My stomach plummets.
I step closer, dizziness hitting me like a wave, but I grip the doorframe hard enough to steady myself.
The lock is turned inward.
I stand staring at it, cold creeping into my bones, crawling slow and deliberate up my spine.
I locked that door last night.
I remember locking that door.
Noah doesn’t forget locks. He checks them twice, sometimes three times, even when he thinks I’m not paying attention.
So who?—
“Kai,” I whisper.
The name falls out of me like a confession.
My breath turns shallow, thin, almost frantic.
“No. No, no, no, no?—”
I turn away from the door too fast, the room spinning like it’s on a faulty axis. I brace myself against the table, breath stuttering, palms sweating.
My pulse is a frantic animal in my throat.
I stumble to the sink, gripping the edge, the steel biting into my fingers.
The window above the basin stares out into the garden—the trimmed hedges, the perfect flowerbeds, the neat little stone path…
…and the mouth of the woods at the back of the property.
Trees standing close.
Dark.
Watching.
Waiting.
Like someone else had been.
I swallow hard.
The drug is still tugging at my limbs, making everything feel slow, fogged, out of sync, but beneath that haze something sharp slices through?—
Instinct.
Fear.
Memory.
Want.
I press my forehead to the cool glass of the window.
“What did I do?” I whisper.
