Chapter 18
If there was one thing the forest did better than anything else, it was making time bleed together. There was a period when things almost seemed settled.
I never felt safe, and nothing about the way we lived would’ve looked normal to any sane person, but somehow we still fell into our own rhythm inside that little cabin hidden out in the woods.
There was order in repetition, though nothing comforting in it.
Food, movement, silence. The woods, the shelter, the lake.
Zwierek, and me. I had stopped questioning it by then.
That impulse had worn away somewhere along the route, leaving something harder to name in its place.
It had become something that no longer required constant tending.
There was a town around forty minutes from where we stayed.
We made sure we moved carefully and never used the same path twice.
Small enough that strangers passed unnoticed, provided they did nothing to disturb attention.
I went for what I always went for. Books.
The building never changed. The same smell, the same stillness.
Paper, dust, and beneath it some faint trace that made the place seem older than its years.
I remember thinking, only for a moment, that it felt almost familiar.
That thought should have unsettled me more than it did.
Familiarity has a way of loosening caution.
I didn’t stay long. I moved through the shelves quickly, fingers grazing over spines, not really reading titles so much as sensing what might be worth taking.
By then, I’d been there enough times to know exactly where every book was placed.
I already had two books tucked into one hand, my eyes moving over the spines on the shelves when I saw it.
The Count of Monte Cristo.
For the first time in years, I felt something pull at my face, unnatural and unfamiliar.
A crooked smile that barely looked like one, but I could feel it forming on my lips anyway.
Looking back on it now, it feels strange that I would smile at that memory.
At its core, it was a place filled with violence and grief, but that book had been the one thing I held onto through all of it, second only to Zwierek.
For the first time in a long while, I let myself loosen my grip on everything for a moment and opened the book.
The familiar smell of dust and paper settled around me as I flipped through the pages.
For a second, I could’ve sworn the book was about to pull me in, but then a familiar voice cut straight through it, slicing through the flood of memories and dragging me back.
“Rowan?”
I locked up completely. I stood there holding those books like an idiot while the past came back so fast it felt physical. That’s the thing memory can do.
My grip tightened around the books without me noticing, fingers pressing into the covers as if they were the only thing keeping me anchored to something real. No. No, no… don’t turn around. Thoughts hit all at once in collision.
It’s not her.
It can’t be her.
You’re imagining it.
You’ve done that before.
“Rowan?” Everything dropped. That voice… I turned. And there she was.
Krystyna.
Standing a few steps away as if she had every right to be there, as if this wasn’t the kind of moment that should tear something open simply by existing. Her eyes found mine at once. And God… the look on her face. Relief. Real relief. “Rowan…”
She said for the third fucking time, but softer this time, as though saying it too loudly might make me vanish. My body didn’t move. I don’t even think I breathed.
Flash.
Her hands. The way they felt.
Flash.
Her presence at night. The way she closed the door.
Flash. My own body no longer mine. Fuck.
My stomach turned so fast it made me dizzy, something cold moving through me, colliding with the heat climbing my spine. She stepped closer.
“I thought…” Her voice faltered, then steadied.
“I thought I’d never see you again,” I said nothing. I couldn’t, because I didn’t know which version of me she thought she was looking at. Her expression softened, and somehow that made it worse.
“You left,” she said, a small, almost disbelieving smile touching her mouth.
“You just… disappeared.” Her hand lifted a little, as though she might touch me, then hesitated.
“I looked for you,”
Did she? My throat tightened.
“Rowan…” she exhaled, as if my name itself were something she had missed. “Can we… can we sit somewhere? Talk? Please.”
No. No. Not a fucking chance. But it never made it out of me. Because something else moved underneath it.
If I say no, then what happens?
If I walk away, does she follow?
Does she say my name louder?
Does someone else hear it?
Police... My heart slammed against my ribs. What if this is it. What if this is how it ends. Thoughts started piling over one another too fast to sort. This is a setup. She knows. She’s stalling me. Someone’s outside. Watching. Waiting. I’m standing in the open like a fucking idiot and,
“Rowan?” Her voice cut through it, closer now.
“There’s a café,” she said gently.
“Just around the corner. We can just sit. Talk. That’s all.”
My jaw tightened. That’s never all. But against every sane instinct I had, I nodded. Her face lit up, and I hated that I noticed.
“Okay,”
She breathed out, relief threading through her voice in a way that sounded real enough to confuse me.
“Okay… good.”
She stayed close when we walked. I could feel her even without looking, smell her, the old, familiar scent of her perfume penetrating my nostrils.
After a few minutes of walking in silence, we arrived at the café.
The café was small, warm, way too warm. The air thick with coffee and something sweet that made my stomach twist in a way that had nothing to do with hunger.
We sat. She talked, I listened.
“I’m so sorry,” she said at one point, her hands wrapped around the cup like she needed something to hold onto.
“Everything that happened, I should’ve… I should’ve done something.” My eyes stayed on her. Should have... Her voice wavered.
“I should’ve protected you from him.”
From him? What about herself?
“I didn’t,” she continued, shaking her head, like she couldn’t quite accept it. “And I hate myself for that.” I fucking doubt it.
“I mean it,” she added quickly, searching my face like she needed me to believe her.
“I hate that I didn’t stop him.” My finger curled slightly against the table. You didn’t stop. Not once.
“I’m… glad,” she said, softer now, her voice dropping in a way that felt almost like a confession.
“I’m glad you did it.”
Wait, what? That made something shift inside me.
“He didn’t deserve to live,” she continued, eyes darkening as they locked onto mine.
“You did what needed to be done.” Something in me narrowed, and I looked at her properly.
“And now…” she exhaled, something lighter slipping into her tone.
“Now I’m free.” Free to do what exactly? Fuck more teenagers? Fucking hell.
“I moved,” she added quickly.
“After everything. I couldn’t stay there. It just…” she shook her head.
“I have my own place now. It’s… better.”
I couldn’t make sense of what was happening right in front of me.
And I’m probably the last person in the world who should have anything good to say about Bartosz, but in the six years I lived with them, I never saw him be cruel or violent toward Krystyna.
Well, aside from the one time he walked in while my cock was buried deep inside her.
But even then, I was the one who took the worst beating.
Even if I chose to believe her, to believe the words coming out of her mouth, there would still be too many questions. Too many things that didn’t make sense in my head, no matter how I tried to piece them together.
What happened when she opened the door to my room the next morning and found Bartosz, or what was left of him, spread across the floor?
Did she cry?
Did she panic?
Did she call the police?
Were we being hunted?
Was it just me she was looking for, or Zwierek too?
And if she did call the police, what would she even have told them?
And if she didn’t, then what did she do with Bartosz’s body?
As fucked up as Krystyna was, I still couldn’t picture her actually handling something like that on her own. Her hand moved then. Across the table, resting over mine. My body and my thoughts went still.
“You have no idea how much I missed you,” she said, her gaze resting on my hand as her thumb brushed lightly against my skin. A familiar movement, and for a second, I wasn’t in that café. I was back in that room.
“Come home with me,” she said softly.
My mind snapped. No. No, no no, but my body didn’t follow. My thoughts turned on me again, faster this time. Why would you say yes? Why would you even consider, what the fuck are you doing.
“...okay.” The word left my mouth before I could catch it. Her eyes widened. “You…” she blinked, something like shock crossing her face.
“You spoke.”
Right. That. I didn’t explain, just held her gaze. Something in her expression shifted again.
“Okay,” she repeated, slower this time, studying me like she was seeing something new.
“Okay…”
We stood and walked out of the café together.
The air outside felt colder, almost hostile.
We walked back to the library parking lot, where her car was still parked.
The same car she and Bartosz had picked me up in from the orphanage.
Krystyna unlocked the doors, but just as I reached for the handle, something in the corner of my vision caught my eye.
I only half turned, but I saw him anyway.
Zwierek.
Loitering at the far edge of the lot, half shadowed, like he had been there the entire time and just chose not to be seen until now. Our eyes met, and something in me seized. For a second, every thought fell away.