t admitted to anyone. I didn’t even want to say them out loud in the privacy and sanctity of my home. But it was hard to ignore them in these quiet moments.
And the dreams were becoming more frequent since the murders had come to Sweetwater Lake. They were always the same: a forest, an altar for the Blood God, and a voice in my ear, whispering that I was the salvation. I was the key.
But then Grayson was there, just materializing between me and the altar.
I sat down and pulled out the notebook he’d given me.
He’d left it with me two nights ago, after we stayed on the porch for nearly an hour just talking.
About the murders. About the town. About things I’d never told anyone else lest it reveal who I really was . . . where I really came from.
And he’d sat there and silently listened. Let me unload all my thoughts. He hadn’t touched me. But I’d wanted him to. And I had wanted no one in a very long time.
I flipped through the pages I’d filled. Dates. Impressions. Details about the truth. About the dreams. About memories I hadn’t thought about since I was a child. Most people who read my notes would see nothing but ramblings. But they all meant something to me.
And I wanted to show it all to him. I wanted to confess. But maybe not everything. Not yet.
My phone buzzed with a text, pulling me from very dangerous thoughts.
Grayson: Free tonight?
My body reacted instantly. Cheeks flushing. Smile forming. My thumb hovered over the screen, my pulse skipping.
Me: Sure. I’m free now.
The reply came instantly.
Grayson: On my way.
I was inviting him over again, into a space I’d kept private. I realized I wasn’t just inviting Grayson into my house, but into whatever the hell this was becoming between us. Because I felt it from him, too, as he looked at me, as if he wanted to tell me things he didn’t understand.
I sat there just thinking about . . . everything. How this town felt like it was spiraling. About the murders. The fear that was slowly growing, infesting everything it touched.
It wasn’t just the bodies.
It was the way the café used to be packed on Saturday mornings and now only a handful of regulars came in, whispering about the latest “poor girl” while they stared too long at the door, as if they expected the killer to walk in for a latte.
It was the For Sale signs sprouting on half the storefronts in the town center.
It was Mrs. Lambright from the flower shop locking her door at four instead of six, and the teenagers, who used to loiter by the pier well into the night, now hurrying past with their hoods up, eyes on the ground before the sun even set.
It was the way no one lingered on the sidewalks after dark anymore.
Sweetwater Lake wasn’t dying quietly. It was hollowing out, one frightened heartbeat at a time, and every fear-stricken gaze that I saw in the street felt like another turn of the screw.
But when I thought of him? I felt like I’d finally found something solid to cling to for the first time in my life.
And that scared me more than anything else.