I grip the wheel tighter. The confession rising in my throat has no place here, no chance of survival if I let it out.
That I don’t think I can sleep in my bed without her in it.
That even after she betrayed me, I still want her.
That maybe I’m pathetic enough—or cruel enough to myself—to need her anyway.
Keeping her under my roof wasn’t only about control. It was about the way her laughter filled my silence. How her golden smiles cut through the dark. As if, for a moment, I could almost believe I wasn’t ruined.
It’s silent for so long that even the radio she flicks on fades into background static. Her head tips against the glass, lashes low, until sleep drags her under.
She stirs only when the tires crunch onto dirt. Blinking awake, she rubs her eyes.
“Oh my god. Why?”
“Welcome to the Crest,” I murmur. “This is where my life began. Where you fell in love with me.”
Her eyes spark as the trees part, revealing the black lake glinting like oil in the moonlight. The camp remains abandoned after the abuse reports. My father made sure of that; he helped shut it down, made corpses of the men who ran it.
But the dock?Ourdock? It still waits, skeletal and stubborn against the water, like it’s been holding its breath for us all these years.
I park at the end of the moldy cedar planks, shut off the engine, lean back against the squeaking leather, and wait.
She doesn’t move at first, gaze darting across the shadows like they’re alive. Finally, her voice lands small, testing. “I want to see the closet.”
My nod is slow. “Sure. But after that…I need to show you something.”
Moonlight slicks across her thick hair as I circle to her side and let her out. I settle my coat over her shoulders—too big, swallowing her frame—and she still shivers when I guide us to the main cabin with my hands on her shoulders.
The once-proud lodge looms like a corpse. Windows boarded. Vines gripping the siding like veins. A host now only to raccoons and ghosts.
My phone flashlight stabs through the dark as I kick in the warped door. It gives with a splintering crack; the wood so rotted it protests with a groan. Inside, the air is wet and heavy. The porch, the subfloor—spongy with decay. Holes gape in the ceiling, exposing the night sky, stars staring down like watchful eyes.
We cross the barren kitchen, stripped bare of tables, gutted of appliances. Only pipes left behind, jutting from the wallslike broken bones. At the far end, three narrow pantries hunch together, doors closed, waiting.
It’s the darkest place in the camp.
Ashlyn freezes, her breath stalling. Then, with a sudden jerk, she rips open the farthest door. My light scans the inside, revealing walls etched with what remains—slash marks, frantic names, crude tally marks. All the ways children tried to leave proof that they existed.
“It’s so small,” she says on a shaky exhale.
I can’t form words to express the strangled feeling inside me as I look at the place of some of our worst memories. That first summer, I’d lock myself in there to take her place, to become her shield. The second, I picked fights to cause chaos, to draw their eyes away. By the third, I was too big, too dangerous, so they left me alone. And I sure as hell wasn’t about to let her suffer in silence.
“You used to wiggle your fingers under the door,” I murmur. “I’d play games with them. You kept sneaking me food when they wouldn’t.”
Her laugh is brittle, sad.
I snort from a memory. “I threatened the cooks with a knife. Slipped you bologna slices. Only thing that could fit under the crack. That was before I figured out how to pop the hinges. Before I busted the knob clean off.”
She sniffles, voice breaking through the dust and shadows. “I remember.”
My chest fractures. Not from my pain; I could handle anything. No, it was hers that gutted me. Always hers. And she was too strong to show them, too stubborn to bow her head. She walked out with her chin lifted, lashes dry, every time.
I wrap my arms around her now, rocking her against me. She says to the darkness, “I don’t want to see any more. I’m done. It’s over.”
“We’re not in that closet anymore,” I whisper, lips brushing the curve of her neck.
Her face buries in my chest, just like then. And I hold her—like I used to.