He’s silent for a moment until a pleased, knowing look overtakes his features. “Did you have a dream about me, pet?”
I furrow my brow. Is this a trick question, or was that really not his doing? A blush stains my cheeks as I desperately attempt to play it cool.
“No.” I rush past him into the kitchen to brew a pot of coffee. There’s a warm pulse in my core at the sound of his nickname for me, a reminder of how he had said it to me in my dream. “And stop calling me that.”
His low chuckle carries through the silence. “Hmm… maybe I’ll consider another pet name for you if you tell me about this dream you had.” The sound of his fingers drumming against the cover of his notebook makes me want to throw this ceramic mug right at his damn head.
“Fuck off.”
He laughs again but thankfully doesn’t say anything else.
Once I’ve poured my coffee, I head back upstairs in an attempt to save whatever shred of dignity I might have left. God, that was humiliating.
My brain, as always, is working against me to fuck things up. Still, I can’t shake the lingering feelings from that dream.
So much danger, so much seduction, so much exhilaration. I know it’s just the leftover endorphins flooding my body, but that doesn’t make the physical effects any less real.
Damn it all.
After setting my coffee on the nightstand, I flop back onto my bed and pull out a notebook, doing some more math to consider the number of lives I’ll need to take to get the hell out of this mess. Then, I turn to a blank page and title it “Future” with the intent of brainstorming where I might go after this, what I might do, or who I might become without the constraints I’ve come to know.
And just like that, my thoughts are a whirlwind again, too chaotic and overwhelming to even begin to make sense of.
The page stays blank until I close the notebook, finish my coffee, and consider my imminent next steps to get the hell out of this situation as quickly as possible.
CHAPTER 16
Life is divided into a series of befores and afters. We section our existence into fragments separated by milestones: before and after graduating high school, getting married, moving to a new city, losing a loved one. Now, my life has been forevermore divided into the time before and after I’ve killed a man.
The afternoon air is heavy with the promise of rain as I walk the property, needing to clear my head after the events of the last few days. Thick, gray clouds gather in the distance, but the sun still shines for the time being.
I don't feel guilty as I should for killing that bartender. The murder replays in my mind like a video on a loop, but it feels distant, disconnected, as if I was simply a witness in the scene and not the perpetrator. It’s a relief, honestly, to not be wracked with guilt, though that should probably be cause for concern. Can I really justify killing a man simply because he was a shitty person?
Apparently I can.
Behind the house, I discover Ambrose has a fire pit that looks unused and a massive vegetable garden. Neat rows ofplants line the raised bed. I try to imagine him out here watering the garden or pulling weeds, but it’s difficult to envision. It seems too domestic for someone—something—like him.
I walk the perimeter of the multi-acre yard along the treeline, finding a small break in the trees where a worn path leads into the woods.
My dream from this morning filters through my mind, but I shove it away.
I glance over my shoulder to make sure Ambrose isn’t watching me, then take the path into the woods. The further I walk, the more the trees close in around me, their branches creating a canopy where sunlight spears through the gaps.
The forest is still a deep green, though the falling temperature each week tells me that the leaves will be changing soon. Will I still be here when they start to fall? Or even when they begin to grow back in the spring? The thought of being here for another year is almost more than I can bear. Freedom is close enough to taste now that I have an end goal, so every day spent here is a day wasted.
I rear back when a crow takes flight from a branch near me, cawing loudly and followed by two others. It takes a moment for my heart to settle back to its normal pace, and I shake my head at my skittishness.
I’ve been walking for fifteen minutes under a canopy of encroaching trees when a white building peeks through the trees. At first, I think I’ve gone too far and found another house hidden out here in the mountains, but I recall Ambrose saying he owns dozens of acres surrounding the house. I definitely haven’t walked that far. As I round the bend of the path, I realize it’s not a house; it’s a church.
It’s a simple rectangular building with a slanted roof behind a short steeple, seemingly lost to time but still standing.The white vinyl siding is peeling away to expose the gray beneath, and the brick foundation is crumbling. A couple of the windows are boarded up, but I’m surprised to see that most of the lancet stained glass windows remain.
When I circle the building, giving it a wide berth, a small graveyard comes into view as I round the other side.
It seems like a perfect recipe for a horror movie—a woman alone in the woods coming across an abandoned church with a cemetery. But though the air is heavy here, like it tends to be in any sacred space, there’s no fear prickling my skin.
I make the potentially stupid decision to investigate further, climbing the three cracked concrete stairs and tugging at the handle on the wooden door, its white paint chipped and peeling.
It opens.
