Page 61 of Jayson
The silence thickens between us like smoke—choking, heavy, full of things she’s not ready to say. And I get it. God, I get it. Because this wasn’t just some reckless detour. She came back here chasing something. A truth. A ghost. A memory she can’t seem to shake loose.
And maybe that’s what scares me most. Not that she’s keeping secrets—but that she’s getting too close to uncovering mine.
Or worse… that whatever she finds here, she’ll turn it inward. And hate what it makes her see.
“I needed to pack some things,” she mumbles, like that’s enough to explain everything. Like that small, ordinary excuse can smother the hurricane brewing beneath her skin.
She finally meets my gaze again, and I see the lie in her eyes. Not malice—just the aching, desperate kind people use to protect themselves.
I release her wrist, slow. But I don’t move. I don’t step back. I just stare at her, because the more she tries to pull away, the more I want to hold her still and make her stay.
“We were here two days ago to pack your things,” I say quietly. “You said you were done with this place.”
She doesn’t reply.
We stand in her father’s room—the same place his life ended, the same room still thick with the echoes of who he was. It’s cold in here, emotionally and otherwise. Dead energy clings to the walls like peeling wallpaper, and the ghosts don’t whisper. They scream.
For a second, I don’t see the girl who came at me with a bat. I see a girl who’s unraveling—slowly, quietly, behind her stubborn little smirk and that smart mouth she uses as armor. I see a girl who’s breaking. Who’s terrified. Who’s running from something that probably doesn’t even have a face.
“I forgot a few things,” she mutters, already turning from me. Already retreating down the hallway.
I follow, but it’s not eagerness. It’s reluctance, and it sits heavy on my soul.
She heads toward another bedroom, and when I cross the threshold behind her, I see the open suitcase on the bed. Clothes folded neatly. Essentials stacked with practiced hands. She’s been packing. For real. And not just to grab a sweater or some keepsake from under her bed. This looks… deliberate. Like a girl planning her exit. Like she’s been gearing up to disappear.
She doesn’t look at me as she moves about the room, folding, zipping, stuffing her world into a bag like it won’t gut her to leave it behind. And maybe it won’t. Maybe she’s used to cutting ties. Maybe survival comes easier when you expect abandonment.
But I don’t walk away. I stay in the doorway, arms crossed, watching her with a simmering edge of suspicion and something darker—something that feels alot like dread.
Were you planning to run, Keira?
Were you going to vanish and leave me chasing your shadow?
She thinks I don’t see it. But I do. I will always see her.
And I need to know why she came here. Because if she’s searching for the truth… She’d better be ready for what it does to her. Or what I’ll do to protect her from it.
26
KEIRA
Ican feel his eyes on me, burning into my back like he’s trying to read the truth right out of my spine. He thinks I was trying to run. That I packed a bag to vanish, to disappear before he could stop me. And maybe I can’t blame him for thinking that. But he’s wrong. I wasn’t planning some grand escape. I wasn’t going to bolt.
I just needed… a place to be. A space that wasn’t his estate, wasn’t that suffocating bedroom where every breath feels borrowed, uncertain. Somewhere I could exist for a few hours without feeling watched, or owned, or kept on a leash I didn’t ask for.
I came here to pass the time. That’s all. Three o’clock would come, Lionel would return, and I’d be back in the car, back in the cage.
But the house…This house isn’t just a monument to the past. It’s a tomb. And someday soon, someone’s going to have to empty it out, box by box, memory by memory. So I figured I’d get a head start.
I came to pack the rest of my things—what little I have left here that still belongs to me. A few books. A sweater. Old photosI’m not even sure I want. It wasn’t about fleeing. It was aboutclosure. Because deep down, I know I can’t come back. I don’t ever want to come back here if I can avoid it.
Not after everything that’s happened here. Even if—by some miracle—Jayson decides I’m free. Even if he rips up the marriage decree and tells me I’m no longer bound to him by this sick, twisted arrangement…I still won’t come back. Because this place has nothing left for me but ghosts.
And the echo of a girl who realized too late to stop the monster that raised her.
I fold the last sweater and zip the bag halfway, my fingers moving on autopilot. Everything in here feels like it belongs to someone else now—someone I used to be.
The drawer beneath my nightstand sticks when I try to open it, swollen from time and neglect. I almost don’t bother. But something tells me to tug. It gives suddenly, jerking open with a small puff of dust and a clatter. I glance down and see the edge of a notebook peeking out beneath some old receipts, a faded friendship bracelet looped around its spine like a tether to the past.
