I turn back to Logan, resting my weight against his car door, my eyes searching for material, something to stop the bleeding.

  His phone is in his other hand, the screen shattered, the purple case—cracked.

  I take a second look at the bloody purple case. The painted lavender flowers.

  Not his phone. Mine.

  He was in the house. He took my phone.

  I grab it from his hand and tap the screen, but it remains black. I push the button on the side and wait. Still black.

  Something red catches my eye, not where he sits, but on the passenger side window.

  I’m sorry, written in blood. The words hit me like the metallic scent, overpowering every other sense.

  I drop the broken phone and stumble, pulling my head out of the car, gasping for fresh air. The cold night fills my lungs and hits the tears in my eyes, blurring my vision until the world is a deep, dark sea of pain. My stomach churns, and a hard lump forms in my throat. Gravel crunches beneath my boots until they echo against the asphalt. I stagger to the center of the road, gasping for air.

  Logan’s dead.

  Each step I take, imbalanced by the glass in the sole of my boot, threatens to send me tumbling to the ground. I’m heavy—all my limbs are so heavy.

  Logan’s dead, and I can’t see straight. I have to reach the neighbours’ house. I need help. The neighbours… Why can’t they hear me? Were these Marlena’s final thoughts?

  “Help,” I say.

  The world turns black.

  12

  My eyes flutter open to darkness, my head aching. A hand comes into focus. A hand setting a bottle of water on the table in front of me. A pillow props my head up, and I rub my cheek against it. Not soft, like I imagined. Not the bed. I’m on the couch—Nicole’s parents’ living room couch.

  Heavy footsteps fall away from me, softer as they leave the room.

  “Nicole?” I call.

  Come back, Nicole.

  I open my eyes wide, staring into the dim living room. Warm light cascades in from the hallway. My head throbs. I reach for the bottle, my arm trembling, my limbs still heavy.

  “Remey?” A deep voice comes from the kitchen and footsteps follow, coming closer again.

  Logan?

  No.

  All at once, images flash through my mind of Logan in his car, his wrists slit. The bloody shard of green glass. Logan’s letter to me, telling me he couldn’t live without me. My ribbon wrapped around one hand with the shard of glass and my phone in his other hand—his bloody hand.

  Someone’s walking toward me, their shadow backlit by the hallway light.

  Not Logan. Logan’s dead—unless that was a dream. Oh, please, please, please, I’d give anything for it to be a bad dream.

  Panic struggles in my chest like a caged bird as my vision comes into focus.

  Mike crouches beside the couch with a concerned expression on his face. He studies me intensely from behind his thick-framed glasses.

  “Mike?” I whisper, craning my neck away from him. He’s still wearing his white, collared dress shirt and black dress pants. “What are you doing here? How—”

  “You called me.” Whatever expression I make must show my confusion, because he frowns. “You don’t remember?”

  “No,” I say, my lips and tongue so dry.

  “You stopped answering my texts, and even though you told me you were okay, I couldn’t shake the feeling something was wrong. Then you called and asked for help. I just want you to rest up and have some water.”

  I shake my head. He pushes the bottle closer to me.

  “How did you find me?”

  “I found you on the road, Remey. I almost hit you. I kept calling your phone, hoping you’d answer. I was kind of distracted, and then there you were, out there on the road alone. The police are on the way. Do you remember what happened?”

  “I think so. I woke up, and I felt so disoriented. I thought someone was in the house, and then there were rose petals… leading to the backyard.”

  He nods. “I saw those when I brought you in. Both the front and back doors were wide open. I didn’t understand… I mean, I didn’t know why you’d have torn up the rose I got you… but now it makes sense.”

  “That makes sense to you?”

  He shifts to sit on the edge of the coffee table in front of me. “It’s your ex. It was the phone call you took during our date that changed everything—your whole demeanor. I think he’s stalking you, Remey. I think he followed you to our date. I’d even bet he interrupted it on purpose, and then followed you back here. Maybe he brought you flowers. Maybe he was hoping to win you back, and he saw the rose from me…”

  As he says it, I imagine it all. Logan watching us from the restaurant window. I thought I’d felt him there in the parking lot, but I couldn’t see him. I shiver, hugging my arms against my chest, recalling the urge to scan the dark parking lot.

  What if he was following me? If he followed me to the drug store, he knows I picked up my pills. He’s the one who suggested I start taking them.

  Could he have drugged me somehow in my sleep with my pills? How could he have done it otherwise? I got some fizzy water from the fridge, but I never drank it. I haven’t drank anything since I returned.

  “My pills…” I blurt. “Did he drug me?”

  Mike frowns. “He drugged you? Wow, he could have, I guess. How? What pills?”

  I rub at the sharp pain in my temples and notice the cuff of an unfamiliar sweater on me. I feel like I’m in someone else’s body—that this is all happening to someone else.

  He lifts his chin, nodding to the blue sweater I’m wearing. “I had it in my car. I put it on you once I brought you inside. You seemed so cold.” He carried me inside, put a sweater on me, and watched over me until I woke. It’s so much effort from someone I barely know, and I don’t know how to process it. “Sorry, you said pills?”

  I lick my dry lips and nod. “Yeah, could you get me my pills? They’re in the kitchen. In the white bag on the counter.”

  If I didn’t take any, they won’t be open yet.

  “Of course. Hold on.” He stands. “Remey, if you’ve been drugged, they’ll be able to test you to find out what you were given…”

  He disappears into the kitchen.

  Why? Why would Logan do all this and then kill himself? My stomach heaves again, and I press my hands against it. Mike’s so calm—too calm. He doesn’t realize what’s happening.

  Logan killed himself after all his failed attempts to connect with me.

  “I saw Logan… on the road. He’s dead, Mike,” I call to him, desperate to impress the gravity of the situation on him. This is an emergency. He needs to understand what’s happened to Logan—to me. I need to understand it, and maybe he can help. “Do you hear me?”

  I struggle to sit straighter, leaning back against the stiff pillow.

  “What?” He re-emerges with my bag.

  “My ex. Didn’t you see him—his car—when you found me?” I take the white bag from him and grab my pills from inside. It’s still sealed.

  He frowns and crouches down beside me again. “I found you in front of this house, Remey.”

  “Wait… what? Here?”

  He nods. Confusion clouds his stare as he tilts his head to the side and frowns.

  How? I must have passed out and then came to. I must have been in and out of it, trying to get back here—to do whatever it took to get help. Maybe I even crawled, but my hands and knees don’t hurt.

  “I found you at the bottom of the driveway, just passed out. I didn’t understand how. You only had one drink at the restaurant. And I knew you must have been unconscious because it was so cold… You were so cold.”

  I rub my dry eyes and stare down at the white bag in my lap. “I don’t think he used my pills… but I feel so out of it. I—you said the police are on their way?”

  He nods, his eyes wide as he stares at me. “I don’t know what Logan did to you, but you need to tell the police everything you know.”

  “I just—I can’t believe he’d do this. And I can’t believe you were here… to help me… Did you see a car on the shoulder of the road on your way in?”

  He frowns and looks up to the right. “I was pretty distracted, trying to call you, but now that you mention it, I think I remember seeing a car parked. Yeah.”

  “That’s him—was him. It was so… it was terrifying, Mike.” My voice trembles, and I pull my hands up into the sleeves of Mike’s sweater for warmth. “Discovering him like that…”

  Imagining Logan—his body sitting there in his car. He had this dead stare, but unlike Marlena’s, from a distance, it looked like he was still alive and awake. Their dead eyes stare at me, cold and accusatory. I found them when it was too late. They stare into my soul. They see who I really am.

  “I never wanted to—I never wanted it to happen again.” I gasp for breath and pull Mike’s sweater away from my chest to try to catch it. “I can’t… keep doing it.”

  My whole body convulses, adrenaline pulsing through my veins with no place to escape. My muscles clench. My body rocks back and forth.

  “Can’t keep doing what?” He wraps his arms around me, but he pulls his face away to look into my eyes. “You’re shaking.”

  I can’t keep discovering dead people.

  He gives me a long hug, and with his warmth, I’m able to stop shaking. When he releases me, pulling his phone from his pocket, he leaves one hand remaining on my leg. “I called the police about ten minutes ago. I know we’re on the outskirts of town here, but it shouldn’t be too long. I told them it was a possible break-in with the front door open. I told them to send paramedics, too. When I saw you on the road, I didn’t know what to make of it—”

  “I don’t, either. I don’t… understand…”

  He stands, my leg chilled by the absence of his warm hand. “I’m going to make you a hot tea.”

  His kindness is the only thing grounding me in reality right now—in the possibility that I’ll get through this.

  “Thank you.” I squint up at him, still shivering.

  He nods, his concerned expression softening only slightly, as if he’s considering staying with me, before he leaves the room.

  Seconds later, a far-away whooshing sound comes from the kitchen as the faucet starts running.

  I don’t understand why Logan would do all this… I still can’t believe it.

  His letter said he was feeling some of the same things I’ve been feeling. Guilt. Did he feel so guilty that he couldn’t stand it? Did I make him feel so alone in this that he couldn’t take it? His letter said he couldn’t live without me.

  Tears burn my eyes. He was here. We were so close, and I made him feel like he couldn’t reach out for help. Pain shreds through the depths of my spirit, and I squeeze my eyes shut, wrapping my arms around me. He’d written “I’m sorry” in his own blood on the car window. The guilt—he was filled with it like me.

  And in his last moments on earth, I shunned him. He saw me moving on with someone else. And it killed him.

  I picture Logan in my mind’s eye, standing in front of the McCowns’ with a bouquet of roses, like Mike suggested. Tears spill down my cheeks.

  The roses.

  All those petals, ripped off…

  I open my eyes, still alone on the couch.

  If Mike is right, Logan’s trail of petals was leading me into the backyard. What if I’d taken that path? What was he trying to show me in his final hour before walking back to his car and slitting his wrists?

  I push the blanket off me, shivering with a combination of chills and adrenaline. I grab my pills and shove them in the pocket of the sweater—Mike’s sweater. What would I do without him here? I take the water bottle and stumble down the hallway, into the kitchen.

  Mike turns and looks over his shoulder by the stove, holding the kettle with a concerned stare. “You should be lying down until the police get here. The medics will need to check—”

  “I can’t, Mike.” I lick my dry lips and twist open the bottle of water. “I don’t understand what’s going on. I need to make sense of it.”

  I walk to where the rose petals meet the now closed sliding glass door and stare out into the night. The trail is all but dissipated, all the petals blown away like clues to the answers I need. A small fire crackles in the pit at the back, by the tree line.

  “Do you see that?” I point to it.

  You need to let this go.

  Nicole’s words echo in my mind. I slide the door open and the cold night air washes the sluggish brain fog away. Quivering, waking from my stupor, I set my water bottle down on the table and hug Mike’s sweater against my chest, watching the orange flames before the trees beyond.

  That’s where the trail leads.

  Once the police get here, whatever’s out there will become evidence. I won’t be able to see it for myself. I need to know.

  I step outside.

  13

  Nicole’s parents’ firepit crackles, the flames biting at the night air above.

  There’s barely a path to follow anymore. The wind teases the remaining rose petals, and I wouldn’t be sure which direction to walk in anymore, if it weren’t for the fire.

  As I draw near, the smoke wafts toward me, blurring my vision. I cough. The snap and crackle that once comforted me as the four of us sat out over the summer, roasting marshmallows together, now draws me closer to answers.

  The smoke clears, and just outside the pit, items are gathered on the grass, illuminated by the glow. Something material. A rock sitting on a folded piece of paper, like the letter Logan slipped in my bathroom box before I left the apartment.

  “What is this?” Mike’s deep voice behind me makes me jump.

  I clutch my hand to my chest and whisper, “I’m not sure.”

  I take a step closer and reach for the material thing. A sweater.

  “Careful,” Mike whispers.

  I unfold the gray hoodie.

  “This is Logan’s—” I start, but the maroon stains stop me.

  Blotches and splatters of blood—dried blood—stain the right arm and right side of the hoodie.

  “That’s b-b-blood,” Mike stutters. “Put it down.”

  The reality of tonight sinks in for Mike as I drop the hoodie, picking up the scent of cologne—bergamot and cedar. Bergamot is Mike’s. Cedar was Logan’s. Mike hasn’t seen what I have. This blood is his first tangible evidence of the horrors this night has revealed.

  Whose blood is on his sweater? What has he done?

  “Maybe the letter explains it,” I whisper, answering my own question. I reach my shaky hand down and pick up the rock then the paper, unfolding it.

  “This is—that is—” he stammers, shaking his head.

  I barely hear his voice above the wind. “What?”

  He squints, his gaze fixed on the paper.

  Fear fills his eyes. Or is it anger?

  “Just please, read the note.”

  My hands shake the paper so I can barely read it. I bring it closer, so afraid of what I’ll find. It begins with the same scratchy kind of writing as Logan’s first letter.

  Remey,

  You deserve to know the truth.

  Mike walks behind me, his body blocking the wind and warming my back. I think he’s reading over my shoulder.

  I can’t handle the guilt anymore. I was seeing Marlena. Maybe you already suspected it.

  Seeing Marlena? I crane my neck back. What? No… How is this possible? He was seeing her and accusing me of cheating? I read on, desperate for answers.

  Her boyfriend got suspicious, too. She didn’t want to be with him anymore, but not just because of the abuse. She wanted me. And she wouldn’t let me go. So she got a knife to the heart because it was never her heart I wanted. I wanted yours.

  I killed her so we could stay together, but it drove you away.

  I shake my head no, looking in the direction of the fire, staring past it at a memory of Logan and me at the park. He held me close—tried to comfort me in his arms—the same arms he used to kill Marlena?

  My paper shakes as I hold it tight, my knuckles white. No—he wouldn’t. He couldn’t.

  That first night, when she used the code and knocked three times, I knew it was my chance. I knew she’d get out and try to meet her mom before the police arrived. She was already by the dumpsters by the time I caught up with her. Her boyfriend found us there, and I killed him, too. I made it look like he took his own life and hid his body a little better so it wasn’t found until later.

  I gasp for breath, my eyes blurry as my heart races, pounding in my ears. It can’t be, but… How could he know all that? How could he have known she was meeting her mom? Her mom told us after she’d supposedly died. Had she confided in Logan? Had he really been seeing her?

  My chest aches as I read on.

  That Saturday night, I knew she was already dead, but you heard knocking. I never realized how much responsibility you’d take for her death. I never realized the guilt I’d put you through.

  And after Marlena, I was scared too. I felt guilty. And then… you called me Shawn. I know it was a mistake, but it made me feel like he meant more to you than I do. Maybe that’s my fault. I always hurt the people I love. And you deserve so much better.

  I can’t live without you. I think the best gift I can give is to let you live without me.

  Logan

  It can’t be. Logan wouldn’t…

  I can’t finish the thought because, if I’m being honest with myself, he could. He could have cheated. But murdering two people? I just can’t believe he’d do that when he’s never been violent off the rink. I’ve never been afraid of him before we broke up—not once.

  But no one else knows those details. No one else knows about the knocking, and calling him Shawn in the park, and then the blood on his hoodie…

  Stunned, I turn to Mike in shock, but he’s already looking at me.

  “That’s a—a suicide note,” he stutters. “He—he killed Marlena.”

  He knew Marlena? Maybe he’d heard about her murder in our building… but the way he said her name with familiarity in his inflection, like he’s said it a million times… he must have known her.

 

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