“No ...” he draws out, then under his breath adds, “this isn’t G ... maybe her sister, though.”
I shake my head, my eyes fixed on the object behind him—the one stabbed into the front door. I’m breathing fast enough to have a goddamn heart attack because the fear I’ve spent the last thirty-two years of my life either hiding or running from closes in like a vise around my throat.
The newspaper articles, along with the four yellowed letters I discarded months ago, are pierced, stabbed into the dark oak door with the tip of a butcher knife.
“How the fuck?” I breathe out. “That’s impossible—”
But it’s not. Everything I walked away from that day in my office has been resurrected. Crucified on my door.
My entire focus is devoured into a cylinder of sight.
“Why would someone do that?” Chase breathes, but I already know the answer—to expose me in the way someone can do only if they also know the truth.
“He’s back,” I say, making Chase frown in confusion.
“What are you talking about? Who’s back?”
Chase follows me toward the now-closed front door, but I walk slowly before I stop, feeling my chest rising faster and faster. I yank the letters down one by one, moving quicker and quicker as I do, discarding them all onto the floor as Chase picks them up.
My whole life, I’ve run from this moment. Scared to be found. Hungry to be free. I just wanted to be Noah ... But he has to die now, because Davis has been found.
Until I tug on the last letter, and my chest feels like it caves in.
Because staring back at me is an old photo of my mother. She’s smiling as she stands with her arms spread in front of a sign that readsCamp Weonoke, 1994in red digital print at the bottom.
But it’s what’s scratched in thick angry slashes that’s made my pulse slow to the calmest of rage and ready for Noah to die because Davis has been found—“MINE.”
“Chase,” I breathe out, finally finding my voice as I look over my shoulder at him. “There’s something I have to tell you.”
He lowers the article he’s reading before he holds up one of the letters.
“What do these have to do with you?”
I swallow hard as I understand there’s no more room for lies.
“Thirty-two years ago, my mother was attacked at a camp along with the other counselors—she survived by stabbing the guy in the chest. His body was never found ...”
Chase looks down at one of the headlines, all the dots seeming to connect in his head before he blinks up at me, ashen and shocked.
“It was this Billy guy?”
Our eyes lock as I finally tell the goddamned truth.
“Billy’s my father. And he’s back to finish the job.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
Goldie
“Golds, do you want to wake up? Mom made some food.”
I open my eyes as Evie sits next to where I’m lying on the couch, making the cushion depress. But I close them again just as fast because they’re immediately flooded with tears. My heart is so broken that being awake hurts.
I shake my head, unable to speak.
“Oh, babe,” my sister hushes. She lays herself over me and wraps me in her arms as I cover my face to try and stop the crying.
They say time heals all wounds, but what happens if the cuts are so deep that there could never be enough days or weeks to make it go away?
