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Unless he wanted her to find it.
With violently unsteady hands, Kenna lifted the lid. Her throat tensed and it felt like someone was choking her, like the night she’d first seen him in St. James. It had been a subtle warning from God to stay away.
She hadn’t listened. She’d gotten closer and closer. And now, sprawled on the floor of his bedroom, it was too late.
Black spots hindered her vision as she stared at a pile of Polaroids, unblinking. Fear slithered through her chest, her lungs, but her exterior was the portrait of tranquility as the shower continued to run in the foreground.
Maintaining her composure was imperative.
A different woman starred in each photo, every shot bordering on soft-core pornography. Names and dates were inscribed below them in Dr. Merino’s signature, ragged penmanship. Her blood ran cold when she recognized Erin among them. Then Charlee. Then Alex.
Bella, the girl who had jumped to her death.
Kenna placed the Polaroids on the floor as she sorted through them. The remaining women were unfamiliar.
Until she came upon the final one.
Bottom lip quivering, her eyebrows knit together as she held a photograph of herself. One that had preceded their spontaneous photoshoot and had been taken without consent.
In it, she slept in Dr. Merino’s bed, clad only in her white underwear. The caption was divergent from the others.
‘Saint Kenna.’
Terror possessed every cell in her body as she let the photograph fall amid the rest but she fought to steady her breathing. She wouldn’t surrender to the fear, no matter her clammy skin or state of near hyperventilation. She was a final girl, a survivor, and though she didn’t believe her life was on the line, she felt her academic and future professional reputation was at stake with the existence of the picture.
Kenna refused to let him hold something so damning against her. Against anyone else.
She spotted her phone peeking out of the pocket of her discarded shorts and yanked it free, steadying the camera over the arrangement of Polaroids and ensuring they were all in frame before capturing them. With tremulous fingers, she scrambled to put the photos back in the order she’d found them and replaced the lid. She crouched on the floor and slid the box beneath the bed.
As she steadied its previous, precise position, a rusty creak sounded within the bathroom that made her arms go rigid. The shower had cut off.
In a whirl of movement, Kenna was on her feet, making quick work of tugging on her clothes. Her hand fumbled around to check that her phone was in her pocket as she tore out of the bedroom and her expedient strides broke into a jog toward the front door as she heard Dr. Merino emerging from the bathroom.
A dangerous weakness dominated her knees and nearly sent her tumbling down the porch steps with her bike. She mounted it as the tire hit the ground and sped away from 673 Fairbrook. Her legs burned and strained from the fervency of her pedaling and yet Kenna couldn’t pump fast enough. Every second she remained on his street, her anxiety intensified, latching onto her core and radiating throughout her defenseless body like a lecherous disease. She imagined him chasing after her. Shouting. Snapping pictures of her escape.
Tears singed her skin as if they were tiny flames. She’d thought she was different. Some kind of exception.
She was one of many.
Kenna screamed until her throat was raw and lungs felt on the verge of collapse, filling the desolate roads and forests of Branch Spring with her gut-wrenching howl.
32
BLIGHTED
A jarring slam erupted in the main area of the house and Dayton’s hands stilled as he reached for a towel. He waited for more noise but there was no sound save for the water dripping from the showerhead.
“Kenna?”
Questions hammered at him while he dried off. Surely, she hadn’t left. Again. Pressure congregated in the center of his chest. Had he not behaved like a gentleman? As gentlemanly as he could manage, anyhow.
Wrapping the towel around his waist, his hand lingered on the doorknob as he siphoned a breath and was met with a still scene. His wedding attire was where he’d left it. The sheets disturbed by sleep and passion.
Kenna was gone.
Her love had transformed him but its magic had been fleeting, sparks dying in the wake of her absence, and he hardened into the man he’d shaped over the last decade as he regarded the empty bedroom. Cold, detached, logical.
Dayton had foolishly believed her insistent acceptance of him. It was everything he’d wanted to hear from her lips. And she had played him. A novice had beaten him at his own game.
