Total pages in book: 75
Estimated words: 76592 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 383(@200wpm)___ 306(@250wpm)___ 255(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 76592 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 383(@200wpm)___ 306(@250wpm)___ 255(@300wpm)
“Goodbye.”
The line goes dead. I stare at the phone until it fades to black, and then I stare at myself in the reflection until that fades too.
Why do I keep thinking this woman holds all the answers? That getting to know her will fix everything wrong in my busted-ass head?
She’s been a crutch. My Hail Mary in the final quarter. The thing I held on to even though, deep down, I knew it wouldn’t put me back together again.
The only person who can fix me is me.
And maybe I can do that with the support of the woman I’m sharing my family’s cabin with.
Inside, Tabitha is still at the table with her tablet and notes. “Work?” she asks.
“Yeah,” I lie.
I return to my laptop and fill the last few hours until dinner with grants and financials.
I try to read after. She pretends not to watch me pretend to read. The fire pops. Zach snores. The day stretches thin and tight as old elastic.
By late afternoon, the cabin feels too full. I chop wood I don’t need to chop just to make something split. Sometimes there really is no substitute for good old-fashioned manual labor. When I come back in, Tabitha is on the couch with her tablet.
“You don’t have to tell me,” she says without looking up. “Whatever it is. Not yet.”
I mentally drop my jaw. Am I that transparent? To her, apparently.
“Thanks,” I say, and I mean it.
An hour later, I fry some burgers and open a can of corn. Hardly gourmet fixings like my mother would make, but it does the job. I don’t mention the phone call I made to my past. In fact, we don’t talk much at all.
When the dishes are loaded and the fire is steady, we go to bed by the hearth again.
I slide closer. She doesn’t move away. Her palm lands on my chest.
“Henry,” she says into the dark.
“Yeah.”
“You don’t have to be fine here.”
“I know. And you don’t have to be either.”
“Okay.” She presses a kiss to my shoulder. “Sleep.”
I don’t want to sleep.
I want to lose myself in her body again.
But I close my eyes.
Twenty-Seven
Tabitha
Everything is black at first. Almost airless. Pressure builds behind my ribs. The quiet hums in my brain. Then a sound. Not footsteps. Not breathing. Just weight.
My body knows before my mind does. Every muscle locks. My pulse beats too loud, too fast, until it’s the only thing I can hear. I try to move, but the dream doesn’t allow it. My hands are heavy, my fingers useless. My throat opens, but no sound comes out.
There’s a door. It shouldn’t be open, but it is. The air that seeps through is cold and brittle. The shape beyond it keeps changing. It gets taller. Closer. Thinner. Closer again.
My skin prickles. I can feel my own heartbeat against the sheets, against my teeth.
I tell myself it isn’t happening again. I tell myself I’m safe. But the dream laughs like it knows I’m lying.
The walls close in and pulse with my fear. The air thickens until breathing burns. A flicker of dim light glints on something smooth. Then it’s gone. I don’t see, but I feel the stare, the weight of it, pressing down, peeling me open from the inside.
I try to scream.
Nothing.
The sound catches in my throat. My chest won’t rise. I’m a panicked statue trapped in a room that’s all memory and no exit.
The air shifts again. Closer. Close enough to smell.
Salt, sweat, and something I can’t name.
Then warmth. But not a comforting warmth. It’s menacing. Demonic. A hand? A shadow? It doesn’t matter. It’s there. Touching without touching. My stomach turns. My mind fractures between then and now. Then and now. Then—
The light snaps white. My heart jerks once, twice. The world flips.
And what’s left isn’t him. It isn’t me. It’s the echo of the moment before rescue. The split second that never ends.
The moment before everything breaks.
I jerk, and my eyes shoot open.
A nightmare.
Always the fucking nightmare.
It doesn’t come clean. My brain wants to replay it all.
I get it now.
Why Henry thought he was so broken.
I curl into him. His breathing evens. Mine pretends to. Moonlight shines across the floorboards and climbs the wall. Zach sighs on the other side of Henry.
The nightmare hangs on me like smoke. It clings to my hair, my tongue, the back of my throat. I hold on to him tighter, until he moves.
“Tabitha?” His voice is sleep-rough but gentle.
I nod because if I try to speak I may burst into tears.
“Hey,” he murmurs. “I’m here.”
Something in me breaks and opens. I climb on top of him with a clumsy urgency that would embarrass me if I weren’t so distraught.
I don’t want to talk. I don’t want to be asked if I’m okay. I want the sound of his heart under my ear. I want the heat of his breath and the rough bristle of his stubble, anything loud enough to drown the echo still ringing inside my skull.