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Every memory we made over the years. Every drip of water we tracked in from the lake during hot summer afternoons. Every drop of forbidden alcohol I sipped. Every salacious act I did in my room.
It’s all gone.
Over.
And I’m moving on.
I don’t have a choice. I have to.
Despite Isaac being a disgraced preacher, the church let me take my time cleaning out the house, knowing it was difficult to be in here. Knowing everything that happened, how bad it was.
My gaze flits around the room, landing on the bookshelf still in front of the basement door and I shudder. No one wanted to touch it. We didn’t want to move it. Kon nearly shattered the thing when he first saw it, but after Chase told him to leave it, he did. Kind of.
I still think he’s plotting something to get rid of it, I just don’t know what.
He’d been so angry after that day. Chase and Oli, too. I think everyone was. How could they not be? In his last moments, Isaac took something from all of us that we’ll never get back, not really. He used his hatred of the world, his deluded beliefs in what it should look like, and broke me. Broke us.
I’ll hate him until my last breath for that.
My eyes fall closed as heaviness washes over me. He’s taken everyone I ever loved away from me. He took Cami. He took Mama. In a way, he took Daddy, too. He took—
Arms wrap around me from behind, and a soft kiss is pressed to my cheek. Tilting my head to the side, Roman kisses along my jaw, and I sigh, my eyes fluttering shut.
“You have everything?” he murmurs softly, his lips ghosting along my skin.
“I think so,” I whisper, some of my sadness disappearing with his presence. God, I love this man. I wouldn’t have gotten through the last few months without him.
Isaac took our mothers before trying to kill me. And then, I almost lost Roman. They almost took him from me, too, and if they had, it would have been Isaac’s fault. If he’d really dragged Roman to Hell with him like he promised he would have, I’d have razed the world to get him back.
Luckily, Divinity Fall’s law enforcement wasn’t as remiss as Haven’s had been nearly twenty years ago. They took in the scene, the bruises around my throat, my black eye and busted lip, as well as everything Mama had gathered including her murder, and we all walked away. Bruised, battered, exhausted, but thankful.
Hopeful.
It doesn’t hurt that Deputy Tanner, who Chase, his cousin, had called per Roman’s instructions, vouched for us.
“I saw it all,” he’d said. “I know it was an accident. Y’all just got to him before I could. Otherwise, it would have been my gun that took his life instead of you.”
Even crazier was what came after that. When word spread about Cami’s murder, my mom's—her abuse and mine, someone else came forward that we never expected.
Mary.
She walked right into Divinity’s precinct and confessed to covering for Isaac all those years ago. Instead of being at the conference Mama thought he’d been at, hours and states away, he was with Mary. Apparently, they’d been having an affair for years. When his time needed to be accounted for that night, she came forward and said they’d been at the church working on the bills.
No one even blinked twice at that.
Why would they? They trusted Isaac. We all did. She was sentenced to a year for obstructing evidence and as much as I want to hate her, to be mad at her, I can’t. It was clear as day that she was another victim of his. He convinced her he loved her, that they’d be together someday. He used her. And then, he abused her.
Just like Cami. Just like Mama.
Just like me.
My body tightens and Ro mistakens my reaction for sadness.
“We’ll come back and visit,” he promises, and I nod. Despite hating what this town has come to represent, all the memories it’s dragged up, I’m still going to miss it. It’s been my home for ten years.
I can’t just leave it behind.
But I have to.
