Six-and-a-Half Months Ago

The very first time Lily laid eyes on Colton, she was embarrassingly sweaty—it was the first day of her internship and the air conditioning had gone out in the office. It was sweltering, but she wanted to make a good impression and seem amicable, so she dared not open her mouth to complain even as she felt a beat of perspiration trickle down her back.

The intense first day was probably an omen of the very intense internship to come. Most of the kids they were working with had been recently removed from unsuitable home situations, which meant that there were also sometimes detectives and police officers drifting in and out of the picture helping them deal with the legal ramifications of the cases. They weren't the cheeriest group—that was at least the impression she had gotten so far on day one. But when he came over to her, holding out a water bottle so cold that it was slick with condensation, he looked everything like an angel and not at all like the devil she would later know him to be.

"Thanks," she said, her cheeks flaming. She hoped this was just a person being nice and not due to the fact that she looked like she'd sweated out all of the water in her body.

If she looked gross, he didn't let it on. No, he was charming, with hair the color of honey and a smile just as sweet, but he was clearly several years older than her. She wondered how many cohorts of interns he'd been forced to interact with already, if he'd just learned to plaster on a smile by this point even if he secretly disliked the college students.

"What's your name?" he asked politely, and she almost wanted to say, I have a nametag on, doofus, but getting sassy with the cop didn't seem like a great thing to do on any day, much less her first.

So she said, "It's Lily, what's yours?"

"I, ah, I think you're technically supposed to call me Officer Maine here," he told her in a manner that clearly suggested that he was about to make an exception for her.

"Right," she said quickly, glancing down. "Sorry."

"Don't be sorry."

There was something velvety about the tone of his voice, something almost inappropriate, something that also felt a little bit dangerous. Lily knew that she was surely just imagining things, but that didn't stop the hairs on the back of her neck from bristling.

"Between you and me, it's Colton."

"Colton," she repeated.

She didn't form a crush on him, not ever. Maybe in another life, one where she didn't have a beautiful boyfriend who adored her just as much as she adored him, she might have. Even then, she wasn't sure—she liked Colton Maine exclusively in the sense that he felt like a little bit of a safety net, someone keeping an eye on her.

As time went on, she didn't want his eyes on her anymore.

It just seemed like he was being friendly at first. She usually only saw him once or twice a week, but in the brief moments of respite that she got during the workday, he'd ask her about her hobbies, her friends, her family. That much would have been bearable if not a bit awkward, but he kept showing up in unexpected places—once, it appeared that he had been lingering by her car to talk to her when she walked out to the parking lot—and things began to feel more solidly inappropriate.

She should have talked to her manager or her supervising teacher back at the university, asked if there was any way she could be placed somewhere that wouldn't involve interacting with him. But she didn't want to be the student who was demanding or complicated; she told herself that he was merely talking to her.

The summer would be over soon, anyhow, and her life was so much bigger than him. It was crying happy tears on the Fourth of July when Henry came home and said that he was staying home this time, hearing him say that he wasn't going back to Seattle. It was finally getting home after a long day to see Liam already cooking dinner for her, kissing in the kitchen while the dog's tail happily thumped against their legs. They sit in bed and talk about getting married one day and giggle over gummy rings. And when they kiss again, her hair fanned out against the pillow, she thinks, This is my future. This is everything I want.

Colton was a mere blip; he'd be gone with the changing of the leaves.

She couldn't fathom that his peculiar fascination with her might endure past her internship, once she was back at school and no longer seeing him anymore.

And she was speeding a little bit as she drove home from Liam's apartment that night, so although she quietly cursed to herself when she saw the flashing lights in her rearview mirror, she hadn't considered that she could possibly be getting pulled over for anything besides the speeding. She hadn't considered that she shouldn't stop the car.

She didn't know until much too late that he was always there like a shadow, following her wherever she went.

Amelia was still seated upright on the bed, her unsteady body lightly swaying like a reed caught in the wind, when a gentle hand that she recognized to be Henry's touched her shoulder. Her eyes flew open—how long had she been sitting there? It only could have been a minute.

"We should meet them outside," he murmured. "Before they barge in here."

Lily still lingered near the window, but she had picked her book back up, clutching it to her chest like she didn't want to leave it behind. For a brief moment, Amelia wondered why in the world that could be, but she remembered that the confines of this house had been all that she had known for weeks. Colton might have taken her out a couple of times to pretend he was being nice, tugging her around like an animal on a leash, but she hadn't been allowed to truly exist outside of these four walls in nearly three months.

"I fully condone stealing it if you want to take it," Amelia mumbled.

That made Lily smile a little bit and the pinch of humor also seemed to give her the bravery she needed to leave the safety net behind. She dropped the book back onto the nightstand, giving it one last, almost remorseful look before turning away for good.

They left the light on—might as well run up Colton's electricity bill while they were at it.

Lily nervously shrank back between Henry and Amelia as they filed downstairs and the thud of footsteps could be heard approaching the front porch. He carefully placed a protective hand on her back, up between her shoulder blades.

But when Amelia opened the door, it wasn't the EMS or the police who had come knocking just yet, though she could see all of their various vehicles pulling up outside. No, it was Liam whom she'd caught mid-stride, one foot up on the bottom porch step and the other still on the ground. And now, aside from the slight motion of his mouth falling open, he was a statue.

He was looking right at Lily.

And Amelia's heart fractured when she glanced over and saw the expression on the other girl's face. It was more than shock. It was confusion, as if...

Oh. Oh.

She must not have expected him to actually keep waiting for her this whole time. That even if she had one day formulated her own clever way of getting out of Colton's grasp—which Amelia suspected she would have found a way to do eventually—it would still be far too late to salvage what she had with Liam.

She thought he would have given up on her by now.

Lily blinked a few times, as if trying to break herself out of a trance, and tentatively stepped forward onto the porch, the wooden boards creaking under her feet.

"Liam?" she finally asked, her voice quivering, and it wasn't a statement but a question, as if she still couldn't believe what her eyes were showing her.

And even from where she was standing, Amelia could see his eyes start to brim with moisture, but he blinked it back and put on a small smile.

Softly, he said, "Hey, Lils."

That elicited the tiniest giggle from her and it was all so precious that Amelia felt like she shouldn't be watching it, like it was something private, but she didn't have anywhere else to go without stepping around them or skirting further back into the house.

Lily ventured even further still, coming close enough that she could lift a trembling hand to his cheek, to feel that he was truly real, that he was flesh and still hers. And Amelia wasn't sure how Liam wasn't crying because she felt like she was about to start crying, even more so when he reached up to cover Lily's hand with his own and she didn't draw away, didn't even flinch.

His voice had grown even quieter, but Amelia thought she heard him ask Lily if she was ready to see Moosey, and that must have comforted her because she let him lead her over to the paramedics.

The sight of it was overwhelming—the ambulance flanked by four police cars, all of their lights still flashing. And yet there was no Colton, no boogeyman to unmask and put in handcuffs. Amelia assumed she and Henry would be the ones recounting what happened to the officers while Lily was checked for injury.

Her pulse quickened at the thought of having to relive any of it already; she reached back for his hand. Like her, he looked a little pale, a little queasy from the raw cacophony of emotions clashing inside of him. But when their eyes met and the world was just her and Henry once again, Amelia realized that they'd somehow achieved what they set out to do.

Her crazy plan had actually worked.

"You saved her," Henry whispered, slightly dazed. "You saved us all."

It was determined quickly that Lily should be transported to the hospital for physical and psychological evaluation.

To her credit, she was being an absolute badass, answering everyone's questions as well as she could and not instantaneously dissolving into a giant puddle of tears like Amelia would have been if she were in her shoes. Like Amelia wanted to do as she tried to explain her own side of the story to the officers that had come—she didn't know if it made things easier or more difficult that they seemed absolutely dumbfounded that one of their colleagues from just one county over had been doing this right under everyone's noses.

But she knew that one of the most significant differences between her and Lily right now, of which there were obviously many, was pure shock. Lily's mind and body both had clearly gone into defense mode, numbing her to the torrent of hurt that she was still experiencing nonetheless. That much was clear when she maintained her neutral expression as she rolled up the sleeves of her shirt halfway up her forearms, revealing a band of tender skin around each of her wrists. The bruises were layered atop one another like different colors in a watercolor painting, as if fresh ones had been inflicted before the earlier ones could even heal.

Liam, who was still right there at her side, looked like he might puke on the paramedic's shoes.

A flicker of discomfort finally crossed Lily's face as she eyed the ambulance doors, and Amelia couldn't help but wonder if being shut in there might feel like getting trapped in another cage. They were told that one of them could ride in there with her, but the other two would have to come along in their own car. They weren't through with being questioned, not even close, but no one was cruel enough to make them stay behind while Lily was taken away from them when the interrogation could continue elsewhere.

A silent look was exchanged between Henry and Liam, the former giving a small nod as if to say, Go ahead. Amelia wasn't sure if it was because he thought Lily needed Liam more than him right now or if everyone thought that Amelia also needed Henry, but regardless of the reason, Liam dug into his pants pocket and tossed his keys to Henry.

Watching Lily get into the ambulance was hard—hard enough that Henry wiped at his eyes when he turned away and soundlessly trudged to the car. Amelia let him have his second of space to himself before reluctantly following.

The first thing she did once she crumpled in the passenger seat was stuff the gun in the glove box. She didn't want to look at it anymore, didn't even want to consider what it might have been like if she'd had to use it. For a long moment, the only noise in the vehicle was the hum of heat flowing out of the air vents.

"Are you sure you can drive?" she asked quietly, though she didn't really know what the alternative would be—she was certainly in no state to do it, either.

"Yeah," he said tightly, likely having the exact same thought as she was.

The car seemed to grumble in complaint as they rattled along the gravel road off the property, but it still beat trekking through the woods. Amelia closed her eyes for a second, saying a silent prayer that today would truly be the last time she ever had to see Hollow House.

She couldn't have said how she was feeling. Knowing that Lily was with Liam right now and receiving medical attention was an astronomical relief, a weight lifted off of her shoulders. But the ability to focus on getting her to safety had been a distraction, an invisible wall that stood between Amelia and confronting her own emotions about Colton. Now the wall was cracking apart and it was doing so quickly.

Her ex-boyfriend had been keeping a girl hostage. And it had started while he was still dating her.

Amelia could remember in vivid detail how he'd paraded her around Hollow House, telling her all the grand plans he supposedly had for it. All those nights he'd stayed out late, claiming he was out with his friends, even though she had just moved in with him.

She'd been sleeping in the same bed as a monster. Until now, she'd been able to hide it, but she knew damn well that the whole truth was about to come out. She was going to have to give her own testimony about Colton's character, probably to multiple people. To officers who didn't look so different from him at all.

This wasn't going to be a small thing. No, it was going to go stratospheric. There would inevitably have to be an investigation launched into his police department from the state level, which meant that Amelia wasn't only going to have to detail everything he did to her to a select few investigators—she could easily wind up on the stand in a courtroom, getting cross-examined in front of dozens of people about if she'd been "asking for it."

Her parents were going to find out. Everyone was going to find out.

The whole world would get to hear how she was the girlfriend who didn't please, who never fulfilled his wants, to such a degree that he went and preyed on a poor girl who had nothing to do with it. And Amelia thought,

Would he even have gone after her if I'd just given him everything he wanted in the first place?

Her stomach churned, acid rapidly rising up in her throat as they passed the hospital signs. The car wasn't even at a complete stop in the parking space before she had to fling her door open, doubling over as her stomach expelled its contents onto the ground. Her eyes stung with tears, her throat burning with the sourness of the bile, and she could hear Henry frantically undo his seatbelt to try to clamber over the middle console and hold her hair back.

"I'm fine," she croaked as soon as she was done, as she picked up the only thing she saw that she could wipe her mouth with: an already-used napkin that lay crumpled on the floorboard.

"Amelia..." he started to murmur to her, but she didn't want to let herself believe for a second that he could stay and hold her while she cried.

Sharply, she interjected, "You need to go be with her."

And they both knew that she wasn't wrong, but when she finally turned her chin to look at him, he looked like was being torn in two. Split between two worlds, unable to be in both at once.

"I can't just leave you like this," his voice cracked. "You're not fine."

"She doesn't need me, Henry—she needs you."

He let out a soft sigh, defeated, but he didn't get out of the car right away. He thought about it for a moment, then said, "I'm gonna call Natasha and see if she can come be with you, okay?"

"Okay," Amelia replied bleakly, not because she wasn't appreciative but because she suddenly felt so drained that she wanted nothing more than to curl up in a ball and sleep.

And Henry certainly would have let her do that if it was his choice, but it wasn't. The officers had been pretty clear back at Hollow House that they wanted everyone to come inside and she nearly wanted to spite them by not doing it, but she knew that Lily's nurses might need all of the information they could get about the situation, too.

He turned the temperature of the air conditioning down before stepping out to call Nat and the sudden burst of cold against Amelia's face helped settle her stomach a bit. She tried to breathe deeply in the way Dr. Foster had taught her to do when she was having an anxiety attack, and it at least halfway worked.

Henry opened the door and slid back into the driver's seat. "She's gonna come for as long as you need her, okay?"

Amelia nodded. "Thanks," she said meekly.

They finally got out of the car—once she'd made him pull to a new parking space so that she wouldn't have to step in her own barf—and made their way inside, eager for any and all updates on Lily but much less eager to talk to the police. They were greeted in the waiting room by the same officers who had come to Hollow House, who told them that Lily was already receiving care and that they wanted to ask Henry and Amelia a few more questions about what had happened as soon as they could find a private room to do so. Since she didn't have any life-threatening injuries that they'd needed to stabilize in the ambulance, Liam was apparently allowed to stay with her for the time being.

This all meant that there wasn't anything else Henry and Amelia could do at the immediate moment besides wait in the uncomfortable plastic chairs. At some point, someone must have finally had the thought that the two of them were also very emotionally rattled from the whole experience—a nurse came over to hand them blankets and water bottles. Amelia didn't feel like water was going to fix very much, but it did feel soothing going down her sore throat.

It took half an hour or so before one of the officers finally circled back to them, requesting to talk to them in separate rooms, which she assumed was to make sure that their stories lined up. Panic gripped at her again, but in a move of impeccable timing, the automatic doors that lead outside slid open and through them ran Natasha.

Amelia could have cried with relief. It took a small amount of convincing for the officers to allow Nat to come with her, but they eventually caved since she hadn't been with them at Hollow House and thus couldn't have a conflicting testimony.

The two of them were brought to a room that was so tiny and bland that she wondered what it could ever possibly be used for besides conversations like these. Had Nat not been there at her side, Amelia wasn't sure that she would have been able to breathe—the officer was a man. As they sat across from him, she felt Nat's hand squeeze hers under the flimsy table.

"Thank you for your cooperation, Amelia," he said as if she'd had much of a choice; she gave him a dull nod. "I will try to keep this as brief as possible, but as you can probably imagine, we need to move quickly given the occupation of the accused. You mentioned back there at the scene that you knew Officer Colton Maine prior to this incident—can you explain to me what the nature of that relationship was?"

It wasn't brief. It was torment.

Amelia avoided looking directly at the officer as much as possible. She stared down at the table, at the clock on the wall. Occasionally, she'd look over at Nat, who was doing her best to keep a neutral expression, but Amelia knew that this had to be brutal for her too. There was so much about Colton, about the nature of the things he did to her, that Amelia had hidden from Nat.

And all just because she hadn't wanted to leave him yet. If Amelia had been honest with her best friend from the beginning, Nat could have helped her get out of the situation way sooner.

Now, she could only hope that some good could still come of it, that her testimony against him would help get him behind bars one day. But when the officer asked her if she had ever considered reporting his behavior before now, all she could do was splutter out a half-hearted response about how she was too scared to.

And it was the truth, but if she'd done what he was suggesting she should have, there was a chance they might have been able to save Lily so much sooner.

It was impossible for Amelia not to feel like she'd screwed everything up.

It was only after a very pointed comment from Nat about Amelia's current state that the officer let them stop—not without mentioning that he'd reach out to her if he needed any more information, of course.

They returned to the plastic chairs in the waiting room. She was exhausted but didn't want to leave without at least seeing Henry again, and he seemed to either still be stuck in his own interrogation or off visiting Lily. So Amelia leaned over to rest her head on Nat's shoulder, breathing in the familiar scent of her flowery perfume, and felt comforted by it.

"I'm so sorry I didn't know," Nat whispered to her.

"I'm so sorry I didn't tell you," Amelia swallowed. "I wasn't being a very good friend to you back then."

Softly, Natasha shook her head. "You've always been a great friend. This isn't your fault—none of it."

Amelia wanted so badly to believe that was true.