Chapter Thirty-Six
Pretending to sleep gets me exactly three things: plausible deniability, a free pass on hard conversations, and a little extra time to think.
I make damn good use of all three. Sterling’s truck hums under us, steady and familiar, every rattle cataloged from a dozen runs before this one.
Normally, I’d be tracking each sound, every twitch of his hands on the wheel, ready to call out trouble before he even sees it.
Tonight, the trouble is sitting right in the passenger seat, wearing his initials.
My fingers rest over the S on my hip, heat pulsing under the denim like it has its own heartbeat.
Every time the truck hits a ripple in the road, the mark answers back.
Deeper aches join in—old bruises, fresh ones, and the long invisible ones the program likes best. Re-enroll, I’d told him.
It brought me to you. I hear it again in my own voice and want to bite my tongue off.
Real smooth, Kiera. Ten out of ten for subtlety.
The thing is…it’s true. The Nesting House, Ward C, every nightmare they stitched into us—all of it led straight to him.
If that’s not the worst love letter ever written, I don’t know what is.
Outside, the trees lean in close, branches flashing through the headlights like reaching hands. The rain has thickened from an annoying drizzle into a full percussion section, drumming on the cab and blurring the world into streaks of gray and black. “You still breathing?” Sterling asks quietly.
“Regrettably,” I mumble, eyes still closed. So much for pretending to sleep.
“Good,” he chuckles. “It would complicate the drive if you stopped.”
I crack one eye open and turn my head just enough to catch his profile.
The dashboard light paints him in that ghost-green glow: set jaw, focused eyes, that little line between his brows that only shows up when he’s thinking too hard and doesn’t like the answers.
He looks different from the way he did this afternoon.
Same face, same scars, same stupidly competent hands on the wheel—but something in the set of his shoulders has shifted.
Less like a loaded weapon, more like a man who’s decided something and hasn’t figured out how to live with it yet.
Join the club. “Scale of one to ten,” I say.
He glances over. “On what?”
“On how bad an idea this was,” I say, waving a vague little circle in the air that covers way too much. “Chapel. Knives. Mutual vandalism disguised as worship. The whole…thing.”
Sterling considers it quietly for a moment. “Depends on who’s asking.”
“I am.”
“Then eight,” he says. “Leaning nine.”
A pout shadows my face in mock sadness. “Ouch.”
“Ask me again if they ever find out,” he adds. “It’ll be a twelve.”
“And if they don’t?”
Sterling’s fingers tap the wheel once…twice. “Then it’s the best idea I’ve had in a long time.” Oh.
I look back out the windshield before my face can do something embarrassing. The wipers drag a clean arc through the rain, only for it to fill right back in. Wipe, blur, wipe. Like we’re erasing ourselves as fast as we draw the lines. “You’re making it really hard to maintain my reputation,” I say.
“Your reputation?”
“Cold-hearted, chaos-driven, commitment-averse,” I giggle. “I have to uphold my reputation.”
“You carved your name into me,” he says. “Pretty sure that ship already sailed.”
“Allegedly,” I say. “There weren’t any witnesses.”
Sterling huffs. “Chapel ghosts don’t count? Or the scar that’ll be left when it heals?”
“Chapel ghosts are on my side.” I shrug.
“I bribed them with good theater. And you could’ve done that yourself.
No proof, so… hearsay.” Silence stretches between us; it feels softer this time, roomier, like there’s actual space to breathe after your heart finally stops trying to punch its way out of your ribs.
The cabin’s porch light bleeds through the trees ahead, a smeared halo in the rain.
Sterling slows as he hits the gravel, tires crunching over the wet stone.
My senses automatically catalog the usual markers—no extra tire tracks, unfamiliar silhouettes, or shift in the way the trees stand.
“Looks the same,” he says, noticing the way I take in our surroundings after the last time we left Cam and Lila alone.
“Or they got really good at hiding while we were… busy,” I say.
His jaw ticks. “Don’t you dare ruin the one good thing about today.”
I swallow a smile. Fair enough. Sterling eases the truck to a stop beside the cabin.
The engine rattles into silence, leaving the rain loud and close around us.
For a second, neither of us moves. The world tilts, recalibrates, trying to make sense of whatever the hell this is now.
“Is this the part where we pretend to be fine?” I ask, voice barely audible.
“This is the part where you let me look at your hip again before you pretend to be fine,” he counters.
“Always so fucking demanding,” I say. “Knew there was a catch to all that chivalry.”
Sterling kills the lights and turns toward me, just a little. “Kiera.” The way he says my name—careful, like it’s a live wire he’s decided to hold anyway—does more damage than the knife ever did.
“Inside.” I hop out of the truck before I do something stupid. “I’m not flashing you in your own driveway. You’ll get a reputation with the neighbors.” I hop out of the truck, heading for the front door.
“We don’t have neighbors,” he yells after me. “And we don’t live here.”
“You don’t know that,” I toss back over my shoulder. “There may be someone close, and whatever would they say seeing me in such a predicament?” I swear I hear him mumble that they wouldn't be alive if anyone saw anything. There’s my normal ghost.
The rain hits hard as I walk across the yard. The cold slams into the heat radiating from the S, and for a second, it feels like the mark is the only real thing on my body. I bite down on a curse and ride it out, one hand clamped over my hip.
Sterling comes to my side, his hoodie already soaked with water. He’s close enough that his warmth cuts the edge off the rain. “Walk or dramatic swoon?” he asks.
“Walk,” I say. “If I swoon, it’s on purpose and for effect—and you haven’t earned that show yet.”
The porch is only a few steps away, but every bruise is waking up with its own opinion.
By the time we reach the shelter of the porch, I’m breathing harder than I want to admit.
Sterling unlocks the door, shoving it open with his shoulder.
Warmth rushes out, carrying the smell of coffee and burning wood.
Home-ish. I pause on the threshold like I always do, half-expecting the inside to be different—empty.
It isn’t. Cam’s cables are still an OSHA violation waiting to happen by the table.
“Still ours,” Sterling whispers in my ear quietly behind me.
Inside, the light is softer, kinder. The cabin door closes out the rain.
Later, Sterling will sit too straight in his chair and pretend he isn’t watching me for cracks.
Later, Cam will ask questions with careful hands and hungrier eyes, and we’ll feed him just enough truth to keep his conscience intact.
Later is a problem. Right now is simple.
“Come on, Thorn,” Sterling says, using the name like a hand on my spine.
“Let me make sure my bad idea doesn't go septic.”
I roll my eyes and step fully inside, letting the door close behind us. “They’re all your bad ideas,” I say. “I just make them look good.”
“Debatable,” a new voice says from the table.
Cam looks exactly like I pictured him: laptop open, three tabs too many, pen stuck through his curls, socks that have clearly never met as a matching pair.
There’s an empty mug by his elbow and a fresh one cooling beside it, like he’s been stress-brewing the whole time we were gone.
His gaze snaps over us—head to toe. I can practically feel the checklist forming: blood, posture, pupils, gait. “You’re late,” he says.
“We brought you a present.” Sterling pulls the notebook from his jacket. He sets it on the table like an offering. “Basement of the chapel. Old desk drawer with a false bottom.”
Cam’s fingers land on the cover like it’s made of glass. “Of course she had a secret stash,” he mutters. “Angelina and her love of drama.”
“Dramatic people save lives,” I say, easing my jacket off. Every movement wakes something up—bruise, cut, the stitched-in ache along my ribs. “Sometimes.”
Cam opens the notebook, and the rest of the room starts to blur for him.
His eyes go sharp, pen appearing in his hand like magic as he underlines, circles, boxes phrases we haven’t met yet.
Behind me, the stove clicks on. Sterling reaches for the kettle, for the coffee tin—for anything that turns nerves into action.
I hover by the back of the couch. My hip throbs in time with my pulse.
Deeper, further in, there’s a slow, wrong roll I don’t want to name.
It’s been lurking at the edges all day—on the drive, in the chapel, now.
Not adrenaline. Not fear. Something heavier.
Cam turns a page. “Same internal shorthand as the Nesting house notes,” he observes.
“But the progression’s different. They’re shortening recovery windows, stacking stressors.
Someone wanted to see what happens when you push too fast.”
The room dips a fraction. I lock my knees. “Because why break people slowly,” I scoff, “when you can speedrun it.”
Cam’s pen pauses, but he doesn’t look up. “Among other things.”
The kettle starts to scream, steam curling.
Coffee hits the filter, and then the smell hits me.
My mouth should be watering, but instead, my stomach lurches like it’s trying to crawl out.
I swallow, the motion not helping. The scent wraps tighter.
“Sit,” Cam says without looking, which is irritating as hell.
“I’m fine,” I say.