My sharp gasp filled the bathroom when I landed hard on the wet floor, and long minutes passed before I felt like I was able to make myself move again. But by that time, my legs were working again. They were shaky, but working. Although I knew it was a vulnerable position, I crawled as far as the hallway before I was able to push myself onto my feet, and then had to use the wall to help me walk.
I didn’t know how long I’d been unconscious, and even though I would’ve bet my life that Collin would come running in at the first sign of me waking up, I was now second-guessing everything because I didn’t know my monster at all anymore. He could have been waiting, for all I knew. Watching with those dead eyes from somewhere in the house as I slowly dragged one foot in front of the other toward the front door, the whole time a sick smile played on his face. I was soaked head to toe, but I didn’t care. I didn’t have time or the strength to go into my bedroom to change. I needed to get out. I needed to run.
Just before I made it to the front door, I caught sight of myself in the large mirror in the entryway, and what I saw made my already-trembling body start jerking from the force of my silent sobs. I looked like someone coming back from the dead to get their revenge. I was so terrifying I was only able to look at myself for a split second before I looked away. I didn’t have time to change the wet clothes or shoes, but I also couldn’t afford to have anyone call the police if they saw me and my blood-tinted shirt.
Turning around, I pulled open the entry closet and grabbed one of Collin’s dark hoodies. It swallowed me whole, but none of my coats in that closet had hoods, and I needed something to hide the gash on my forehead, which was pumping out blood again.
My shoulders dropped in relief when I finally made it outside and didn’t see Collin’s car, but I knew better than to let my guard down now.
He can still be playing a game with you. He may have just moved his car to make you think he left. You need to get out of here, Harlow. You need to run. You need to go faster than this. You need to run! I chanted to myself, and was glad to see that each step was a little easier, and a little faster than the last.
There was something freeing in running—well, shuffling—from that house. From him. There was also something close to panic that was threatening to cripple me. Something that kept screaming at me to go back so I wouldn’t make Collin mad; that screamed he would find me. I tried to push those thoughts aside. He’d changed things tonight.
I’d thought at the hospital that I’d have to be good in order to keep Hadley and my family safe, but then I hadn’t been able to keep my mouth shut. And then it had happened, what I’d been afraid of all day, but had still thought could be weeks, even months, away. Collin had snapped. No, Collin’s monster had snapped, and he’d decided he was done. He had tried to kill me.
I stopped walking when that thought floated through my mind, and couldn’t stop the sharp cry that burst from my chest before I was able to slap my hands over my mouth. Through everything over the last two and a half years, I’d known I could get through it. And it had escalated to this all within a few short days. I’d hated my life, I’d hated him, but I’d never thought we’d get to this day. Knowing we had, remembering the look in his eyes and on his face, remembering the panic that had consumed me before the dark had welcomed me, was making it hard to breathe now.
Move, Harlow. Move.
I forced myself forward and didn’t stop until I found myself at the front of the neighborhood. I hadn’t thought this far ahead; I’d just known I needed to leave the house. Now I was turning in circles trying to figure out where to go from here. I was worried that if I started knocking on doors asking to use a phone, people would call the police either on me or for me.
I jumped when I heard a voice call out, “You lost, kid?”
I turned and found a man not much older than myself looking at me from across the street. He was holding a leash attached to a fierce-looking dog, but the dog was too excited about the car directly next to him to notice me. The man’s eyes squinted and he bent in an effort see inside the hood I had pulled down low. My hands twisted nervously as I stuttered out in a hoarse voice, “N-no, I’m trying to get to Thatch. But I don’t have a ride or a phone.”
He laughed, and I found myself relaxing at the sound. It was calm and amused, not a hint of the evil I’d lived with and had come to know so well. “What teenager doesn’t have a phone these days?”
I didn’t correct him on the teenager part.
He pointed at me as he continued. “I’d be damn lucky to have you in one of my classes. I feel like I spend more time taking phones away than I do teaching.”
I nodded and glanced away for a second to gather myself. I needed to ask him to use his phone, but that meant I’d get closer to him . . . and that’s where this all got tricky. “Can I—”
“What are you headed to Thatch for?” he asked, and his tone held a hint of something other than curiosity. It sounded like worry, but that didn’t make sense; he didn’t know me in order to worry about me. When I looked at him again, he’d let the dog into his car and had his door open, but he continued to stand there watching me.
It took me a few seconds to think of the best response, and from his face it was a few seconds too long. “I’m going back to Thatch. I’m not supposed to be here.”
The man thought for a minute, then sighed. “Look, kid, if you were one of my students, I would call your parents and wait with you until they showed. But you’re not, and I’m already running late to get to my fiancée’s house—which is just on the other side of Thatch.”
I wanted to tell him he couldn’t be more than a few years older than me, but decided to keep my mouth shut and waited.
“If you can promise me, and I mean really promise me, that you’ll maybe reconsider whatever it is you’ve been doing that you would need to find a ride back to Thatch, I’ll give you a ride there.”
As long as it got me out of this neighborhood and as far away from Collin as I could get right now, I would promise him anything. “I promise.”
He gestured toward his car, and when I walked toward it, he held his hands up. “I mean, I know grown-ups aren’t cool, and parents are the least cool of them all, but they usually know what they’re talking about.”
I nodded, not knowing what else to do or say, and paused outside the passenger door. “Um, I’m wet. I was . . . thrown into a pool with my clothes on.”