It’s not working. Why isn’t it working?
Four windows. Five taps. Six steps.
Nothing.
I curl up in the corner of Madi’s room and pull my knees to my chest because the one coping mechanism that has saved me a thousand times—grounding me, pulling me back from the edge of panic—does nothing against this.
He’s in the room next to me but so far away I can’t reach him.
He’s become my touchstone, and we’re both so confused, we can’t reach each other.
“Here.” Savvy holds out her hand, palm up.
My little honeybee carving.
When I don’t immediately reach for it, she presses it into my hand. The emptiness in my chest hollows out until I think I might be sick.
Counting isn’t working because this isn’t panic I’m feeling. It’s something far worse.
This is truth.
Ugly. Twisted. Tortured. Truth.
Valen killed my parents.
My fingers close around the wooden honeybee, my thumb rubbing against the grain on muscle memory.
Terra’s words echo in my skull like a bell that won’t stop ringing. I’ve tried to push them away, tried to find some angle where they don’t mean what they do, but there’s nowhere to hide from this.
There’s nowhere to hide.
That’s the cruelest irony of it all.
Bulletproof glass. Triple-locked doors. Refusing to drive.
I controlled all my variables, and in the end, it didn’t matter.
A sound escapes my throat. It’s not a sob—it’s the sound of a wound I don’t know how to heal.
Valen was just a child.
The boy I loved—the man I love—the instrument of my destruction and the savior of my soul.
How do I reconcile those two things?
My heart hammers in my chest, beating painfully as though it’s begging me to find him next door, hug him, allow him to console me while I take away his guilt.
But how can we find comfort in one another when all the pain we’ve ever known boils down to a moment in time, one flick of a wrist, one little boy seeking the affection of the one person it should have flowed from freely?
“Clover?” Madi’s voice is soft, careful. Her fingers trace my fist. I’m clenching the wooden bee so hard the edges are cutting into my palm. “Talk to us.” She steps back, her worried gaze on my hand.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper, opening my hand to see a droplet of blood from where the wood pierced my flesh. The shame of it all makes my skin too tight and itchy.
“We don’t want sorry,” Madi takes my hands in hers. “We want you. The real you. Not the version you think we can handle. Not the curated, pleasantly palatable Clover. Just…you.”
“What if you can’t handle that version of me?” The words slip out, uncensored. The fear I’ve always carried, finally laid bare.
“Oh, Clove.” Savvy hobbles closer on her crutches before tossing them aside and sitting with me on the bed. “We’ve loved you through your house quirks, jump scares, fears of shadows and ghosts, and even your truly terrible taste in music. You think a few secrets are going to scare us off?”
