[ xxxv. catalyst of destruction ]

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WILLA DEVERAUX SUSPECTED RIGHT away that JJ Maybank was aware she was following him.

He never turned, never glanced back in her direction, but his guarded strides seemed to acknowledge her silent presence, nonetheless. Likewise, she did not call out to him or rush to keep up, just kept a steady, cautious distance as he plunged deeper into the wild, tangled marshlands of the Cut. The late summer light faded around them, and she became the lone shadow on his shoulder, the final imprint in every muddy step he took.

And though they never spoke, Willa grew more certain of their destination. Not back to the Chateau, unfortunately, where too much unsaid still waited to simmer over between them and their friends. But somewhere else on the water all the same.

The soggy, humid wetlands around Willa and JJ pulsed with the life on the brink of dusk. Cicadas thrummed in the heat, bullfrogs croaked in distant pools, and every step sank slightly into the swampy earth as if the ground itself resisted them, reluctant to bring them any closer to the invisible line of the Maybank property.

Soon the gnarled, twisted trees—roots half-uprooted by Hurricane Agatha's wrath—gave way to the silhouette of JJ's house that was located up a lone, pot-hole-riddled, dirt drive. It was a squat, two-story building, its once-white paint long since peeled away, exposing the weather-beaten boards beneath. Dark windows framed by ugly shutters stared out blankly, cracked and smudged. A lopsided screened porch leaned precariously to one side, with a couple of lawn chairs scattered across it—one missing a leg entirely. Overhead, a bare bulb dangled by a frayed wire. At this hour, Willa expected to see a weak, yellowish glow cast from it, but there was no light; a house this deep into the Cut clearly still without power from the summer storm.

Elsewhere, trash littered the dead yard—empty beer bottles and cans dulled with age among the unkempt weeds, glinting dully in the overgrowth. The front door hung slightly ajar, its hinges askew, an invitation no one in their right mind would take.

From a distance, the house did not seem much different from the Chateau, but up close, it exuded a strange, hollow emptiness, as if it were a shell long since abandoned, though a few souls still haunted its rooms. It was less of a home and more of a cage, and Willa could feel that tension like a bruise.

After nearly an hour-long trek across the island, JJ finally stopped. Now, Willa joined his side at the base of the porch steps. She tore her eyes from the disheveled house, focusing instead on him—on the way his careful eyes swept the yard, lingering on the discarded beer cans. They were not unfamiliar to him. She could see that in the set of his sharp jaw, in the way his hand—the one not already holding onto Barry's black duffle bag with a death grip—clenched, then slipped into his pocket.

"How's a case of Pabst sound, kook bait?" he asked her. "Don't worry. We won't drink it here."

Willa swallowed tightly. "I wouldn't mind if we did," she insisted.

JJ chuckled humorlessly. "Yeah, sure. Bet you wouldn't."

A beat passed between them, and Willa nearly labeled it awkward. As if they had never hung out, just the two of them, before. Technically, Willa supposed, they had not. Not for more than ten minutes, anyway. Now, they were going to get drunk together?

What was the worst that could happen?

After a moment, JJ cleared his throat, glancing at the porch again with an unreadable look. "Just uh . . . wait out here, okay?"

Willa nodded, barely whispering, "Okay," as he turned and ascended the rickety porch steps.

She did not press to follow as he disappeared inside but could feel the unease radiating off him. She recognized that anxiety well enough. Before the Pogues, she had rarely brought anyone back to the Deveraux mansion herself. Too often, she never knew what—or who—might greet her when she walked through her own front door. There was a special kind of dread reserved for houses that did not feel safe. Her heart twisted with a sudden wondering for what drove JJ to feel such a way, too.

Willa's eyes roamed over the Maybank home again. This time, a fresh, darker clarity settled on her shoulders. The more she looked, the more she was convinced could see it: the peeling paint, broken windows, and rotten foundations—these were not just signs of time. They were symptoms, traces of something tainted, too, that had seeped into the very bones of the house.

Shifting her weight from one foot to the other while she waited for JJ to return, Willa's mind drifted, unwanted, back to the stories of the Cut she had heard over the years, and the rumors that seemed to follow the Maybank name. They were never kind.

There was no mother matriarch in the Maybank family tree. No one who could offer comfort or control to the remaining family. No, it was just JJ and his father, Luke. Willa had always known that much, but she supposed that she never let herself think too hard about it. Of course, she had heard whispers around town—comments from her parents, from the other families in the Figure Eight—about Luke Maybank's reputation. About his temper. His drinking. But who didn't drink in the Cut?

Before Willa could answer her own question, the stillness of the open yard was shattered by a sudden, deafening shout.

The raw, angry sound ripped through the Deveraux daughter, and she startled where she stood, alone before JJ's porch. Before she could even react, before she could even properly breathe, there came next the unmistakable crash of glass, followed by a violent splintering of wood, as though the entire house were coming apart from within.

"JJ?" Willa called in concern.  Instinct kicked in before she could think further, her feet moving of their own accord as she dashed through the littered yard. Beer cans crunched beneath her shoes as she took the creaking porch steps two at a time.

The half-broken front door refused to yield as Willa shoved against it, the wood grinding stubbornly on its hinges. With one final, forceful heave of her shoulder, she managed to break it open, and she stumbled into the dark maw of the Maybank home.

The place was in shambles. The floorboards, slick with unidentifiable dark stains, had warped and split in places, creating jagged gaps that hinted at years of neglect and spilled messes left to fester. In the shadowy light, she could make out sagging sofas with stuffing spilling out of their worn fabric and mismatched recliners, battered and broken. An unsteady table sat in the middle of what might once have been a dining room, now cluttered with more empty beer cans, overflowing ashtrays, and, disturbingly, traces of harder drugs left discarded in the mess. The thick, choking smell of mildew and stale cigarette smoke clung to the air, pressing into Willa's lungs as she fought to keep steady breaths.

Once more, Willa heard the sounds of a struggle—muffled grunts and the angry thud of bodies colliding. The noise came from deeper inside the house, somewhere near the decaying kitchen and the back porch.

Without thinking, Willa forced herself forward, navigating the cluttered wreckage. Her shoes skidded on the sticky linoleum as she hurried through the dark, nearly colliding with the screen door that led out back. She flung it open, and the sound of the ongoing father and son fight erupted around her—loud, furious, and primal.

Down in the yard, Willa saw the ripped screen hanging from the porch, where the thin mesh had given way under the weight of two bodies crashing through it. Now, JJ had pinned Luke to the ground. The Maybank son's face was torn in a mixture of fury—and something darker. His ice-blue eyes were blown wide, almost fevered.

JJ's left hand gripped his father's throat, fingers digging deep into Luke's skin, while his right hand held a heavy wrench poised above his head. He was frozen for a heartbeat, but his intent was clear. He was ready to bring it down, ready to kill.

The sheer horror of the sight rooted Willa to the spot. This was not what she had expected when she had stormed through the house, heart pounding, desperate to help and protect him. But now, she was not sure how to interfere, nor did she understand what she could do to stop this. What even was this?

Because . . . Because she had assumed she would find him under attack from Barry and his drug dealers they had angered at the pawnshop.

Not under attack from his own father.

Willa's brain continued to whirl, struggling to process the brutal scene in front of her. She and JJ were alone in this unexpected threat. There was no John B., no Pope, no Kiara, no Sarah. It was just Willa, the only one who could try to pull JJ back from the edge of this terrible, irreversible decision—no matter how much Luke Maybank now likely deserved it.

"JJ!" Willa cried.

For a split second, the wrench hovered above Luke's head, still trembling in JJ's hand. Then, at the sound of her voice, his head snapped up, his wild, glassy gaze finding hers. His breath was harsh, strained, and animalistic, like he was a cornered creature caught in a trap. He remained crouched over his father's body, his fingers twitching around the wrench's grip. That bloodlust still simmered. JJ was still ready to swing.

Despite the ferocity there, Willa did not back away. She could see him, the boy beneath this rage. The boy whose hands she knew to be gentle because they had once been gentle as they held her. Tucked beneath this vicious wrath, shoved into a far, desolate corner from a defense mechanism that JJ had likely long-ago crafted within himself, was a restless, loyal boy who was just . . . scared. A boy who had spent his life trying to survive in a world that had never once protected him.

And Willa would not damn JJ for that. She recognized the fear deeply rooted in the Maybank son's anger. She recognized strain, the newfound pressure he was under, the betrayal he was reeling from in the fallout of his friends. The darkness that long had built up, too much for anyone to carry alone.

Now, finally, JJ had cracked.

Slowly, Willa took a step forward, her sage green eyes fixed on his trembling form. She watched him—watched as, with a sudden jerk, he flung the wrench aside. It landed in the wet mud with a dull squelch, its menace neutralized. But his fury was not. He dropped his hands to his father's shirt, gripping it tightly, and hissed something in Luke's face, his voice so low she could not catch the words.

Then, with a sharp inhale, JJ straightened. He left his father sprawled in the mud, writhing and silent. Without looking back, he reached for the black duffle bag he had carried earlier, his fingers darting through it, counting the money stuffed inside, verifying that it had not been touched. Was this what the fight had been about? Willa wondered. Had Luke tried to rob his own son?

Willa's eyes flicked toward Luke, lying defeated on the ground, but before she could process what she saw next, JJ was there, blocking her view. His hand shot out, gripping her bicep, his touch rough and urgent. "Come on," he snapped, dragging her away from the porch steps.

The force of his grip made her stumble, but she quickly caught herself, bracing against the harshness of his pull. JJ's eyes were dark now, distant and frantic, barely looking at her as he marched forward, his jaw clenched so tightly she could see the shuddering strain in his cheekbones. His whole body was a live wire, buzzing with an intensity she could feel even through his grip, seeping into her skin, into her. He yanked her toward the side of the house and up the dirt driveway, not sparing a single glance behind them.

They walked in silence, Willa matching his hurried pace, waiting for the storm within him to ease. Only once they had made it nearly a quarter mile down the road did she finally find her voice, speaking softly:

"What . . . what was that back there?"

JJ did not answer. Instead, his grip only tightened on her upper arm. Perhaps that was an answer in itself, too. Even if were a painful one. She felt his sharp pinch and tried to pull back, but he only held on harder, dragging her farther from everything she had just witnessed. Further from him.

"JJ," Willa said, more forcefully now, willing him to look at her, to see her. But he just kept pulling. Each step seemed to build a new storm inside him, pushing him closer to an all-consuming breaking point. Her voice broke through again, firmer, pleading. "JJ, you're hurting me."

He stopped cold.

JJ finally turned to face her, his piercing blue eyes shadowed. In the dying marsh light, Willa saw something raw—fear, anger, and shame twisted dangerously together. He released her arm immediately, recoiling a full step back as if she had burned him.

Willa looked at him, really looked. His shoulders were still shaking, his chest heaving with uneven breaths. His narrow face was flushed, the red of his rage nearly as dark as the blood dribbling down from a split on his lower gums. She tracked a drop as it slipped over his chin and onto the heated skin of his neck. Beneath his thrumming pulse, fresh fingertip-sized bruises awaited her stare there, too.

Abuse. The disgusting word echoed in Willa's mind, and she felt sick.

A part of her did not want to ask anymore, terrified to touch the walls the Maybank boy had built, terrified to break through the fragile distance he had so carefully maintained with the Deveraux daughter. But this was JJ. This was JJ, and this was the pain he had been carrying silently, the hurt that had been eating him alive for who knows how long.

Abruptly, Willa felt her spine stiffen as she remembered their long-ago conversations about scars and old bruises, the ones he had laughed off or explained away.

How many had he lied about to her?

"JJ," Willa started, "is your dad—" Her words caught in her throat. "Is he hurting you?"

JJ's expression changed instantly, his face hardening. His teeth were stained red as he gritted out, "He didn't hurt me." The words came out loud, almost too loud, like he was trying to convince himself just as much as her.

Willa met his fierce denial with a steady stare. "Then why are you bleeding?"

"I'm fine," he snapped. He gave a hollow laugh, shaking his head as if she were the ridiculous one here. "Don't act like you know a damn thing about what you just walked into." His frustration flared again, and he flung his hands in the air before pointing a finger sharply at her chest, nearly jabbing her. "I fucking told you to stay outside!"

As soon as he raised his voice, Willa's heart began to beat unsteadily, but she tried to hold her ground. "I'm sorry. I just—I heard—"

"Heard what?" he demanded, cutting her off.

"Yelling. A crash," she blurted, her ribs growing tight as she tried to explain herself quickly. "I was worried, JJ. I couldn't just stand there, not knowing what was happening, not knowing if you were—"

"No," JJ interrupted, his tone biting and cold. "You just couldn't stay out of it. Just like at Barry's—you just couldn't let me go on my own, could you?"

Willa frowned, not fully understanding the insinuation she sensed he was trying to throw back at her. "I didn't want you to be alone," she said honestly. "You didn't deserve everyone turning on you back there."

JJ scoffed at her, blatantly refusing her comment. "You really think you can just fix everything, don't you? Like you're some kind of hero?" A nasty, judging humming sound rumbled deep in his bruised throat. "That's some classic Kook-savior bullshit for you."

"I'm not a Kook, JJ," Willa declared. The words felt like the first time she had fully claimed her place among her new Pogue friends after Midsummers. It was the first time she had dared to challenge the crooked label that had followed her all her life. "You and the others—you let me in—"

"Let you in?" JJ repeated. "You're not one of us. Not really." His eyes narrowed, and his stare upon the Deveraux daughter turned hostile. "You think tagging along a few times makes you part of the group?"

Willa felt her defenses rise, her own tone hardening now. "I'm part of the group because I'm friends with all of you."

JJ's cruel expression twisted into something unrecognizable. "Friends?" he sneered. "You're not our friend. You're just some sad, lonely little Kook trying to play Pogue. And newsflash, sunshine—you'll never be one of us."

Willa's throat constricted, and she felt the sting of tears pressing against her eyes. She had thought—no, she had believed—that she had found something here—a place, a family, something real in the Cut.

Blinking furiously, she whispered, "You don't mean that."

JJ's responding laugh was sharp and devoid of warmth, each note scraping painfully against Willa's withering heart. "Yeah, I do. You don't belong with us. We don't need you." He paused, allowing his cold stare to drag slowly over her. "I sure as hell don't need you."

It landed like a slap, Willa's breaths suddenly turning shallow and jagged. She took a stumbling step back, the world blurring as she struggled to find air. "You're not being fair," Willa managed, her voice splintering. "I care about you, JJ. I care about all of you. I—" A tremor made her words uneven as she tried to reach him. "I fought for you in that fucking park, JJ! I was going to bail you out of jail!"

JJ's mocking gaze drifted toward the darkening sky. "What did I just say? Classic Kook-savior bullshit."

"Shut up!" Willa exploded, a spark of anger pushed through the waves of hurt flooding her veins. "I didn't do any of that because I wanted something from you. I did it because I wanted you to know you could count on me. I thought that meant something to you."

But JJ was not listening. He was already far away, even as he stepped forward, closing the distance between them. His voice dropped to a low, bitter whisper, thick with a resentment that felt like it might strangle them both. "Yeah? Well, it doesn't mean anything. What you've done doesn't mean a damn thing to me. You don't mean anything to me."

Why was he being so cruel to her?

"JJ—" Willa's whimper was barely audible. Fragile. Like a burning thread on the verge of snapping—and the Maybank boy stood there, holding the lighter.

"Just stop!" He shouted back at her. "Because I know I don't mean anything to you either." He turned away, his violent eyes tracing over Willa, back to his father's house, dark and silent behind him. "I'm not your sob story. I'm not something for you to fix."

Willa shook her head again, desperate and unable to let him fall into that belief. "You're not a sob story," she agreed. "I'm not trying to fix you, JJ. I was just—just trying to understand—"

He cut her off again. His ocean gaze returned to hers, colder than she had ever seen it, even when compared to that terrifying night on the Boneyard Beach, the night they had truly met for the first time. "You think you know me?" he challenged her. " You don't have a goddamn clue. You'll never get what my life is like. And I don't want you to."

Willa's bruised hands stretched out, reaching instinctively for JJ as if her broken touch alone could ease him from the edge he had walked onto, undo the damage her questions, Luke's cruelty, and JJ's own innate storm of rage and fear had set loose.  But when her eyes met his again—those eyes, clouded by so much anger and pain—she found only a solid wall, as cold and unreachable as stone. Her hands fell back to her sides, her fingers curling into her cut-open palms, and her uncontainable tears began to fall, tracing silent paths down her cheeks. Her voice broke as she choked out a final, pleading whisper.

"JJ, please—"

But he immediately recoiled, stepping back as though her very presence disgusted him, and his voice, when it came again, was an unforgiving command. "Just get the fuck out of here, Willa. Go back to your perfect little life."

Blindly, foolishly, Willa still tried again. She might have hated him, but some undying, stubborn part of her refused to let go. She did not want to lose the Maybank boy like this.

"I didn't mean—"

"Leave!" JJ roared. "And don't come back!"

Willa's whole world tilted pathetically, horrifically, as she watched him promptly turn away from her and storm back toward the Maybank property, moving as if she were nothing more than a passing stranger he would never think of again.  Perhaps he would not. Yet, in that very next breath, all over again, Willa nearly threw away her own feelings. She wanted to scream after JJ, to plead, to shake him out of this unnecessary spiral. Because he could not go back into that house, not after everything—it would swallow him whole, devour what little light he had left.

But no words came.  Only silence, thick and choking, as Willa stood alone, frozen, her fingers clenching the empty air where her friend had once been.

Willa's sobs grew under the weight of a familiar ache. How many times had she tried to carve out a place in someone's life, only to be pushed away? How many times had she let herself believe she was worthy of love, only to watch it slip from her grasp? Every time, she thought she had found her place, her people, it was torn away as if she were destined to be a ghost, haunting lives she could never truly belong to.

JJ was right; she was nothing.

Not a Kook, not a Pogue.

Just a tainted girl on the outside of two worlds that would never let her in, chasing after a dream that kept vanishing, no matter how hard she reached.

Maybe this emptiness, this isolation, was all she deserved. Maybe that was why everything good went away, why every connection frayed and broke, leaving the Deveraux daughter with nothing but painful memories and hateful regrets.

As her heart fractured into a thousand tiny pieces, Willa turned and began to walk away, her footsteps soft against the muddy road.  Retreating to the Figure Eight, the growing night accepted her into its vast indifference as she left the battered Maybank house—and JJ—behind her for good.

~~~~~~~~~~

leave it to a death in the family to bring me out of my one-year obx fanfic hiatus.

obx season 4 people, you know what i mean.

anyway, my everything is hurting. both from the show AND from this comeback chapter. i mean, i don't think i could have brought this book back any more devastatingly than the way i just did.

once again, this was a very much willa and jj centric chapter. those two are my everything in this book. i'd love to hear what you all are thinking after the exchanges we saw in this chapter. because it was a lot.

so, why do we think jj exploded on willa?

on another note, i would just like to say--to those that have stuck with this book--thank you. i know when authors go on long breaks it can be tedious and frustrating, but i did genuinely struggle to return to this book. it was hard. but as i have started rewatching season one to cope, i am finding my love again. and i want to give willa the ending she deserves. i have her ending in mind, and i promise it will be worth it. i hope you all have missed her as much as i have.

she needs all the love right now. and all the love for the long foreseeable future.

anyway, i would love to hear all of your thoughts. how are you all doing? and as always, i'm sending all my love. thank you for reading. thank you for loving willa as much as i do.

stay safe and well.

--B.