Page 104 of Jayson
Beyond the manicured grass, the forest yawns open. A beast with black-teeth and breath like fog. It doesn’t reach for me—it waits. Patient. Knowing I’ll come.
And I do.
Jayson’s shirt clings to my calves, soaked through, whispering against my legs with every slow, ghost-drawn step. My hair hangs in a curtain, shielding my face, a veil for shame I haven’t even begun to unravel.
I should feel fear. But what I feel is familiarity. Like I’ve done this before. Like these trees once watched me break and said nothing.
Halfway to the treeline, a thin red beam slices across my shins. The perimeter laser.
Somewhere, deep in the house, steel breathes awake. Motors growl. A system arms. Jayson’s fortress shifts into defense.
But I barely hear it. I’m already somewhere else. Deeper. The forest calls louder now. And this time, it uses my name.
I step over the laser like it’s nothing.
Then I see it. A small hollow beneath the firs, soft with moss and shadow. Moonlight spills there like milk from a broken bottle—luminous, wasted, sacred.
I don’t decide to fall. My knees just give out. And the earth catches me like it remembers.
The moss is cool, damp, greedy. It drinks my tears without asking questions. Without offering comfort. I press my hands into it like I’m trying to ground myself, but all I feel is memory flooding back in high tide.
A man’s eyes, black and gleaming. Always watching. Always calculating.
His hand—a vise on my shoulder, on my waist, on my throat—holding me in place. Making it normal.
Father, standing to the side. Not interfering. Looking away.
Riley in the hallway, fists in her hair, tears streaming, whispering, “Don’t go down there, Keira, please don’t?—”
But I did. I did. And now it’s all crawling back out of the dark.
I squeeze my hands over my ears, nails biting into my scalp. Icurl in on myself. I rock. I scream without sound. But the reel keeps spinning.
Click-click. Frame by frame. Memory by memory.
Blood on my nightgown.
The smell of dry earth and heartbreak.
A locked door.
A laugh I hated.
And one voice—his voice—always in my head.
“You’ll forget eventually. That’s how this works.”
But I didn’t. I couldn’t. And now it's all coming back to claim me.
Twigs crack. A flashlight flares, then dies. Heavy footsteps—too heavy to be a deer, too fast to be a threat I want to meet alone. My heart skitters.
Then his voice, low and coaxing—“Keira.”
I jolt. Terror flashes… then shatters on recognition. I lunge and collide with a chest built like a fortress. My fingers knot in cotton; pinecones bite my knees, but I barely feel them. Jayson’s coat falls around my shoulders like a tent made of warmth and sandalwood.
“I saw him,” I choke. “Dad just—he justlethim.”
“I’ve got you,” he promises, rocking us like we’re the only two people in the world with gravity. “We’re going home, Keira. Hold on.”
