What Lies in the Woods(37)

“What about your car?” I asked him.

He looked at me curiously, and I realized I’d probably asked him the same question already. “An officer is going to bring it by the motel for me,” he said. “They gave me a ride back so I could change.”

“You didn’t have to answer questions?”

“I gave a statement, but I didn’t have much to offer,” Ethan said. He opened the passenger door for me, and I folded myself into the seat, hands clenched to stop their trembling. I didn’t look at him as he started up the engine. “Motel?” he asked. I nodded. He pulled onto the road.

There was a fist around my throat as we cut our way through the dismal strip of downtown. Liv was dead. She’d killed herself, but we’d killed her, too. We hadn’t listened to her. We’d wrapped our hands around our secrets like barbed wire, even when they cut into us. Even when there was no goddamn reason not to let go. I was still holding on.

Raw, animal grief consumed me. I bent to it, collapsing in on myself. I couldn’t tell if I was crying; I wasn’t in my body enough to know. I was in the woods.

“We’re here,” Ethan said. It took me a moment to remember how to unbuckle myself. When I fumbled with the room key, Ethan took it from me and opened the door, then stepped back to let me pass.

I collapsed onto the bed, my elbows on my knees, and stared at the wall. “This can’t be real,” I said.

“I wish I could tell you it wasn’t,” he replied. He shut the door and sat beside me, leaving plenty of room between us.

“You can go,” I said.

“I don’t have to.”

“If you think I’m going to give you a quote, or, or—”

“I’m not trying to get a story out of you right now. I just want to make sure you’re all right.”

“Why?” I demanded.

“Because I’m a fundamentally decent person, maybe?” he suggested.

“No such thing,” I told him. I ran my thumb along the scar on my wrist, back and forth. The one scar on my body that wasn’t from the attack. “If I’d answered when she called, I could have talked her down.”

“It’s not your fault,” Ethan said. It was what you were supposed to say, I guess. “She wanted to talk to me. Do you know why?”

“What happened to not trying to get a story out of me?” I asked.

“I’m just trying to understand,” he replied, and only then did I notice the way his hands were shaking.

“Are you all right?” I asked him.

He gave a choked laugh. “I make a living writing about murders and suicides. I read about all the gory details. Look at crime scene photos.”

“It’s not the same,” I said.

He met my eyes. His breath trembled out of him. I knew that look. Wanting to run without knowing what it was you should be running from. “No. It’s not,” he agreed. He raised his hand in an odd, abortive gesture, almost like he’d meant to touch my arm. I probably would have bitten a finger off if he tried. “I’m sorry about Olivia. She seemed like a lovely person.”

“She was,” I said. And then, “She was complicated.”

“The best people always are,” he replied. He looked away, toward the window. The blinds were shut, casting slashes of shadow across his face. “Is there someone I can call?” he asked.

Cass, I remembered. I’d promised to call her, and I hadn’t. She had to know about Liv by now. But I couldn’t face her. Anger and guilt tangled inside me. She’d left me on that trail. She’d turned away from me and from Liv, and she hadn’t been there when I needed her. When Liv needed her.

It was absurd. She’d been hurt. Of course she turned back. But I felt like I had when we fought all those years ago, desperate to hurt each other, desperate for the pain of being hurt.

“No. There’s no one,” I said. “You can go. I’ll be all right.”

“I’m two doors down if you change your mind,” he said. “Room four.”

“Is that some kind of come-on?” I asked him.

“What? No,” he said. “Jesus, you really don’t have a high opinion of humanity, do you?”

“At least I’m up-front about it,” I said with a one-shouldered shrug.

He looked like he wanted to say something more, but he only shook his head. He let himself out and shut the door behind him.

I let gravity pull me down onto the bed, not bothering to take off my shoes, and lay on my side staring at the wall. I felt like I was drifting. It was the same sensation as when I lay against that rotting log, dizzy from the lack of blood, listening to the birds call uncaringly overhead.

It was the feeling of waiting for the world to end.





I must have fallen asleep at some point, because I woke up an hour later, the exhaustion gone and the grief hardened into a knife’s edge, sliding across my tender skin. I sat up gingerly.

I needed to do something—staying still was suddenly impossible, nervous energy crackling through me. I needed to talk to Cass. We had to figure out what to do about what Liv had found. And I wanted to be with her. For all the fights and stumbles along the way, she was still one of the two people in the world who knew me best.