30. Lola
LOLA
I wake up shivering. My body aches, my mouth is dry. For a moment, I think I’m alone but then I feel his presence like a storm behind my eyes.
He sits in the chair, skull mask gleaming in the watery morning light, elbows on his knees, watching me. Watching, always watching. Brody—except not Brody, not the boy I loved, but some colder thing. A shadow in a mask.
I try to sit up, clutching the blanket to my chest. My head spins. “What do you want?” My voice is raspy, unfamiliar.
He doesn’t answer right away, just stares. The mask gives nothing back, just a bony, black, endless eyes. Even sick, even weak, I feel hunted under that gaze.
Then, finally, he speaks. “What did you mean last night?”
My heart thuds. I blink, remembering flashes of fever: my mouth running, secrets slipping out in the dark. “I don’t—what?”
He leans forward, the mask inches from my face. “You said you never wanted Marcus. Not ever. You wanted me. That night. Don’t lie. I want the truth.”
My lips part, mind scrambling, searching for something safe. There’s nothing. Just memories and regret and the pounding of my own heart. “I hated him,” I say, voice trembling. “He was never what I wanted. I just—I wanted out. I wanted something real. You were the only thing that ever felt real.”
He laughs, joyless. “Yeah? You could’ve fooled me. You ran right back to him. You left me with nothing.”
My hands curl tighter around the blanket. “You left me. After that night, you disappeared. I had no one.”
He stands, fast and violent. The chair scrapes against the floor, and suddenly, he’s towering over me, mask close, breath fogging between us, every inch of him a threat. My pulse is a terrified drumbeat.
“Don’t try to twist this, Lola,” he growls. “You think a fever confession changes anything? You think I’ll forget what you did?”
I shake my head, tears stinging my eyes. “You don’t know what it was like. You don’t know what happened.”
He grabs my chin with rough hands. “Then tell me. Tell me what the fuck happened. What did you do?”
My voice cracks. “You wouldn’t believe me if I did.”
His grip tightens, then he shoves me back, hard enough that my head knocks the pillow. “No, I wouldn’t. You’re just like him. A liar. A little actress.”
I swallow the sob clawing up my throat. “I’m not like him. I’m not.”
He paces, fists clenched at his sides, rage vibrating off him. “If you wanted me—if you ever did—why did you let him take everything from me?”
I can’t look at him. I stare at the ceiling, blinking back tears. “I wanted you,” I whisper. “But you left.”
The sentence hangs between us. He towers over me, all rage and hunger. I see his fists, the way blood pulses in his throat. He doesn’t even flinch. Just stares, mask splitting the light, jaw set like it hurts to be alive.
He laughs. “You didn’t want me. Don’t fucking lie. If you did, you would have fought. You would’ve crawled bloody across the floor before you let him take you.”
I look down, too tired to fight. My hands shake in the blanket. I just want him to stop. I just want him to come closer.
“You don’t know,” I say. Quiet, bracing for the pain. “You don’t know what it was like. You could never know.”
His hand yanks my hair back tight. My chin tips up, tears streaking down my throat.
He leans in, skull to my cheek. “I know you’re a fucking coward. I know you’re a traitor. You let him have you. You ran back to him. Not even a week after you were in my bed.”
I shake my head. “I didn’t want to go.”
He lets go and my head knocks the wall. Stars flash in my vision.
Brody paces, boot scuffing the dirt, shoulders huge. He’s unhinged, rattling with hate and something worse. Maybe grief. Maybe just need.
I wait. There’s nothing else I can do.
He wheels back, snatches my jaw in his hand, squeezing so tight my teeth grind. “Don’t freeze up now. Tell me the truth. You want him? You want to be his little prize? Or do you want me, Bambi? Because the way I remember it, you spread your legs for him easy enough.”
I could scream. I could bite him. I just let it slide off. “He never asked what I wanted,” I say. “He just took.”
“I don’t care,” Brody snaps. “You should’ve fought. You should’ve clawed out his fucking eyes. You should’ve died before you let him touch you.”
His voice cracks. The only thing that still feels real. My cheeks are wet, but I’m done pretending. I let the tears fall. I let them wash over us. “You didn’t come for me,” I whisper. My heart shreds on the words. “You never came.”
He jerks away, wild. I see it. How my words splinter him open.
For a second, there’s something softer, some old ache that almost gentles his lips.
I can feel the heat rolling off him in bitter waves.
I’m half-curled, half-defiant, heart pounding so hard the world blurs.
I think he might hit me. Or maybe pull me in and make me beg. I can’t tell which is worse.
He just stands there, mask splitting the morning, all control and violence and something shattered underneath.
His breath shakes as he says it again, softer, but it cuts deeper: “Don’t put that on me.
I would’ve killed for you. I would’ve burned this whole world for you, and you—” His fist tightens in the blanket, knuckles bone-white. “You broke me. You fucking broke me.”
I pull the blanket up, shaking hands, and hide my face. Maybe if I go small enough he’ll forget I’m here. But he doesn’t. I hear his breath. The chair scrapes back. Boots on the floor, walls closing in. There’s nowhere to go.
He grabs my jaw. The skull mask floats above, like a nightmare. My pulse flares.
“You don’t get it?” His voice is poison in my ears. “You never did. You let him take you. You let him fucking ruin everything.”
“Not what happened,” I rasp. “You don’t know. You left.”
He snorts. “I left? No. I was forced out. Because of you. Because of that night.” He leans in, skull inches from my temple.
I feel the heat in his words. “You could have come. You could have bled for me. But you didn’t.
” I want to hit him. I want to curl around myself and never speak again.
He shakes my head in his grip, like trying to rattle the truth out of me.
“Tell me what you did. Say it. Say you liked it. Say you took him because you wanted to hurt me.”
I squeeze my eyes shut. Tears break free, spilling warm over my jaw. I breathe, in and out. “Nothing like that. I didn’t want it. I didn’t want him.”
He lets go, my head flings back and hits the headboard. There are black spots in my vision. The mask stares, empty, awful. Brody is in pieces. He wants to glue himself back together with every scream, every shameful memory. He wants to eat my heart and spit it out.
His hands flex at his sides. Knuckles white, arms trembling with violence. “You’re a fucking coward,” Brody says. “You always were. Always running. Always hiding behind your pretty little lies.”
I clench my fists under the covers. My skin is buzzing with fear, shame, and something worse—a black hole where love should be.
“Do you want the truth?” I snap, voice gone. “Here it is. You scare me. You scare me more than anything. You tear me open every time you look at me.”
“Good. Maybe you like being afraid. Maybe that’s the only thing that makes you feel alive.”
“You don’t know what makes me alive.”
I can’t look up. If I look up, he’ll see every ruined thing inside me. He’s moving. Pacing the room, boot scraping concrete. Each pass, he gets that much closer. The blanket falls. My skin prickles with cold and panic. I don’t think. I move.
My feet hit the floor; I duck under his arm before he can react. My shoulder slams the corner of the bed. Pain spikes but I keep going. My body is on flight or flight mode, and terror is taking a hold of me.
The windows are thick with snow. I can’t see out, I can barely see anything but shadows and the blurred shape of the door. My lungs burn. I stumble toward the kitchen. Cabinets, table, stove. No exit. No escape. Only dark.
The lights snap off. The storm outside groans. The room goes black.
My heart stutters. The dark is absolute. I freeze. My breath clouds the air in shivery bursts. The only sound is the wind and my pulse in my ears. Then I hear him. The skull mask gleams when the clouds drift past the moonlight, then vanishes.
Brody doesn’t run. He doesn’t have to. He calls into the dark. Calm and terrible. “I am going to find you, Bambi. I always do.”
I choke on a sob. My hands fumble along the wall. I knock something over, it shatters at my feet. I flinch. He’ll hear that. He hears everything.
Crouching behind the table, my knees shake. The storm rattles the cabin, shrieks through the seams. The dark is thick, pressing against my face. My vision swims with fear as his boots scrape closer. Not rushing. Taking his time. Enjoying it.
“Keep hiding,” he says. “It won’t matter. You know how this ends.”
I press my fist to my mouth. I want to vanish. I want to become the shadow. But I’m just a trembling, broken thing behind splintered wood. I squeeze my eyes shut. He is everywhere. His presence coils through the room, fills every crack.
There’s a crash. He kicks something aside. The table shudders. I press myself smaller, breath frozen in my chest. The room tilts but I can’t tell if I’m shaking or if the world is. Something brushes my hair. Fingers, gloved and cold. I scream.
Brody grabs my arm, yanking me up. My legs buckle. I claw at his hand but he’s too strong. He pulls me upright, chest-to-chest, mask inches from my face. I scream again, louder. It echoes in the black.
He shoves me against the wall and holds me there with his whole body. His breath is ragged. I feel it through the mask, hot and cruel. “Told you,” he says, voice all ice and hunger. “I always find you.”
I thrash. I try to bite him, punch him, anything. He laughs. It’s an awful sound. I sob. My chest aches; terror slices through me. Shame, too. And something sick shaped with hunger.
He leans close. The mask presses my cheek. “No more running,” he whispers.
The lights flicker, then die for good. The storm screams. The cabin is a tomb. He drags me, still fighting, back through the dark. I can’t see, can’t breathe. All I feel are his hands, the heat of him, the weight of the mask against my skin.
My scream shreds the silence, but he doesn’t let go.
The dark swallows us whole.