Page 290 of Heart So Hollow

But then a smile tugs at the corners of his mouth, “So, you’re the reason everyone was losing their shit at Bowen’s house last night.”

“I was just…” I take a deep breath, trying to quell the adrenaline seeping into my muscles as they begin to tense, “done. I want to see him hurt—him and everyone else who’s let him get away with it.”

“Wow, little Honeybee,” Colson bites his lip and gives me a once-over, “you do sting when you get angry.”

After a few moments, my smile fades and my gaze drifts across the grass, replaced by melancholy. Colson leans back with a faint smile, running his hand across the small of my back, “What is it?”

I peer at him over my shoulder, studying him for a few seconds, “That one night at your house, four years ago now, you told me that I’d eventually tell you I love you.” I look him up and down, “Why don’t you say it to me?”

“I have said it to you,” he replies, sounding mildly surprised.

“Yeah, when you were tormenting me,” I laugh bitterly.

My sharp tone seems to entertain him. He reaches up and pulls me to him, wrapping his arm around my shoulders and nestling me against the side of his chest, “I love a lot of people in different ways. I love Dallas and Evie because they’re my sisters. I love my parents and Dan and Lena. I love Alex because he’s my brother now and because he loves Dallas. And I love Pony because he’s my ride or die. But there’s something that you don’t share with anyone else. When I say you’re my only, it’s because you’re the one who gets all of me and the one for whom I forsake all else.” He takes a long, slow breath, those blue eyes staring straight into my soul, “I love you because, by definition, there can only ever be…one…only.”

???

Six hours seems like a long time until you procrastinate for three of them. I finally call Jo at the Pennsylvania line and tell her I’m halfway to her house…and that my life is in shambles…and not to worry because I’ll only be staying with her and Omar until my stalker comes to fetch me.

Ultimately, I decide not tell her that last part. I haven’t totally lost it—yet.

Jo is surprisingly pragmatic about the whole thing, not the big sister on a rampage that I expect when she answers. Which is fortunate, because at this point, I prefer low-key disdain and loathing rather than outbursts and threats of violence. She’s always been more dramatic than me, but maybe this time she realizes I’ve had enough of that and need her to make lists, watch trash TV, and help me get my life in order so I can extract myself from the one I just fled. I need time to process, to think. And that’s also what a six-hour drive can offer.

I pick up the empty shaker bottle from the Bronco’s cupholder, the mango smoothie long gone, and I’m instantly bombarded with sorrow.

“I should’ve offered to make them for you from the start,” Colson said when he handed it to me, “without all that gritty shit in it.”

“I like that gritty shit,” I reply, unable to contain my smile.

“Whatever,” he says with a roll of his eyes, “if I had, you would’ve figured out what Bowen was up to the second you saw those bottles of nastiness in your refrigerator and car.”

It was clever of Bowen, trying to make it seem like Colson was leaving the smoothies in the house and in my car. But there are some things that can’t be picked up through phone speakers and spyware. Quiet things, like lingering stares and silent conversations that slowly spill out after years of distance.

It seems so long ago. It’s been less than three days and I’m beginning to lose Bowen—how he looks at me, how he feels, how he sounds. It’s all being replaced by what he was like the last time I saw him. I can only remember how his hands felt throwing me around on the bed, when he slammed me against the bathroom wall, and the sound of his voice while he told me all the vile things that would happen to me.

Part of me misses him—the Bowen I met at Salt Fork. That’s what I think about most when I’m driving north, across the border into Ontario. How can someone love so fiercely and exist in the same body as someone so cruel. And I keep thinking about it after I get to Jo’s and, by that time, it’s spilling out across her and Omar’s kitchen table, their living room sofa, their balcony while I try to explain how I ended up on their doorstep with no house, no vehicle, and no job.

Well, technically I still have a job. But I’ll need to figure out what’s happening with that sooner rather than later. I don’t even know how long I’m legally allowed to stay in Canada.

But with each minute, the more Bowen fades into a shadow of a memory. I know he’s still out there and he knows that I know what he’s done. My first night at Jo’s, I keep waking up thinking I’ll see his silhouette in the doorway, that he’s found me all the way up here. He’s already been to her house once…

I blocked Bowen’s number when I was at Barrett’s house after he texted me, so I don’t know how much he’s tried in vain to contact me since then. But the only thing I do know about Bowen, without a shadow of a doubt, is that he can’t keep the mask on forever without betraying who he is. And, according to Barrett, he’s not finished trying.

It’s early and the condo is silent, which is my favorite part of the day. If I’m not in my home, surrounded by my things, the next best thing is sitting in Jo’s bright living room in front of the window that faces the lake.

Just like when we were kids.

I take the opportunity and muster the mental fortitude to call Barrett. She knows I’m here, and that I’m safe, but I’ve yet to speak to her.

“Oh, Bowen came back alright,” she chirps as I sip my steaming cup of coffee, “I turned the GPS off the night I dropped you at Colson’s and he called me no more than an hour later. He asked where you were, put on this little show, so concerned because no one had heard from you…” Barrett continues with a sigh, “I told him maybe he should’ve made friends with Colson, then he’d be able to get ahold of you,” she giggles.

“What?” I shriek into the phone.

Even now, Barrett manages to slip in a few jabs and dig the knife in deeper.

“Fortunately, Clay and Dalton came down early for their friend’s birthday, so they were already at my house by then. So, then Bowen said he’d get the law involved, as if I’ve masterminded some grand kidnapping conspiracy. He must be getting desperate. I told him, please do, go tell gramps that I disappeared your woman. And then he did, of course.”

“He did what?”

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