Behind me, Tom’s footsteps pounded up the basement stairs, heavy and furious.
I ran.
Through the kitchen where he’d cooked me meals. Past the dining table where we’d eaten together. Past the couch where we used to curl up and watch movies, my head on his shoulder, his arm around me. Past all the relics of a life that we used to have.
My lungs burned, my vision narrowing at the edges. But adrenaline carried me forward, primitive and powerful, drowning out the voice in my head screaming that I’d never make it, that I was too weak, too slow.
I could hear him behind me, closing the distance. He was faster, not weakened by weeks of captivity.
My hand reached out, fingers closing around the doorknob.
The door flew open, and I crashed into the world beyond Tom’s carefully constructed prison. The cold outside air hit my face like a baptism, sharp and clean, carrying the scent of pine and earth. It was the most beautiful thing I’d ever felt.
I kept running.
Down the porch steps, my bare feet hitting wood. Across the gravel driveway that tore at my soles, each stone a small knife. I didn’t know where I was going, didn’t have a plan beyondbeing anywhere but here. Distance was the only goal. Survival the only strategy.
Behind me, I heard Tom in the doorway. Heard him shout my name—raw and desperate and furious, all at once, pain and betrayal wrapped in one single syllable.
But I didn’t stop.
I didn’t dare look back.
I ran toward the trees. A wall of them rose ahead like the ramparts of some ancient fortress, dark and dense and forbidding. They promised shelter, concealment, sanctuary.
Behind me, Tom’s footsteps were gaining ground. I could hear his breathing, harsh and ragged, could hear him calling my name with increasing desperation.
“Shay! Shay, stop! Please!”
As if there was anything he could say that would make me turn around. My legs were moving on pure adrenaline now, my body running on fumes and the desperate animal instinct torun.
One moment I was under the open sky, and the next I was enveloped in darkness so complete it was like being swallowed whole. The canopy overhead blocked out what little light remained in the sky, and the underbrush immediately began clawing at my legs, my clothes, my skin.
I crashed through it anyway. Branches whipped my face, leaving lines of fire across my cheeks. Thorns caught my clothes, tearing fabric. But I kept moving. The darkness was actually an advantage—if I couldn’t see, neither could Tom. And I knew he was behind me. Could hear him entering the woods, hear him cursing as he fought through the same obstacles that slowed me.
“Shay!” His voice echoed strangely among the trees, bouncingand distorting.
My foot caught on something—a root, a rock, I couldn’t tell—and I went down hard. My palms hit the forest floor, sinking into a carpet of rotting leaves and damp earth, the smell of decay filling my nostrils.
I scrambled back to my feet, my hands covered in mud, and kept going.
But I was slowing down. Could feel it in the way my lungs burned, the way my legs trembled with each step, each breath coming shorter and more desperate than the last. My body was giving out, pushed past its limits.
I needed to hide. Needed to let him pass, to give myself time to recover, to figure out what to do next. Running blindly wouldn’t work forever.
A fallen tree loomed out of the darkness ahead, materializing like a gift. It had fallen long ago, and the forest had begun to reclaim it. Mushrooms sprouted from its bark in pale clusters. Vines crawled over its surface like veins. The root system had torn up a huge section of earth when it fell, creating a hollow beneath where soil met air.
I dropped to my knees and crawled underneath it, wedging myself into the space between earth and wood. The hollow smelled of rot, and I pulled dead leaves and debris around me, trying to camouflage myself in the darkness, trying to become part of the forest floor.
Then I held my breath and waited.
Tom’s footsteps approached. I could hear him moving through the underbrush, slower now, more careful. Searching. Hunting.
“Shay.” His voice was closer than I’d expected. Maybe twenty feet away, maybe less. “I know you’re scared. I know you’reangry. But you need to think about this rationally. Where are you going to go? You’re in the middle of the woods in the dark. You’re weak. You’re hungry. You could get hurt out here.”
I pressed myself further into the hollow beneath the log, a root digging into my spine. Something crawled across my hand, and I bit my lip to keep from making a sound.
“Please just come back. We can talk about this. I’m sorry—I know I pushed too hard. I shouldn’t have made you do that. That was wrong of me. I just wanted you to understand, but I see now that it was too much too soon.”
