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“Hey,” I cut in. I folded my arms over my chest and puffed myself out. “My car isn’t shitty. It’s… dependable.”
“Right. Dependable.” He started to bounce on the mattress, as if testing it out—which was just insane, because like hell would he ever be sleeping in my bed. “Alright. Let’s move this tour along. Show me this treehouse I’m going to be spending a lot of my time in.” He got up and went for the door, gesturing for me to go ahead of him.
I walked past him. Down the stairs, around the main hall, we headed to the back door of the house. We pushed outside and headed through the grassy portion of the backyard, where the old swing set was.
The grassy area was encased in an old fence, a single gate centered on the back side to let you out into the woods. We weren’t allowed to cross the threshold by ourselves when we were younger. Only when we had supervision—though that rule fell to the wayside once Claire and I got older.
Most of the trees were huge, though the ones on the outskirts of the forest were smaller, newer. The older ones towered over you, old oaks whose gnarled branches were half dead but still attached to the trunk. It was in one of these old oaks our treehouse sat, forgotten to the sands of time. It wasn’t right on the edge of the woods, but it wasn’t too far into it, either.
We stopped once we reached the ladder at the tree’s base, and I lifted my eyes up to it, memories flashing in my head, so vibrant and clear, it felt like yesterday. This treehouse was perhaps the only place I didn’t have any bad memories. A place where childhood ran free, and you had not a care in the world. I’d stopped coming to the treehouse after…
Well, let’s just say after I grew up and learned that everything was a lie.
I went for the ladder, but I only made it up one rung before I heard Brett ask, “Are you sure this thing is stable? Can it handle both our weight? The last thing I want to do is die in a place like this.”
Tossing him a look, I made sure to roll my eyes at him. “Come on.”
Up the ladder I went. It wasn’t super high; only twelve or so feet. Seemed a lot higher when you were a kid, when everything in the world felt bigger and more impressive. The treehouse itself had two windows on the side, in addition to the door area. It was as waterproof as a treehouse could be; the roof actually had shingles on it, leftovers from when my parents had to re-roof the house.
The wooden floor creaked when I climbed up, but it held. Granted, it had been a while since it had to carry weight for an extended period of time, and someone like Brett was like two people in one. I didn’t know if it’d be able to hold us both. Guess we’d find out shortly.
The pillows and blankets and clothes I’d left him sat in the corner in a pile, along with some snacks. Everything he’d need.
You could stand in the treehouse, but I preferred to sit, and so that’s what I did as I waited for Brett to climb up: I sat cross-legged and picked at the dirt in my tennis shoes.
Brett groaned as he climbed up, wincing as he came into view, but when he saw I was looking at him, he flashed me a pearly white smile and said, “This is going to be so much fun. I can already sense it.” I didn’t detect any sarcasm, but I was ninety-nine percent sure that whole thing was sarcasm.
Brett, a massive guy all around—he was well over six feet tall—had to duck his head to keep it from hitting the ceiling.
He crawled in, and he sat against the opposite wall, setting a hand on his stomach, where the wound was. Though he didn’t want to admit it, he still wasn’t at one hundred percent. I’d imagine it’d take a long time for him to fully heal.
“So, this is it, huh?” He glanced around. “My humble abode for the foreseeable future. Can’t say I’ve ever lived in a treehouse before. I guess it’s true what they say: there’s a first time for everything. Who knew that’s not always a good thing?”
I pointedly ignored his comment, saying, “You’ll have to charge your phone in the house, just be sure to take your charger back here when you go. Laundry is in the basement. Same thing there, make sure it’s done. I get home at around three-ish every day. My mom gets home around five, and my dad at six.”
Brett stretched out his legs. There were still a few feet between us; the inside of the treehouse was an eight by eight foot square. “So, are you saying you want me out of the house before you get home?”
My shoulders went up and down once. “I guess it doesn’t matter, as long as you’re out before my mom comes home.”
“And you’re sure your parents won’t come here?”
“To the treehouse? No. They never leave the yard anymore. We used to go for walks in the woods all the time. Claire and I would beg my dad to build us a treehouse every time. We’d point at every single big tree. I think we bothered him so much he caved just to shut us up.” I got quiet after that. Not sure why I shared that particular detail; it wasn’t like Brett cared.
From the other side of the treehouse, Brett’s sapphire gaze watched me. I thought he was going to say something along the lines of how he didn’t give a crap, but instead he muttered, “I was never close with my parents. They never really got me. I used to go to my grandpa’s house in the summer and hangout with him and my cousin.” He ran a hand through his hair. “My cousin was a year or two younger than you. He followed me around like a puppy.” He smiled at that, a real smile, the kind of smile that told me this wasn’t some elaborate attempt to bullshit me.
So Brett was capable of a real smile. His real smiles made him look even cuter—not that I should be thinking that at all.
“Once he got older, our grandpa went into assisted living, but I still came around. We went hunting together.” His head leaned back on the treehouse wall, and he stared at me through slits, the smile on his face gone. “And I don’t mean for deer.”
I swallowed. How could I not? Given what I knew about him, if they weren’t hunting for deer, I only needed one guess as to what they hunted.
People.
I knew all about his crimes, what he’d done, but hearing him say that so offhandedly really nailed it in. I was sitting here with a freaking serial killer, asking him to help me. There was no way this could end well—not for me, anyways.
“Promise me,” I whispered. “Promise me you won’t kill my parents or my sister, Brett.” I was putting them all in danger by having him here. Even if he did promise me, could I really believe him?
Brett didn’t answer right away. A long, tense minute passed before he spoke, “I promise. I’ll be good. Your mysterious stalker is the only one I’ll hunt.”
