Chapter 3

Chapter 3

Glory

I’M SHIVERING LIKEmad. I don’t know how long he’s been at it, but it feels like hours have passed since he started digging. It’s all but done now. My father is in the hole, and Huxley works on covering him with dirt.

I wander and pace as he works, ashamed that once again, my big brother is cleaning up the mess I’ve made. He always comes to my rescue, and I love that about him—I know I can always count on him—but I don’t feel deserving of it. I don’t feel I’ve earned his care.

Exhaustion sets his features as he works, pausing for a moment to swipe the back of his hand across his brow. It’s freezing out here, but he’s broken a sweat, nonetheless.

I can’t look at him for too long because he looks different. Older, stronger…more attractive. I shake my head and turn away to avoid staring at him and bringing myself even more shame for thinking of my stepbrother as handsome.

Instead, I look out into the dark forest, all blackness sweeping between the trees except for the small circle of light from our cell phones, which we’ve propped up around the grave with their flashlight features on.

The grave.

I should feel something about that word. I should feel something now that my father is dead…that save for my stepmother—who I don’t really care for—I’m an orphan.

But all I feel is relief.

My eyes trace shadows in the silent forest.

Odd.

In the distance, I see a vague, tiny cloud of white smoke move across the darkness. It floats away into the night, but a few seconds later, I see a faint pinpoint of orange light, almost like a spark, before another small cloud of smoke puffs out and drifts away.

Then there’s a shadow…a dark silhouette of a human that shifts and moves behind a tree trunk.

My eyes must be playing tricks on me.

Are they?

I turn to look at Huxley, my lips parting to tell him, but he’s working so hard to clean up my mess that I feel guilty bothering him.

It’s probably nothing. I’m probably imagining things.

Still, I’m curious enough to find out if the little white smoke clouds are real or whether I’m hallucinating. I slowly walk between the trees, my feet crunching the quickly piling snow. I glance behind me after a few steps, reminding myself that I can follow my tracks back to Huxley, and it’s only then that I realize how high the snow has piled since we left the house—and our path back might be covered.

I whirl around and march back toward Huxley. I scan the snow on my way, searching for the tracks we made, and quickly descend toward panic. I can’t see any tracks other than my pacing—none that will lead us out and away from this spot. When I reach the grave, I bend and pluck my cell phone from where it’s laid as he shovels another pile of dirt onto the growing mound. I take it with me as I look, holding the light toward the ground and searching all around me.

I turn back and look at Huxley a few yards away. “I can’t find our tracks.”

He stops, looking up at me, my cell phone light casting an eerie glow around him. His eyebrows pull into a straight line. “Shit. Well, the sled was pointing…” He looks down at it and cocks his head. “Did you turn it?”

I shake my head. “You did. You pulled it close to the hole and turned it to drop him in.”

He runs a hand through his golden blond hair. “It’s…it’s fine. We’ll figure it out.”

“Are we lost?”

He huffs out an agitated breath. “I said we’ll figure it out. One thing at a time, Glory. Just let me finish this.”

I’m trembling and it’s not just from the cold, it’s from fear. It’s two o’clock in the morning, pitch-black, and all I can think about is how we might freeze to death if we can’t find our way back in the dark.

I wonder if that makes me selfish on top of everything else. I murdered my father tonight, and we’re burying his body, trying to cover it up. And here I am, fearful of the darkness and the cold and how we’ll survive the night in the snow.

I deserve to freeze to death for this.

Huxley finally finishes filling in the hole with sod and begins to shovel snow on top of it. He levels it out with the flat back of the shovel, smoothing it over the surface, and somehow, he manages to make it look as though the spot is undisturbed…as though we were never here and there isn’t a body buried beneath. I’m impressed by it, though that’s strange to think in this circumstance.

I’m impressed by him.

He straightens and inhales a heavy breath, swiping his coat sleeve across his sweaty brow, a perfect image of strength and power. He exhales, fog escaping from between his lips. Stress extends across his features and the guilt of what I’ve put him through—what I’ve always put him through—makes shame sink deep within me.

I move to him, quickly closing the short distance between us, and I throw my arms around his neck, hugging him close. “Thank you, Hux. I’m so sorry. I’m sorry I keep fucking things up and you have to keep saving me.”

He’s stiff for a beat, but after a moment, I feel the tautness of his muscles loosen and relax. He sighs and the shovel drops from his palm, plopping into the snow beside us as he wraps his arms around my waist and squeezes me tight.

“I will always save you,” he murmurs. “Always. And for what it’s worth, as fucked up as this is, I’m proud of you. I’m not proud of the violence, I’m just…I’m proud that you finally realized your worth and fought back.”

I didn’t do it because I thought I was worth something. I know that I’m not. I just lost control of myself entirely, but I don’t want him to know that—he’ll think I’m insane.

Maybe I am.

There is a small part of me that feels his pride, though…the way it wraps around me like his arms do, embracing me fully, fueling me with warmth and care.

He pulls back slowly, grabbing hold of my shoulders and dipping his head to meet my eyes. “I think I know what he did to hurt you. How long has he been raping you?”

I flinch.

God, the impact of that word is jarring.

It’s the right word, but hearing it out loud makes it too real.

I shake my head. “I can’t talk about this. Not now.”

His features soften, his head tilting to the side. His hand comes up and cradles my cheek, his touch giving me a jolt of his warmth, even through the glove that covers his palm. “I understand,” he says. “It’s over now. He’s never going to hurt you again.”

I nod.

“I’ll always protect you.”

His thumb brushes against my chin and I feel the tenderness of his touch everywhere. It’s not just a brush across my chin, it’s a stroke down my hair, a caress over my arm, a tight embrace around my belly.

For the first and only time in my life, I feel peace. I’m safe in Huxley’s presence, shrouded in the darkness and surrounded by silence so loud that it makes the world seem distant and unreachable.

THE PEACE STRETCHED on through the first hour, but as we approach the end of the second hour with no end to the tree line in sight, we’ve both devolved into frantic shells of ourselves, frightened that we’ll be lost forever and desperate for warmth.

“Maybe we should go this way,” I point off to my right.

Huxley huffs, “Why? What makes you think that direction will lead us home?”

“I don’t know…I just know that walking straight isn’t working.”

“Maybe we should just stop.”

“And freeze to death?”

“No. We’ll wait until sunrise. Maybe then we’ll be able to see something and can find our way back.”

“This doesn’t feel right. I don’t think we’re anywhere near home. I don’t think sunlight is going to show us the way, either. Hux, we’re lost. Really lost.”

“I know that. Don’t you think I fucking know that? Fuck!”

His shout echoes through the night, bouncing back as an eerie cry for help. Except, there’s no one around to help us.

“Let’s…let’s just go a little farther, okay? Let’s try this direction.” I point off to my right again. “Let’s walk for ten minutes and if it doesn’t get us anywhere, then we’ll stop and wait until sunrise.”

“Shit. I really fucked up here.”

Huxley’s cell phone died, though we still have the flashlight on my phone. The battery is draining quickly, and there’s no service to make a call. Even if it did have service, would we dare? If we alerted anyone to our location, we’d have a lot of explaining to do, and then it wouldn’t just be murder that they charge me with. It would be murder, moving a body, covering up a crime…and Huxley would get arrested for his part in it, too. We’re truly helpless now, and I don’t know what the fuck to do.

The only thing I do know is that I’m not letting Huxley think that he fucked up, that this is his fault. If I hadn’t lost myself to a fit of dissociative rage, then we wouldn’t even be here.

“It’s okay. We’re gonna be okay. This mess is my fault, not yours,” I say.

Instead of trying to assure me otherwise, he falls into silence, and it causes a small stab of pain in my chest—a pain I deserve.

“Come on.” I take his hand, pulling him with me as we change direction.

We stop after another ten minutes or so of silent wandering through the night. We let the sounds of the whistling wind pushing through leafless tree branches wrap around us and whisper dreadful things.

You’re lost.

You’re alone.

You’ll never escape this forest.

You’ll die here.

I put my hand on my chest and turn to face him. “Hux, I’m—”

The light on my cell phone goes out, the battery finally dead.

“Fuck.”

I feel the disconnect from reality wash over me. It’s rushing through my mind as the only way to separate myself from this nightmare and avoid outright panic. I press my eyes shut against the emotional numbing that’s rippling through my veins.

But then he grabs hold of me, pulls me against him, and holds me close. A jolt of electricity tries to break through and overcome the detachment taking hold of me. My eyes pop open again to a mirage, a hallucination—or at least, I think it must be.

Off in the distance, I see smoke—not the tiny white puff I saw before, which rolled away into the night. This is a billowing tower of subtle gray lifting and rising.

“What is that?” I whisper.

He releases me and lets go, his hands still gripping my shoulders as he turns his head to look behind us.

“That’s…smoke. Like chimney smoke.”

I feel reality creep back in to flush out the numbness. “You see it, too?”

“Yeah, I see it.”

His palms slip down my arms, one falling away as the other grips my hand and squeezes. “Come on. Let’s follow it before it goes away.”

I have some apprehension, an anxious tingle climbing up my arms, but the cold follows it, reminding me that it won’t be much longer before hypothermia sets in.

We have to move.

We trudge through the dark forest, stumbling and tripping as we tromp through thick snow without a light, our feet landing on roots and branches beneath. We come upon an incline, and it’s a gentle sloping at first, but after a minute, it steepens.

We won’t let that stop us.

Time is running out for us and desperation punches adrenaline through my veins. Though the hill sharpens to vertical, we push on.

Together, we climb.