by Meg Collett
They crashed down in a pile. The small of her back collided with a step and searing white light flashed across her vision. The flashlight fell from his grip and tumbled down the stairs, the beam darting about crazily. A knee slammed into Violet’s gut as the guy fell on top of her, his weight stealing her breath.
She punched the side of his face, and he howled in her ear and grabbed her waist, hitching up her sweater so that his nails scraped across her bare skin, shredding it with heat. Her legs flailed as she battled for an inch of purchase against him, her fear turning her nearly rabid in her desperation to flee. He grunted and shifted on top of her, but she clamped her teeth on his shoulder.
He reared back, screaming. She threw her hips to the side. He hit the banister with a crack of wood, and it almost gave against his weight. He was off her, and it was enough for her to scramble to her feet, skidding and slipping, a scream welling up in her throat. She took off again and raced up the stairs.
Her hair was wild around her face, and her sweater was torn. A sock had slipped mostly off her foot, and her back radiated pain with every step. But she made it to the third floor, her eyes locked on the end of the hallway, on the attic’s hatch raised up into the ceiling.
She reached the door right as the guy crested the top of the stairs.
On the first try, the string slipped between her fingers, and she spent a few terrifying seconds scrambling to get it back. When she did, she hauled on it and tore the hatch open. A gust of stale air blew over her.
The string broke off in her hand.
“Where you going now?” the guy called from behind her. He took his time limping down the hall, choosing instead to hunt her and watch her struggle as she jumped for the lip of the hatch.
Her fingers just missed the edge.
She darted a look behind her. He was halfway to her, his grin shining in the dark. Behind him, storm clouds blocked any moonlight from entering through the hall windows.
Violet jumped again. Her fingers grazed the hatch. It rocked down another inch or two.
This time, when she jumped, she pulled it down with a clattering bang. The guy shouted, but she had the ladder in hand and barely let it touch the ground before she scrambled up. The guy pounded down the hall after her. She reached for the attic floor and hauled herself up, her other hand on the ladder’s rung to jerk it up behind her.
It collapsed onto itself and smashed her fingers. Tears sprang in her eyes, but she kept pulling. The guy appeared beneath her right as the last part of the ladder folded up and she slammed the hatch closed.
She stumbled back, her hand to her chest. Her fingers pulsed in time with her heartbeat. It was too dark to see, and she wasn’t thinking. She rushed forward blindly, aiming for the window and her phone and help. Her sock connected with the soggy, foamy softness of the water-damaged wood, and she struggled desperately to keep her weight off her leg.
Too late, the flooring gave and her right leg fell through the hole up to her hip. She lurched forward and hit her chin, her teeth clamping down on the end of her tongue. The taste of dirty pennies filled her mouth and blood poured over her bottom lip, but she hadn’t fallen completely through the floor. She pulled herself forward, snapping a nail off in the wood. Splinters dug into her fingers, but she got herself up and hurried to the window. The phone sat on the sill, right where she remembered leaving it.
Her head pulsed and her hand was swelling and her back screamed louder than her thoughts, but she managed to pull up the number and hit send.
She was crying as it rang. One time, then two.
On the floor below, she heard the guy shouting and jumping for the hatch. Without the string, he couldn’t reach it—unless she hadn’t closed it all the way, but she was too terrified to check. Already her thoughts were conjuring him looming up behind her, reaching for her, ready to pull her back down on the floor.
Three rings.
Four.
A sob tore from her throat right as Arie answered, sounding half asleep, “Hello?”
“Arie,” she gasped, nearly choking on his name.
“Wait, who is this?”
Something crashed against the attic floor. He was throwing stuff at the hatch to get it to fall open.
“Please,” she whispered, trembling so hard her teeth chattered. “Help.”
“Violet? Is that you? What’s going on? What’s wrong?”
She was shivering, and her body convulsed with the adrenaline spiking through her veins. “They’re inside the house.”
“Fuck,” Arie hissed. From his end of the line, she heard him scrambling. Things fell over and his footsteps crashed. “Are you somewhere safe?”
“He’s trying to get up here.”
“Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. You’re in the attic?”
“He can’t get the hatch down.”
“Stay there. Don’t move. I’m coming.”
With one more rattling slam against the hatch, the floor below turned silent. Violet only heard the blood pumping in her ears. She sank to the floor, her mangled hand pressed between her legs. She couldn’t distinguish where the pain in her body was coming from because it all merged into one large thrum of searing heat.
“Violet? You with me?”
When she tried to talk, nothing came out.
“Violet?”
“I’m here,” she whispered. “I’m here.”
“What’s happening now? Have you called the police?”
“N-no.”
“I’ll call them. Stay on the phone with me. Where is the man?”
“I don’t hear him.”
“How many are there?”
“Three.”
He cursed again. She heard the ding of his truck as he opened the door, then the roar of its diesel engine. “They’re not trying to get in anymore?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Okay. That’s good. Are you hurt?”
She let out a half-strangled sound that might have been a sob or a choked whimper. Everything hurt, and as she came back down from the adrenaline high, she started to feel every inch of it. The one big flare of pain was turning into thousands, and her fear was liquefying around her, turning her body mushy and her bones into slippery sticks that threatened to poke through her skin.
Violet leaned against the windowsill and looked out, careful to stay in the shadows. Flashlight beams bobbed over the yard and down the hill, three in total. The relief hit her in a rushing wave. They were gone. She was safe. She collapsed back against the wall.
“It’s okay,” she breathed out. “They’re gone. You don’t have to call the police.”
“They were in your house. I’m calling—”
“Don’t. Please.” She gathered her legs beneath her and stood, using the windowsill for balance. “You can go back home. Everything is fine.”
“I’m not turning around.”
She heard the finality in his voice. She shouldn’t have called him, but the panic had bleached her mind. She hung up the phone and crossed back to the hatch. Limping slightly, she gave the new hole in the floor a wide berth.
She mostly fell back down the ladder, her shins too banged up to do much in the way of supporting her. Wanting to be the first to see the damage, she eased down the stairs and picked her way to the first floor.
The entry was a disaster. The stained-glass window above the front door was broken and colored glass littered the floor. All along the walls, they’d written awful words in spray paint. She avoided looking too closely, not wanting to truly read them. The cold breeze blowing in through the shattered window bit at her flesh. She pulled her torn sweater tighter around her middle. The wallpaper that had been on the walls since she was born was ruined. In a corner, discarded on its side, was her father’s record player. The needle was slightly bent, but it appeared to have escaped with little damage.
She sat it back on the side table and crossed into the kitchen. In the sink, she cleaned herself up with a towel, dabbing cool water against the cuts on he
r leg from her fall through the floor. As she worked, she let the water run over her injured hand, the skin over her knuckles torn and bloody, but she could move each finger with little issue.
She had herself mostly set to rights by the time headlights slashed across the front windows and the familiar roar of Arie’s truck filled the silence. A moment after the engine cut off, his door opened and closed. She tracked the sound of his steps up onto her porch and flinched at the smacking knock on the front door. He didn’t wait for her to answer before charging in.
“Violet,” he shouted, clearly expecting her to be somewhere upstairs.
She came out of the kitchen shadows into the entry. “I’m here.”
Pivoting toward her, he dragged his gaze up from her torn leggings to her hand wrapped in a dishtowel soaked in cold water and finally to her face. He’d clearly rushed out of his house, because he wore low-slung sweats, sneakers, and a puffy jacket over a faded Oakland Raiders shirt. He assessed her as if he’d walked onto a battlefield, and when he found her mostly unscathed, his chest expanded around a heavy exhale.
“You’ve got to stop scaring me like that,” he said.
“You weren’t scared.” Her voice sounded shaky at best. “I bet you’re never scared.”
“You bring it out in me. Let me see your hand.”
There was nothing to do but hold it out for him as he strode over, leaving the front door open so more light came in from outside. It hadn’t started raining yet, but the wind was whipping through the trees, the clouds low and churning. Carefully, he unwrapped the towel, holding her hand lightly in his own.
“They’re not broken, right?”
His eyebrows were raised when he looked up at her. “I’m not a doctor, Violet. You need to go to the hospital.”
“That’s not happening.”
He ran his fingers down one of her knuckles, his eyes on her face. She couldn’t hold back the flinch when his fingers bumped over her sore knuckles. She thought the night would have left her drained and incapable of feeling any more pain, but if anything, the aches in her body were set to a higher frequency and hummed loudly through her body.
“I don’t think they’re broken. Just banged up pretty bad.”
She didn’t say anything.
“You want to tell me how it happened?”
“The ladder to the attic closed on them.”
He looked around then, still holding her hand, and took in the spray paint and overturned table and the glass on the floor. “What happened before you got up to the attic?”
She schooled her expression. “They were just down here messing around. I got upstairs before anything happened.”
His blank expression told her he didn’t believe her about her hand. “Right. What happened to your back then?”
“How did you know I hurt my back?”
“The way you’re walking.”
“I fell through the rotted spot in the attic. I hurt my hip and my back.”
He sighed, realizing she had no intention of telling him what had really happened. “Told you to get that fixed.”
“Perhaps next time, I’ll listen.”
The corner of his mouth twitched in a rueful smile. While she watched him, waiting for his dry, Arie-special reply, her vision blurred and she swayed into him as the floor slanted away from her. He let her lean against him, her head on his shoulder.
“I find that hard to believe,” he said. “If it’s the money, Violet, I know Hale and Cade would help you. They love this island too. They don’t want to see your house destroyed over a golf course.”
“They can’t do all this work for free.”
“No, but they can show me what to do, and I will. I owe you.”
Her vision was swimming, her body feeling boneless, and for a split second, she thought she might vomit all over him. Instead, her knees went weak. His arm snaked around her waist and he caught her weight.
“Violet,” he said against her ear, “are you okay?”
“Just a bit dizzy,” she murmured. She tried to clear her vision, but everything was spinning. The crash back down from her adrenaline high was a long fall.
“I’ve got you.”
He shifted her in tighter against the crook of his shoulder. His scent was a mixture of the tiniest amount of sweetness wrapped in musk. He’d just gotten out of the shower, and the short hairs at the nape of his neck were still wet.
Feeling too tired and too far gone, she let her eyes drift closed. Sickness swelled in her stomach, and the white haze of pain danced behind her eyelids. At least she wasn’t alone. She easily pictured herself crying from the pain and fear by herself in her parents’ bed.
But he was here, and she was lying all over him, damsel-like.
“I think I’m better,” she said, attempting to straighten away from him.
His fingers pressed in a little tighter against her waist, but not too tight to hurt her bruised hipbone. He somehow knew all her tender spots and how to avoid them while still holding her close. As if he’d spent hours exploring her, he knew without really knowing her body. She wondered what it would be like if he actually touched her skin, if he truly had the time to take her in.
She wasn’t going to complain if he wanted to hold her longer.
“You’re having dirty thoughts. I can tell.”
Any other time, she might have blushed. “How?”
“You get really quiet.”
“I’m always quiet.”
“Exactly. You’re always having filthy thoughts. You’re savage.”
She closed her eyes. “If you’re trying to make me laugh, it won’t work. I’ve had a long night.”
“Ha. Your jokes are terrible.”
“You can let me go now.”
She felt, rather than saw, him smile. “Just enjoying the moment.”
Before she could move away from him, he softly scooped her up, his arms carefully arranged around the bruised part of her back. He carried her toward the stairs. With each step, his gait lilted beneath her as his prosthetic rolled over the ground. He moved up the stairs, one careful step at a time, correcting his balance with each movement and shifting his weight over to step up with his prosthetic.
Maybe that was why he was so attuned to her body. He knew where his own pain resided.
“Second floor?” he asked.
“Third door down.”
He carried her back to her room and toed open the door, the useless lock spinning against its metal catch. The room was blistering warm since she’d left the furnace door open, the fire having burned through most of the logs she’d put in earlier that evening. Outside, through the window, she saw it had finally begun to rain. Arie settled her into her bed and pulled the covers up over her legs.
“I could have walked,” she said.
“Now you tell me,” he said, sitting on the edge of her bed.
She licked her lips, her mouth dry. Inching over to the middle of the bed, she rolled onto her side, facing him so her weight was off the small of her back. Her spine felt wrapped in bruised, raw nerves. “Did you pick up any soup on your way through town?”
“Everything was closed. You shouldn’t call me so late at night.”
She cradled her head in her arm and closed her eyes. “Right.”
“You know what would be funny?” he asked.
“What?”
“Telling Stevie I spent the night with you. That we slept together. She would die.”
She opened her eyes and found him watching her closely, taking in every dip and rise of her face. His eyes were far more serious than his words had suggested, but then, she figured a lot of what they said was like that, especially tonight, when everything felt more serious. But to express that, to voice the pain in her heart and in her body, to say she was terrified of him leaving her alone in the dark again, would have been too much. And in his way, he understood she needed his dry humor and blank stares.
“Why would that be funny?” she asked carefully.
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He waited, silent, his nearly black eyes on her. She decided to play along.
“You’re right,” she said. “That would be funny.”
“Glad you agree. We can talk about the salacious details you’ll give her when I get back. I’m going to go shut the front door.”
Only when he stood and started toward her bedroom door did she notice the bulge at this back and the peek of dark metal: his gun, tucked into the back of his pants.
She closed her eyes and pretended she hadn’t seen it. Not seeing it was similar to their flat jokes. It meant tonight wasn’t serious and nothing bad had happened.
But the whisper in the back of her mind said everything had changed. Nothing would be the same here again. This house had once been her safety net and a bubble of memories, but now it would have a black taint to it at night. When she heard a hollow thump downstairs, she would always wonder what was coming up the stairs. What was standing behind her, smiling in the dark.
Now, she would always be afraid in a place that had always been home.
11
Arie walked the length of the house downstairs, checking doors and finding the window the trespassers had entered through. Violet wondered what he thought as he nailed the boards back into place. Did he think her mad for merely having boards across the window?
His footsteps thumping across the floor reassured her enough that the buckshot of fear currently splintering her insides quieted. Many years had passed since she’d experienced the same potency of terror from earlier tonight. Not since she’d watched her mother drive off beneath angry dark clouds.
Ten minutes later, Arie slipped into her room. His eyes did a quick check of the corners and shadows before resting on her. He paused when he discovered she was awake and watching him with her cheek resting against her forearm. The look on his face read as uncertain; he hadn’t expected to find her just waiting.
She remained quiet, letting him marinate in his thoughts on the matter.