Processing the fact that I’m happy and lonely at the same time. That I’m glad my friends are building families, even while some tiny part of me whispers it’s never going to be my turn.
Processing the fact that a quiet holiday in Lucy Falls never stays quiet for long.
As if summoned by my thought, Jack’s radio crackles.
He turns the dial, muting the chatter with two practiced flicks of his wrist. The sudden silence in its place is deafening. Whatever warmth I’d been floating on evaporates.
Lucy Falls has been peaceful for more than a year. No stalkers. No missing girls. No bodies turning up where they shouldn’t.
Peace in this town always feels like the pause before a second shoe drops.
Jack’s phone buzzes in his back pocket. He pulls it out, glances at the screen, and his shoulders stiffen in a way that makes my palms sweat.
He turns away from us slightly as he answers, voice low. “Brady.”
We all pretend not to listen. We’re terrible at it.
“Yeah,” he says after a moment. “I’m here. How bad?”
His jaw tightens. The muscles in his forearm flex as his fingers clench around the phone.
Every hair on my arms stands on end.
“Jack?” Harry asks finally, cautious.
Jack kills the call and slides his phone back into his pocket. When he faces us, his expression is carefully neutral, but the lines around his mouth are deeper than they were a minute ago.
“I’ve gotta go,” he says. “Hiker found a body up at the Falls.”
Shiloh’s hand flies to her throat. “No.”
“It could be a fall,” Sammy says quickly, tone forced-light. “Plenty of people wipe out on those rocks when they’re iced over.”
“We’re not going to jump to conclusions before we have facts,” Jack agrees. “Stay put. Lock your doors. I’ll keep you posted as soon as I know anything.”
He doesn’t look at me when he says it, but I feel the emphasis anyway.Lock your door.
My stomach flips. I’m one of the few of our group who live alone these days. Harry and Wyatt were the first to couple up, their relationship coming out of the blue when Harry discovered her husband wasn’t just cheating on her—he was a bigamist with an entire second family.
Then there was Shiloh and Gunner, friends I’d gone to school with. Their happy-ever-after was the culmination of years of dancing around a brother’s best friend thing and an “I can’t—I’m your teacher” complication that drove a wedge between them when Shiloh’s first teaching job turned out to be Gunner’s senior English class.
Cotton, aka Emery, found Brodie, my cousin, when he was sent to kill her by the extended family we pretend doesn’t exist—the Irish mob. They’re relatively harmless unless you fuck with them, usually only needing me or Brodie to do the occasional job for them.
Brodie couldn’t kill Cotton, though. He took one look at her and was pretty much gone for her. He kidnapped her instead,whisked her away to someplace safe until he figured out how to keep her permanently safe, and now she has a ring on her finger and one-point-five kids.
So it all worked out.
It’s just me on my own now, and Jack—who definitely had a thing for Harry at one time, but we don’t talk about that—and Sammy, Shiloh’s younger brother and Gunner’s best friend.
But Henry Thurston’s not interested in dudes.
We watch Jack walk out, silence thick in his wake.
“Probably definitely just a hiker.” Harry echoes Sam's call and forces a laugh that doesn’t sound like her at all. “Tourists can’t read warning signs.”
“Yeah.” I pick at a loose thread on the rug. “Probably.”
The Fallsaredangerous as hell in winter. It’s not outside the realm of possibility. Wet stone, black ice, tourists who think Instagram is worth a broken neck… It could definitely happen.
