“And your dad,” she adds, watching the house shrink between the trees. “He looks like he could build a house and bury a body by lunch.”
“Accurate,” I say, pulling onto the road. “You still in?”
She turns from the window and pins me with a look that makes me want to kidnap time. “All in,” she says.
“Good,” I say, and let the oaks close over the drive behind us. We head home with destruction in the rearview and a girl who throws fire like confetti. I roll my shoulders and feel the day set in my bones.
We blew in. We blew out. We are done. At least for now.
55
Agatha
The driveinto town is quiet. Too quiet. The kind of quiet that makes my stomach roll. The roads are mostly empty, late afternoon light slanting low across the asphalt, cutting through the haze that’s been hanging since we left their parents. I lean my head against the window and watch the world slide by in slow gray streaks. My chest feels heavy, like there’s a clock ticking inside me and I’m running out of time.
My fingers twist in my lap. Somehow, these twisted, sexy men have gotten under my skin. Maybe even into my heart. I can’t stop thinking about it.
“What happens now?” I ask. The question steals the air right out of my lungs.
Corwin glances at me in the rearview mirror, his voice flat. “You go back to school. Back to your channel.”
“And you?” I press.
He lifts a shoulder. “What about us?”
Garron glances at me. “What do you want, Little Horror?”
“I don’t know,” I admit. “I just know I feel sad about going home and acting like this trip didn’t happen.” My voice cracks on the last word.
Evander turns his head slightly, the corner of his mouth twitching like he’s fighting a smile. “You think it’s easy to stop thinking about you?”
Garron laughs under his breath. “She doesn’t think we’re addicted yet.”
They drive me all the way to my house. When we pull up to the curb, I wait for one of them to say something, to tell me not to go. They don’t. Corwin just puts the car in park. I grab my bag, slam the door harder than I mean to, and stalk up the steps.
They just let me go inside, alone. After all the chasing, the stalking, the taking, the kidnapping, they just let me go that easily?
Inside, I throw my duffel down and start unpacking. The normal motions feel foreign. Socks in the drawer, dirty clothes in the washer. I’m angry, and I can’t even explain why. Maybe because they let me go so easily?
I strip and get in the shower, scrubbing until my skin turns red. School starts again in a couple of days, and then I’ll be back in my classroom, smiling at bright-eyed kids who have no clue their teacher just helped burn down a church and murder several people. .
When I crawl into bed, I try to read—something steamy and violent because that’s all my brain can hold—but the words blur. Sleep finally drags me under.
Morning creeps in;slow, pale light seeping through the blinds. It feels colder than it should, but maybe it’s just time to turn the heat on. My phone sits silent on the nightstand. No messages. No calls. Just me in this quiet little house that already feels too small, like it’s trying to press me back into the version of myself I was before them.
I lie there for a while, staring at the ceiling. My body aches, not in a bad way, but in a way that reminds me of every touch, every bruise of our trip. My skin smells like my own soap now instead of them. The sheets are cool against my thighs. I hate it.
Finally, I push myself out of bed. My feet hit the cold floor, and I drag on my robe, tugging it tight like it might hold me together. In the kitchen, I make coffee the same way I always do, but it tastes like the flavor’s gone. The mug is warm in my hands, but it doesn’t reach my chest.
I sit at the table and scroll without really thinking about it, just trying to fill the silence. But the news finds me, anyway.
The feed from my hometown is a mess of missing person reports, church gossip, and shaky phone footage that’s already been reposted a hundred times. Someone uploaded a clip of flashing lights outside the church, sirens bleeding into the night. The caption reads“God’s house burns, secrets burn with it.”
There’s people from town arguing in the comments, asking why Lindy and Williams, what they were hiding, who leaked the evidence. No one mentions me, but my name feels ghosted between every line.
Then I see it. A link to a true crime group. Screenshots. The kind of photos that used to live in the dark corners of that church, now plastered across timelines. Proof of what they did. Proof of what we stopped.
My thumb hovers over the comments section, but I can’t make myself read them. Half the town is probably callingit divine punishment. The other half is pretending it never happened.
