They had access to resources. They felt empowered. They met new friends. Hell,Ieven made a couple friends there.
It all faded into blackness when we returned home without anactualplan. When the reason we’d ended up there in the first place wrapped its cold, lanky fingers around our ankles and drug us back to the hell we thought we’d escaped.
It was all fleeting for us. The empowerment. The safety. The friends. And in the moments we were being dragged, I was envious of the women who made it out. The ones who used the safety plan, new friends, and resources, going on to find true safety and success. I banged my fists as my belly scraped along the ground because I wanted to bethem. Notus. In thishell.
We lost everything. We lost us. We were on our way to losing our actual lives. Until that spark of fire twinkled in my mother’s pretty eyes again.
And Lily, she’ll get her spark of fire back, too. All of those things she feels when she leaves the shelter—the faint beacon of hope in the distance that things are going to be different this time—that beacon will be permanent for her. Because her husband just became cougar chow, and she’ll never have to worry about losing herself to him again.
The light pollution of my small town comes into view as I crest the hill back into Devil’s Peak. As it fogs up the night sky in the distance, I take a left into my neighborhood on the outskirts, navigating the rising, winding road to my cul-de-sac.
I pass Barry MacGregor’s car parked by the curb and pull into my driveway, stopping just inside the iron gates to walk to the mailbox. I’d gotten used to coming home to a slew of reporters parked out front, but Barry seems to be the only one whose interest never waned even when the coverage of my mother’s arrest slowed in the media.
As I continue down the driveway, I think of the man I wish was parked out front. The one man who I shouldn’t want, but do.
It’s hard to imagine a life where I actually get my happy ending. Where I manage to balance a life of hunting and death with happiness and devotion.
Considering the man who put my mother in prison is the man I want to teeter that line with, and he’s long gone, it doesn’t look like I’ll get my chance.
I can practically feel the memory of him, the whisper of his fingertips across my skin as he plastered my back against whatever hard surface he would trap me between. He’d bring his lips close to mine, promise to find evidence that would put me away for life, but I couldn’t help but feel that the only thing he was doing was protecting me from everyone. The reporters. The sideways glances. He was always jumping between meand some wannabe predator, feigning contempt, and all I felt was the smoldering heat where his skin met mine.
Barry climbs out of his vehicle and saunters in my direction. The distance between us shrinks out of the corner of my eye as I stand at the mailbox and flip through the envelopes. Bills. Solicitors.
A letter from my mother from Four Peaks Penitentiary.
“Hey, Chloe.” Barry stands off to the side trying to appear uninterested in what’s in my hand, even though he’s leaning slightly forward and his eyebrows are raised, clearly trying to peek at the lettering on my mail. I flip my mother’s letter to the back of the pile and ignore the way his focus shifts to my outfit, obviously curious about why I’m coming home with the wilderness painted onto my skin.
“Barry.” Turning from him, I move back in the direction of my car.
“Where you been?” he calls behind me, stuck at the edge of my property line.
“Out.”
“Did you hear?” he calls again.
I don’t want to let it pique my interest. Nothing any of the local reporters say should interest me, let alone the one who plastered my mother’s makeup-free face and orange jumpsuit on the front page of The Peak. Plasteredmyface on the front page the year following her arrest with headlines likeDid the Black Widow Act Alone?andBaby Widow Makes a Home in Murder House. Shit, there was even one that saidBaby Widow Ventures Out for Coffee. On thefront page. Like the community members of Devil’s Peak had nothing better to do than look at pictures of me ordering and then sipping on a fucking latte.
And now, he probably just wants to snap a picture of me, standing in my driveway covered in mud, so he can write a headline for tomorrow’s paper and ignite the buzz again.Baby Widow Makes a Mess, Gets the Mail.
Groundbreaking.
But there’s something about the way the words leave his lips that does make me curious. Something about the way the words imply I’m going to want to hear this. I can’t stop myself from slowly turning back in his direction from the safety of my driveway. His lips turn up into a smile, and he holds onto whatever knowledge he’s hoarding for a moment longer—to make me suffer, no doubt—before he says the two words that simultaneously buries the grains of dirt deeper into my pores and clears the mud from my soul entirely.
“He’s back.”
2
Colin
“Welcome back, Mills.” Detective Alex Graves claps me on the shoulder as he continues past me at my desk to his own, settling down and staring at me across the small space. I grunt in way of thanks.
“Your mom doing okay?” he continues. I nod absently, trying my password for the second time.Fail.“Sunset Peak, right?”
I let out a frustrated breath at my password failure and type in the same exact thing I’ve been typing this whole time. I know that’s what my password was when I left. “Yeah. Sunset Peak.”
Settling my mother in the independent living community a town away from Devil’s Peak was the last thing I wanted to do, but that’s whatshewanted. And since I’m trying to support her independence, I didn’t argue.
The screen jostles itself with my third and apparently final password attempt, telling me it’s locked for good and I need to call IT to get back in. “Fuck.”
