38. Kiera
KIERA
Dom’s heavy footsteps echoed down the hallway like the pounding of my own heart. But as she slipped away, the hammering didn’t stop. Instead, the pressure in my chest grew, cutting off my thoughts along with any air left in the room.
In the silence that followed, my saviors just watched me while I watched the door. No one had any clue what to do. But if we stayed silent for long enough, maybe it would feel like nothing had happened at all.
It was Leo who cleared her throat first, shattering my foolish hope along with the silence. “...What the fuck happened?”
I opened my mouth, grasping for the words and failing again to find them. Panic had only accelerated my flashbacks from a smattering of memories into a dizzying supercut of horrors.
The rage I’d seen on Dom’s face as she pinned me against the wall wasn’t all that different from the rage on her face the night I left.
But that moment was an outlier. Everything else I’d experienced from Madeline — what I could remember of it, at least — had been gentle, sweet, and protective.
Memories of Madeline spliced together with the terrifying monster Dom had become, and I had no clue how to make sense of it.
Madeline braiding my hair became Dom pinning me down by it.
Madeline cooking dinner for us turned to Dom throwing that bloody knife at my feet in the garage.
Madeline hiding me from Isaac’s shouting morphed into Dom locking me up in the bedroom like I meant nothing to her.
The lines on all of the memories were starting to blur. Being pinned against the wall of this haunted old bedroom had shaken memories loose, but not all of them were the ones I’d been seeking.
“Kiera?” Leo took a step closer, and suddenly, there was no holding down my emotions.
“I can’t do this…” Sobbing, I clutched my arms, shrinking in on myself.
There were the things I remembered: Madeline’s protection when we were kids, chasing her down the hall, and then a blip before I saw her beating that man, screaming at me to leave the one stable home I knew.
But then, there was something else too. Bone-deep fear. Not of Madeline, but of something outside of the room. The monsters in the hallway. The shadowy figures that haunted our entire childhood.
“Hey, Princess, it’s okay. I want to help. What can’t you do?” Leo furrowed her brow.
Have this conversation. Be in this house. Face her again. A million answers flooded through my psyche, but only one made it past my lips. “Breathe… I can’t…”
When I’d first gotten here, Dom’s screaming had made me defiant. But now, it brought back all the confusion I’d felt that night. Madeline was my friend. I’d never been able to figure out what happened to make her hate me enough to kick me out, but I knew it must have been something I’d done.
You can never just listen, can you?
“Bunny…” Spencer frowned, holding out her arms as she stepped toward me. I didn’t move, but I didn’t stop her from wrapping her arms around me and nuzzling against my hair. “I promise, everything’s going to be okay. Try to take a deep breath for me?”
My body followed her command without me thinking, timing my breaths with the swell of her own. But my mind was still far, far away.
I’d come here seeking answers. But knowing who Dom really was didn’t make any of it clearer. Why let me stay here? Why not tell me sooner?
My body shuddered in reaction to the latter question. Maybe she’d been right to keep it a secret. As my head reeled with all that I’d learned, I wasn’t sure that I wanted to know.
“Good girl,” Spencer kissed my temple gently before pulling back and intertwining her fingers with mine. “You’re real shaken up. Maybe we can just take a seat and?—”
But as she moved for the dusty twin bed, I flinched, ripping my hand away from hers. “No!”
In an instant, any calm the deep breaths had instilled vanished. My heart was thundering in my chest as I gasped raggedly for air, eyes flicking past my lovers and toward the door.
Spencer stumbled in her shock, locking wide eyes with Leo before Leo stepped forward, holding her hands up in the air in front of me. “Okay, we want to help you. So why don’t you tell us what you need, Kiera?”
My eyes flicked from hers to the door again as panic burned a hole in my chest. “I need to get out of this room — out of the house.”
I scanned both of their faces as they tried to figure out where to take me. But before either of them could offer up a plan, Leo’s phone dinged in her pocket, loud as a shotgun in the quiet room.
I kept my eyes glued to her as she pulled out the phone and swiped it open — saw the exact moment her expression darkened.
“You have to be fucking kidding me…”