Chapter 48 Kristen
I woke up with my whole body aching like I had been pressed under a mountain and dropped into a bed of thorns. My muscles were heavy, my skin sore wherever I breathed, and my temples throbbed in time with every distant heartbeat. My eyes opened to blur — pale walls, dim light, and someone sitting at my bedside with the kind of expression that could either break me or make me laugh somewhere deep inside.
Anna.
She was perched on the edge of the mattress like she hadn’t slept in days, her hands clasped so tightly her knuckles were bright white. The moment I stirred, she leaned forward, worry all over her face.
“What the hell happened?” she asked before I even had a breath.
I blinked again, trying to clear the fog out of my head. Words felt thick and reluctant to form. “One minute I was with Caleb,” I muttered, remembering the last fragments before everything went dark. “Then I was tied to a chair. I don’t even know where.”
My voice was rough, like gravel scraping across a shuttered window. Anna exhaled in relief, but there was still that tension buzzing in her eyes.
“You remember Leo barging in, right?” she asked gently.
I closed my eyes as the memory seeped back. His face first, desperate and frantic, then the edges of everything blurring again until the next thing I knew I was here. “Then nothing,” I said. “Everything went dark.”
She sighed and reached out to smooth my hair back from my forehead, careful not to touch the tender patches where it hurt to move. “It doesn’t matter now,” she said quietly. “You’re safe. That’s all that matters.”
But safe felt like a fragile concept, like a paper lantern in a storm. I didn’t feel safe. My head throbbed. My body ached. And no matter how Anna tried to reassure me, the edges of the nightmare were still too close.
Anna’s expression softened. “You need rest,” she said. “Tomorrow is going to be chaos anyway.”
I didn’t argue. Mostly because I couldn’t manage the energy for it.
It wasn’t long before the conversation shifted without warning — not about comfort, but about rumors.
Anna sat back in the chair, arms crossed, expression tight. “Everyone thinks you killed Caleb.”
My eyes snapped open. “Of course they do,” I said, voice hollow but sharp. Logic didn’t even feel like a privilege anymore. Why wouldn’t they think it? I disappeared with him. He was gone when I came back. Bodies unaccounted for always make for a story people want to believe.
Anna shrugged, trying and failing to make it nonchalant. “You disappeared with him, and now he’s gone. They’ll blame you. Just brace yourself.”
I wasn’t surprised, really. Nothing about this whole nightmare had been easy or expected. But people blamed what they didn’t understand, and right now most of them didn’t understand a single thing.
I paused, head lifting, curiosity coiling in the back of my throat. “Is Leo… alive?”
A small, genuine smile flickered on Anna’s face. “Very,” she said. “He brought you home. He also says he has news for you.”
“News?” I echoed, feeling a knot tighten in my stomach.
Anna smirked. “He’ll tell you himself.”
Her tone was light, but I could hear the undercurrent of tension behind it. Like she knew this wasn’t going to be simple. Like she already suspected whatever “news” he had was going to shift something fundamental in all of us.
I closed my eyes and took a breath, already feeling the weight of the world pressing in on me. Tomorrow was going to be chaos. Anna was right about that.
By the time I managed to drag myself downstairs, my whole body protested in ways I didn’t even know muscles could protest. But there she was — my aunt Patricia — in the kitchen, cooking as though nothing had happened at all.
She looked up and gasped, like she stepped into a conversation already in motion. “The one time I leave town,” she said, eyes wide and voice half amused and half panicked, “this happens?”
I blinked at her like she was part of some strange dream remix. “It’s fine,” I said even as my legs wobbled under me. “I’m fine.”
She didn’t look convinced. Her eyes flicked over me again, worry crawling across her face in slow arcs. “We’ll talk later,” she said firmly, like concern was a currency I owed her. “For now just rest. Eat something.”
I grabbed something light — fruit, some toast — and settled at the table, the world feeling as flimsy as a dream I wasn’t ready to wake from. I ate slowly, listening to the soft sounds of the house that should have felt like home but no longer did.
I really wasn’t fine.
Sunset came, and with it that stretch of orange light that always made things look warmer than they were. I lay in bed again, trying to coax some restful nothingness back into my system. My limbs were sore. My mind was heavy. And every memory I had tried to stitch back together felt like it had ragged edges designed to prick at me on every turn.
I was alone, or at least I thought I was, until I heard it — a low, rhythmic hum. At first it didn’t register. My brain was too slow, weighted down by pain and confusion. But then the vibration shifted under the window, and I knew that sound anywhere in the world.
It wasn’t the hum of a car. It wasn’t the growl of a lawn mower I’d heard a thousand times before. It was the precise, casual, purposeful sound of a machine slicing through grass.
I opened my eyes and sat up, groggy but alert. I staggered toward the window and peered out.
And froze.
There he was.
Leo.
Shirtless.
Mowing the lawn.
His muscles were moving with each push, glistening under the fading sun like he belonged to the landscape rather than the nightmare that had nearly swallowed me whole. The uniform motion of his arms — strong, controlled, relentless — was the kind of picture that should have been peaceful. Should have been normal. Should have meant nothing.
Instead it made my breath catch.
I stepped outside, crossing my arms and trying not to let every nerve in my body show exactly what I felt. “Really? Mowing the lawn?” I said, voice half teasing, half incredulous.
He didn’t look up at first. Just kept mowing, blade humming, sweat trickling down his torso. Then he stopped the mower, cutting the engine and folding his hands in front of him with a stillness that didn’t belong to normal people.
When he finally met my eyes, his expression was the kind that carried exhaustion, relief, and something deeper — something heavier.
“Good,” he said simply. “You’re awake.”
I let out a humorless laugh. “I thought you’d have gone back to your safehouse by now.”
He hesitated, like he weighed every word before letting it out. “About that…”
I forced myself to keep my eyes on his face, though part of me wanted to look away, to hide, to collapse back into the bed that still ached with memory.
He took a step closer. Close enough that I could see the tiny lines of tension at the corners of his eyes, feel the faint tremor in his stance that he didn’t bother hiding.
“I spoke to your aunt,” he said.
“And?” I asked, trying to sound casual even though my stomach had twisted into something unfamiliar.
“She agrees.”
I frowned, blinking at him. “Agrees to what?”
He met my gaze unflinchingly, voice measured and solid. “I’m moving in.”
My breath caught, slow and sharp in the back of my throat. My heart thudded in that strange place between dread and disbelief. The words hung in the air like a challenge, like a declaration, like something irrevocable.
He wasn’t leaving.
Not after everything that happened.
Not after what I just went through.
Not after I almost lost myself and perhaps lost him too.
“I’m moving in,” he said again, like he expected me to blink and tell him he was joking.
But he wasn’t joking.
And for the first time since I woke up today, everything felt real, heavy, and unfinished in a way that had nothing to do with pain and everything to do with what was coming next.