“It sounded insane. Risky. Trusting someone like that? But Martha swore he was skilled, said he owed her a favor. And she… she cared for Lucas. So I believed her. I had no choice.”
Her voice cracks, “We did it. We brought him in through the back of this run-down hospital, no paperwork, no names. The kind of place that doesn’t exist on record. They wheeled him straight into a room, and I—” she cuts herself off, pressing a trembling hand over her mouth. “I paid everything I had. My entire life savings. It cost more than I could have imagined, but I didn’t care. He was my boy. I just needed him alive.”
She exhales shakily, a mix of relief and grief in her voice. “And by some miracle, the surgery worked. Lucas survived. But that night…” her eyes glaze over again, “that night cost me everything.”
She finally looks straight at me. Her lips are pale, her eyes hollow, and in that moment, I realize—this is the turning point. For her. For Lucas. For everything.
“What happened in that tree house, Kathryn?” My voice is low and inpatient. My chest tightens, lungs burning from how long I’ve been holding my breath. “What did they do to Lucas?”
Her throat bobs, eyes shimmering as she stares past me. I watch her fight the tears, see her jaw tremble as she shakes her head and looks away.
My heart pounds.
No.
No, it shouldn’t be what I’m thinking. It can’t be.
“Fuck,” I mutter under my breath, fists clenching.
“I hate this,” Kathryn says abruptly, exhaling hard through her nose like she’s cracking under the weight of everything she’s carried. She rises to her feet with an edge of panic. Her eyes meet mine for a second, haunted and hollow—but she says nothing as she turns toward her trailer and disappears inside.
The door slams shut.
I stare at it, frozen, my mind spiraling into a place I don’t want to go. My stomach churns with dread. The air feels too thick. Too loud.
And suddenly, all I can think about is him.
Lucas.
I dropped him off this morning for his driver’s test. He started earlier this week. He was hesitant about it for weeks, but finally gave in and signed up. Now, I just want to find him. Hold him. Wrap him in my arms and never let him go again.
The door creaks open.
Kathryn steps out slowly, her movements measured but heavy, like each step is dragging something invisible behind her. My chest tightens the second I see what she’s holding.
A camera.
Something tells me it’s the same one she told me about—the one he loved, the one he carried everywhere. It’s in her hands now, like it’s made of glass and memory and regret.
When she reaches me, there’s war in her eyes. Grief and fire, battling inside her.
“Lucas called me two days ago,” she says, her voice soft, like the words are too fragile to speak loudly. “he rarely does that.”
She pauses, clutching the camera tighter, fingers trembling. She looks up at me, and something in her expression breaks.
“I thought he was calling to check up on me,” she says. “For a moment, I was… I was hopeful.”
She gives a sad, hollow laugh. “But that’s not why he called.”
My brows draw in. I feel the shift in the air.
“He called to tell me about you,” she says, and her voice trembles, cracking on the last word like it physically hurts. “He said he was in love with you.”
My heart melts.
“He said it terrified him,” she continues. “That it makes him feel alive and afraid and seen all at once. He said you look at himlike you heard him, even when no one else did. That whenever he’s with you… He doesn’t feel broken.”
Something shifts inside me—tightens, then swells so fast it knocks the breath from my chest. My heart aches, the kind of ache that makes you want to get in a car and drive until you’re by the side of the person who needs you most. Every part of me is screaming to go to him. To wrap him in my arms and remind him that I’m not going anywhere. Ever.
