Page 70 of The Fire Went Wild

When we drove to Houston.

The last thing I remember was curling up in the passenger seat of Jaxon’s car and staring at my pale reflection, Houston’s skyline at our backs and the world around us too dark to see. Jaxon talking softly, telling me about Ambrose. The man, he said, who can explain what’s wrong with me.

But I know what’s wrong with me. I killed a man. And not one who kidnapped me and came back to life anyway. A stranger, someone I’d never seen before in my life. Someone who had done nothing to me.

I slashed him to ribbons, and then I?—

I squeeze my eyes shut, crushing out the memories even though they make me feel warm and floaty. Or rather,becausethey make me feel warm and floaty. If they made me feel like the nightmare I am, then I’d wallow in them.

I push the blanket off and sit on the edge of the bed, taking deep breaths. I’m clean, and I feel like I shouldn’t be. But no, we took a shower together, in the bathroom of the man I killed.Jaxon had rubbed all the blood away from my skin, kissing me the entire time.

I kissed him back.

I want to kiss him again.

I want to?—

A dull ache forms behind my eye, a ghost of the migraines I usually get. I stand up, shaking a little, and test the door, out of habit more than anything.

I’m stunned when it swings out into the hallway.

What’s this? A show of respect? Of trust? Or is it just that Jaxon knows he’s trapped me in this other way. This worse way. Because where can I go now that I’ve killed a man and?—

And bathed yourself in his blood and fucked another murderer on his corpse and screamed when you came?

The memories hit me all at once, and I swoon, slamming up against the doorframe. My body throbs with a hot, angry need. My mind screams at me that I need to turn myself in, that I need to be thrown in jail before I hurt someone else. It also viscerally recoils at the thought, enough that I fall down to my hands and knees and retch.

A door slams somewhere in the house, followed by Jaxon’s voice: “Charlotte! I’m here!”

I retch again and spit up stomach acid. I hadn’t exactly had an appetite for food last night.

Footsteps thud up the stairs. I wipe my mouth with the back of my hand just as Jaxon appears at the top of the staircase. “Are you okay?”

I sit back on my heels, not sure how to answer. “How did you know—” I start, not sure how to phrase the question. “Know that I wasn’t feeling well?”

Jaxon helps me stand, his hand squeezing mine. “I can sense things, remember?” He gives me a wry smile. “It’s why I thought you were human until you?—”

The revulsion crawls over my face, and he must see it too because he snaps his mouth shut.

“Because you feel human,” he finishes instead. “Sort of.”

I’m dizzy, and I stare down where I spat up on his floor. “I need to clean that up,” I mutter.

“I’ll get it,” he says. “I’ve dealt with worse. Why don’t you go down to the kitchen and get some water?”

His kindness strikes me as suspicious, and I regard him accordingly, glancing at him out of the corner of my eye. There’s something hapless about him, which I do find charming in spite of myself. It reminds me of when I first saw him in the diner, which feels like a million years ago. An awkward weirdo instead of a psycho.

“I still don’t understand what’s happening to me,” I finally say.

“I’ll explain what I know.” His eyes bore into mine. “I promise.”

Yeah, I’ve seen how much he likes toexplainthings. But the truth is I do want a glass of water and I don’t want to go back into the bedroom where I had, up until this moment, been a prisoner. And if he wants to clean up my vomit, he’s welcome to it.

So I go downstairs, scurrying quickly through Jaxon’s creepy-ass living room. The faint throb in my head has vanished, thankfully, and I fill a glass with water from the tap and gulp it down, staring out the window above the sink as I do. It looks out at the swamp, lush even in the dead of winter.

Footsteps behind me. I whirl around as Jaxon slinks into the kitchen, peering at me through the sleek curtain of his hair. “You feel better,” he says. A statement, not a question.

“I guess.” I fill my glass with more water and then sit down at an ancient kitchen table with aluminum legs and a chipped Formica top. I run my fingers over the imperfections, wondering what other nightmares have happened in this house.

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