Chapter 5 #2
"No." The word comes out before I can dress it up. Naked and shaking and more honest than I've been with anyone in months.
He doesn't ask what's wrong. Doesn't probe. Doesn't fill the silence with questions I'm not ready to answer.
He steps aside and lets me in.
His room is small. Bed, desk, lamp. A laptop open on the desk, lines of data on the screen. Boots by the door.
The room smells like him—clean, warm, and grounding—but all I can feel is the suffocating weight of the dread that’s been clawing at my chest since six this morning.
I’m a frayed wire, sparking and desperate, and he’s the only thing keeping me from snapping completely.
When I collide with him, it isn’t a gentle embrace—it’s a crash.
I press myself against him, needing to feel the solid, unwavering heat of his body to drown out the cold void inside me.
I need to feel something other than the panic.
He catches me instantly, his large palms sliding firmly over my waist and lower back, hauling me flush against him.
I kiss him with a starving kind of urgency, my mouth searching, demanding.
He doesn't flinch. He doesn't hesitate.
He meets my desperation with a fierce intensity of his own, his tongue sliding against mine in a rhythm that makes my head spin.
The sheer relief of being held by someone who can handle the storm inside me makes my eyes sting, a sob catching in my throat that transforms into a moan.
My fingers scramble, frantic and clumsy, digging into the hem of his shirt.
I yank it upward, needing the barrier gone.
He breaks the kiss just long enough to whip the fabric over his head, revealing a chest that is lean and defined.
I gasp, my palms slamming against his warm skin, feeling the heavy, thudding gallop of his heart beneath his ribs.
It matches my own—a frantic, synchronized drumming.
He moves to my flannel buttons. He’s slow, deliberate, while my hands are still shaking from grabbing at him.
Every button he undoes feels like a question, a silent check-in to make sure I’m still with him.
I answer by arching my back, pressing my chest harder against him, my breath coming in shallow, jagged hitches.
The flannel slides off my shoulders, and my tank top follows, leaving me exposed to the cool air of the room and the searing heat of his gaze.
His mouth drops to my neck, his lips grazing the hollow of my throat.
He finds the spot just below my ear where my pulse is hammering wildly against the skin.
I feel the slight curve of a smile against my flesh when he feels it.
"Your heart's going fast," he murmurs, his voice a low, rough vibration that runs through me like a current.
One arm wraps tightly around my lower back, crushing me into him.
"I know," I whisper, my voice sounding wrecked, foreign to my own ears.
"Good fast or bad fast?" He pulls back just an inch, his eyes searching mine, reading every flicker of emotion.
"Good," I choke out, my fingers curling into his hair, pulling him back down. "Please... don't stop."
He doesn't. He lifts me, my legs instinctively locking around his waist, and carries me to the bed.
We hit the mattress in a tangle of limbs and heat.
The air in the room grows thick and humid as we strip away the last of our clothes, our skin sliding against skin.
As he moves over me, I can feel the fine sheen of sweat beginning to coat our bodies, making every touch electric and slick.
I’m frantic, my nails digging deep into the muscles of his shoulders, pulling him closer, needing to be consumed.
He’s patient, but there is a hunger in him now that mirrors my own.
We’re figuring out the language of each other's bodies in real time.
He pays attention to everything—the way my breath hitches when he brushes a thumb over a sensitive spot, the way my hips tilt upward, begging for more.
When he finally slides inside me, the sensation is overwhelming, a sudden, searing fullness that makes me cry out, my head tossing back against the pillows.
I cling to him, my chest heaving, sweat dripping from my forehead and mingling with his.
Every thrust is a heartbeat, every gasp a confession.
The tension builds, a coil tightening in my gut until I can't breathe, can't think, can only feel the friction of his cock filling me and the weight of his body pinning me down.
When I finally come apart, it isn't a sudden explosion.
The walls I've built up all day crack wide open, and everything I've been holding back spills out in a wave of shuddering release.
I shake beneath him, my eyes squeezed shut, my entire body vibrating.
He doesn't pull away. He stays with me, his forehead pressed hard against mine, his breath ragged and hot against my lips.
His own release hits him a second later. I feel his hips stutter, his grip tightening on the sheets beside my head until the fabric groans.
A low, guttural sound ripped from deep in his chest, the kind of sound a man only makes when he's lost control of everything except his body.
We collapse into each other, slick with sweat and exhausted, our hearts still hammering against one another in the sudden, heavy silence of the room.
For the first time all day, the dread is gone. There’s only him.
He rolls to the side, pulling me with him so my head rests on his chest.
His arm settles across my waist. Heavy, warm, present.
Neither of us speaks for a long time.
I almost tell him.
About the letter, the calls, the cellmate on my mother's porch, the graduation photo, the name Halstead and what it means and why I changed it.
The words are right there. Sitting on my tongue like coins waiting to drop.
But his breathing is evening out, and his thumb is tracing lazy circles on my hip, and for the first time since the phone rang this morning, the dread has gone silent.
I can't risk losing this.
Not yet.
My phone buzzes on the nightstand.
I reach for it without thinking, expecting a text from my mom saying goodnight.
The screen glows in the dark room. Not a text.
A notification from an app I don't use. A social media tag from an account I don't follow.
I tap it open.
A true crime forum. A thread I've never seen. A post from six hours ago with a photo of the Morgantown courthouse and the subject line:
HALSTEAD CASE: Where Is the Daughter Now?
Beneath it, a paragraph about the murder. Christine's name. The sentencing.
And a question: Does anyone know what happened to the daughter? She'd be in her early twenties now. Still in the Morgantown area?
Someone has tagged my account. My real account, under my real name.
Saylor Bell.
They've connected Bell to Halstead.
My phone screen blurs. My arm is trembling so hard the light jumps across the ceiling in jagged lines.
His arm tightens across my waist. "Saylor, you okay?"
I power the screen off and set the phone facedown on the nightstand.
"It’s nothing." My voice doesn't sound like mine. "Go to sleep."
He's silent for a moment.
His arm stays heavy and his thumb stops tracing circles.
He knows I'm lying, but he doesn't push.
I close my eyes and press my face into his chest and listen to his heartbeat, pretending the ground is still solid while the cracks spread underneath.