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The woods went quiet around us. No birds. No wind. Just the truck’s engine and the wet click of my own breathing, but then somebody grabbed me from behind.

I fought. I kicked backwards. Elbowed. Bit down on a hand. Someone cursed. Fingers tightened around my throat. The world became branches, dirt, fabric, and the sharp metallic taste of blood.

“Hold him,” one of them said.

“Don’t let him get away. Strip this fag and let him feel the humiliation our boys did.”

A fist drove into my ribs and fabric tore free of my body. Air vanished from my lungs, but I kept fighting until my limbs stopped listening.

They dragged me towards the service road, and my heels tore through the mud. My shoulder struck a root and my body was dropped onto the ground with a thud.

I thought that this was a good old-fashioned beating. I’d survived plenty of those over the years. What was one more?

But then they wrapped a long chain around my ankles and the woman leaned down into my face. “Up for a ride, sweet little fairy?”

My stomach dropped, and I realized I wasn’t getting in passenger-princess style.

Pain flashed white as the truck lurched forward and my body went with it. I tried to focus on the trees. On the path. On anything that would tell me where I was. How I could get help. I screamed as the dirt and rocks and twigs tore into me.

One fucking name. His. Darius.

The thought came without warning, and with it, a fresh wave of panic. He was close, wasn’t he? He had to be. His cabin was only a short distance away. If only I could reach him, if I could make him hear me, maybe this would stop.

But another thought followed. And this one was harder to ignore. Would he come? And would they do the same to him?

Darius had been the one person I trusted to see what was happening. The one person I had wanted beside me when everyone else looked away. But it felt dangerous now, almost as dangerous as the hope. I couldn’t tell whether I was reaching for him because of the love I had for him or because I was terrified of being alone in this last moment.

The smell of gasoline and wet vinyl hit me. For a while, there was only motion. Dirt. Branches. The brutal rhythm of being pulled over ground that did not care whether I survived it.

I looked like I got in a fight with a cheese grater and lost. I couldn’t scream anymore. My throat had closed. My hands were numb, and even my thoughts came apart in pieces.

Trevor. Mason. The lake. Darius. I hated that his name was the one my mind reached for. I hated that even now, with the world closing in around me, some part of me still wanted him and I hated that wanting him felt like betrayal—of myself, of everything I had survived, of the part of me that had promised never to depend on anyone again.

The truck stopped, and the sudden silence rang in my ears. The men argued somewhere above me. A female voice insisted they should leave. The mom. Another said nobody would find me until morning…

“Enjoy fucking hell. We did your daddy a favor.”

A glob of spit landed on my face, and then the doors slammed shut and the chain on my feet dropped. The engine faded into the woods, its growl thinning until it disappeared while I lay there listening to the silence return.

For a long time, I couldn’t move. Finally I rolled onto my side. The cabins were visible through the tree line but I couldn’t stand. I was losing this battle. I started to close my eyes until I saw it…

Tiny. Distant. Almost unreal. An open window. Darius’s window. I stared at it, the square of yellow light spilling across the darkness. I tried to call out to him but nothing came.

My vision blurred. I wanted to believe he would look up. I wanted to believe he would know something was wrong. That whatever had passed between us hadn’t been… nothing. But beneath that hope was the terrible certainty that he might never know where I was and that I might never know whether he would have come if he did.

I’m sorry, DeeDee. It was all real for me. I love you. It was the last thought I had. Then everything went black.

CHAPTER 37

Iwoke up choking on my own heart. That’s the only way I can describe the violent awareness that suddenly came over me. Sure, it was better than how I’d woken up a few days ago nearly choking on my own vomit. But not by much.

For the first few minutes, I just lay there in the dark of my cabin, staring at the ceiling that I couldn’t actually see, trying to figure out what had pulled me from my dream about eating a giant inflatable gummy bear. It was filled with cherry-flavored air and giggled whenever I took a bite. Weird as far as dreams went, but not panic-inducing.

I twisted on to my side and peered out the window, to see if any of the other cabin lights were on. The night was soundless, though. Except for the usual chirping of crickets and the occasional creak of the old cabin walls. I hadn’t heard any of the kids tiptoeing out of their rooms or any thrashing about that suggested a bear had stumbled into camp and was rifling through the trash.

Instead, I was left with this awful, gnawing certainty that the world around me was… wrong. That weight in your gut you got before something catastrophic was about to happen. I’d had this feeling all day but put it down to how I’d left things with Alvin. It was always hard for me to sleep after one of our fights.

This was different, though.