Chapter 20
HONEY
After John leaves and I eat as much as I can, I pull out another letter from the shoebox. Like the other two letters, on the front, but scrawled with a pencil in achingly tiny letters is: To you. Yes, you.
Dearest you. Yes, you.
I’ve been here a month. As you probably noticed, that’s usually about the time when everyone writes their letter, but I have been in my head and writing this letter for the last three weeks.
I’ve been telling you to keep going. I’ve been telling you that everything‘s gonna be OK. I’ve been telling you to be brave every time you wake up and see that things are different.
I’ve been telling you that you made the right choice to stick up for yourself and walk away from somebody who treated you poorly.
I’ve been telling you that you don’t need anyone to love you but yourself.
Because it’s easier for me to tell you than for me to tell me.
Last week I packed my bags to return home, and I told you in the letter I hadn’t written yet to not give in. To Unpack your bags even if they are zipped and your foot’s halfway out that door, back to him.
I’m telling you now: don’t think he will change this time because he just needed only one more chance to change and this was the one.
I don’t know if I will make it.
But you will.
You’ll make it all the way into a new life with someone who can show love in another way besides their fists. Or you’ll just enjoy being with yourself.
I know you can do it.
Cady
I take a shower and let the tears wash over me. Please let Cady have made it somewhere safe and happy. But there’s nothing I can do about it right now except feel this ache in my chest for her while the warm water rinses my tears away.
I dry off and stare at my face in the mirror. The bruises are gone. I look like me again. Honey Hale, pre-Trey Bishop.
When I dress, I remember the cash I hid in the dishrag drawer in the kitchen.
I don’t want to be completely reliant on John.
“We’ll go there and get the cash,” I tell Monster as I pull on my shorts.
“Oh, and your treats and a couple books I was reading. Real quick. Before John gets back. We need a walk anyway, and my ankle’s fine now.
” I point my foot and rotate it. “Yep. Much better.”
Monster and I follow the grassy route Danni took to the pavilion.
We walk past the pavilion, where a footpath takes us to the double oak with Danni’s and Heath’s initials.
There’s a fresh morning breeze that’s sweeping through, and the sky is a clear, cloudless blue.
A woodpecker pecks out a welcome when we step through the gate to Heaven.
Monster sits on his haunches and searches until he finds the large stately, red-headed woodpecker, high up in an oak tree.
“Come on, M. We can’t stare at birds all day. ” I nudge him onward.
When we get to my cottage, Monster bounds up the steps, and I unlock the door and push it open.
Monster shoots inside for some water and cool air.
I notice Ned has already fixed the back screening, and Danni has delivered the back porch furniture and dropped off the box with the Calypso.
I pull it out—excited about playing around with it.
I join Monster on the back screen porch and plop down on one of the rocking chairs, sighing happily, looking out at the thick, tall pine trunks shooting straight up to the bright blue sky.
“I’m not going to complain about another beautiful place to sit.
Are you, Monster?” He’s ignoring me, nosing at the new porch screening.
“Don’t even think about it,” I tell him, and he walks over and lays his big head on my lap.
I kiss him on the muzzle. “Let’s keep moving.
Stay out of trouble while I get everything we came here for. ”
I grab the cash from the kitchen drawer, tuck it in my satchel, get Monster’s treats, and decide I should move my drooping potted plants inside, out of the heat before I return to John’s. While I gather up the ones on the screen porch, Monster snoozes in a patch of sun in the corner.
“Don’t get too comfortable. We’re leaving in a minute.
” I water the plants thoroughly in the kitchen sink then head out to the front porch to get the remaining ones out there.
I’m just closing the door behind me, eyeing the sad, wilted plants tucked against the wall when I hear the soft thump of someone stepping up the porch steps.
“What are you doing here?” I ask, my voice tight.
“Thanks for the warm welcome.” Trey’s scrutiny runs from my sunhat all the way down to my tennis shoes. “You ready to come home? You look like shit. And this place…” His eyes take in the cottage behind me. “Definitely not a vacation I’d choose. If this is heaven, I want to go to hell.”
“You need to go. Now.”
“I’ll go, darling, when it’s time.” His words are a drawl.
It’s an affectation he uses when he wants to calm people down.
“Nobody can resist my fake Georgia drawl,” he told me once.
Back then, briefly, I felt bad for him because he never let himself just let down and be who he was.
That was before I got a good glimpse at who he really is.
I slide closer toward the front door.
“We need to talk. And since you’re not answering your phone, it was a little hard to make that happen without coming here. I don’t appreciate it. It was a big disruption in my schedule.”
I stand in front of the front door, my hand behind me, closing over the doorknob.
“Where did you park?” I ask him. “Because there’s a tree that’s about to fall over there.
” I point with my free hand toward where he must have parked.
He looks, and I yank the door open and fling myself into the house.
But with one big stride, he sticks his foot in the door and stops me from closing it.
He yanks me back onto the porch and closes the door, just as Monster rushes down the hallway, barking ferociously.
“Sit.” He waves a hand toward a chair on the front porch. “Is it so hard to spend a couple minutes just talking with me?”
“The last time you wanted to talk, you almost killed the both of us. So, yeah.” I clamp my mouth closed. Riling him up won’t do me any good.
Monster is barking like crazy at the door.
He sits, but I remain standing. “So, you’re here,” I say. “What do you want?”
“Go ahead now. Sit.” He stands and pushes me at a chair. Hard. I stumble then right myself. I sit on the edge of the chair, my legs tense, ready to spring back up.
I hear a thump. Monster’s big muzzle is pressed against the living room window facing the porch.
“That freaking dog is huge,” Trey says before his eyes turn back to me. “Relax, would you? You’re so tense.”
“What do you think we’re going to be able to resolve with a discussion?” I ask him. My eyes dart around the porch, searching for a way to defend myself.
His jaw clenches. “I don’t know what you’re trying to do here—biking around, holing up in this shack, but it’s stupid. And you know it.” He smirks. “You think my guy didn’t find out where you were and check on you and tell me what you’ve been doing?”
Ice runs through my bones. Of course he knew.
“I’m sure this whole shack in the woods thing is getting old for you.
” He quirks an eyebrow, but I don’t respond.
“I know what we do, Honey. We fight, you tell me we’re over, you leave, and you wait for me to come back groveling.
Okay, then. I’m groveling. It’s time to come home.
” He leans back, his eyes deceptively sincere—another show.
Trey is incapable of heartfelt warmth or sincerity.
“I’m sorry. I made a mistake. You’ve proven your point.
I miss you, Honey. We just need to get back to how we were.
You remember how good we were together, don’t you?
” His eyes sear into mine, trying to burn me into thinking he’s being honest. Or maybe he sincerely believes we’re good together because dysfunctional is all he knows.
“I know you want to bully me into playing nice and going back to California with you,” I tell him.
“You want me to pretend we’re a couple, so that you don’t have to realize that you are, in fact, a horrible person.
But I’m not going.” I stand, and he pushes me toward the chair again, but this time so hard that I stumble, hit my head against the wall, then crumple into the chair.
I clamp my lips closed to suppress a whimper.
“I came all the way here.” He bites out each word. “Is it so hard for you to shut up and listen? Is that so much to ask?”
Maybe if I listen, he’ll go. Maybe if I just…no, don’t be stupid. He won’t ever, ever, ever, ever go without you.
“I’ll make this simple for you. I’m going to give you two options.
Again. This time, choose the correct one.
You can either go back home with me. Or you could disappear here in Heaven somewhere, sadly, and nobody would know what happened to you.
There’s a lot of forest out there.” He waves a hand toward the forest.
I stare at him, ice sliding up my backbone. “You’re not a killer, Trey. You’re just a a bully. You bully anyone who doesn’t love you.”
“Nobody knows who you are here. You’re not using your real name. They’d simply think that tiny Wren flapped her little wings and flew back home, wherever that was.”
I need to shut up. I need to say something that will calm him down, make him leave.
He’s not going to leave without me. He’s not going to leave without me.
“Take the right damn option this time, Honey.” His expression is gentle, his eyes oozing compassion. “Stop punishing yourself here. We’re meant to be together.”
“I need my dog. I have to make arrangements for him. Buy a kennel, book a flight, that kind of stuff. Then I’ll join you.”
“You’re going home with me. Now. And we’re not bringing a dog because I hate dogs.”
“But… you do all those Humane Society ads. You’re like their ambassador.” It slips out even though it’s a waste of words. Everything Trey does is fake.
“It’s just bullshit my PR person makes me do.”
Monster is no longer barking on the other side of the door. He’s given up, and just at the same time, I feel myself giving up as well. Trey and I are going to play out this incident over and over again until I’m dead. Maybe he wouldn’t murder me, but he would kill me nevertheless.
“Okay,” I tell him.
“Okay.” He holds a hand out for me to take. “Come on. Let’s go.”
“No. I choose option two. Death. Again.”
He stares at me, his expression changing from placid to enraged, quicker than you can say ‘kill me and bury me in the forest.’
I hear a loud ripping sound. It takes me a moment to realize what it is. “You might want to run. I mean, like now,” I tell Trey.
He sneers. “What are you talking about?”
“That’s Monster, my dog. He’s pushing through the screen of the back porch. Good luck when he gets out. Because you may hate him, but he’ll hate you more.”
He stands, his face taut, staring at the side of the cottage.
He picks up a chair and holds it in front of him.
He’s not watching me now, but there’s no possible way I can make it past Trey into the front door.
Instead, I bolt toward the stairs and leap—a perfect leap until Trey throws the chair at me.
Pain envelopes me. I can hear Monster growling and running toward us before I thud to the ground, my head slamming onto the corner of the step. A curtain of black sweeps over me, and I realize that this may be how I will finally get rid of Trey. Option two, death.