Page 53 of A Smile Full of Lies (Secrets of Stonewood #1)

Chapter

Thirty-Four

ROS

The irony wasn’t lost on me.

Day twenty-one. The last day of the retreat. The day I was supposed to pack up and go home. The day I’d been looking forward to, even if it would also mean facing whatever Knox wanted to do, to punish me.

And what did the universe drop in my lap?

Thayer’s memorial service.

I worked until most of the night was gone, getting it all set of for the book’s release, learning so much stuff on the fly that my brain felt fried, if it hadn’t been already, then tossed and turned for the few hours I had left, barely getting any sleep.

I stared at the ceiling for a long time, dreading that memorial service with every fiber of my being.

I stared long enough for the pale morning light to bleed through the curtains, washing the room in a colorless haze.

It felt deliberate. It felt cruel.

Like the universe couldn’t resist one final twist of the knife before sending me back to the man I had almost died trying to protect.

My suitcase sat half-zipped by the door.

My laptop was still open on the table, the final chapter of What We Buried in Stonewood staring back at me.

I hadn’t closed the file after checking that I had it all correct.

I’d uploaded it to the publishing site, but I just couldn’t face the moment when I closed it, when I took that last step that said ‘this is done’. Just couldn’t bring myself to do it.

Not yet.

I stood slowly, wincing as my muscles protested.

My shoulders and arms ached from sitting at the laptop, typing.

My body remembered the knife, even if the scar was sealed now.

A ghost of pain curled beneath my ribs low on my right side.

The puncture wound high on the left side had a deeper ache, too close to my heart, but not close enough to stop it from beating.

I went to the window and stared out at the Tensaw river. It was as smooth as glass. A mirror. Cold and flat and reflective.

I hated that Thayer got a memorial… a celebration of life for a goddamn killer.

I hated that people would stand there crying over a boy they didn’t really know. That they’d dress in black and say nice things and pretend like he was anything other than a monster who’d chosen envy and violence over decency and happiness.

But his family would grieve him. They’d lay his ashes to rest and believe whatever lies helped them sleep at night.

And me?

I’d be watching from a distance. Because I had to see it to believe it, even though I was there when Alyssa shot him.

I had to watch them put the urn in the mausoleum. I had to know — for sure — that he was gone.

So I forced myself to eat something, drank the last cup of coffee and put the dishes away, then put the laptop to sleep, that file still open – because for me, until I saw Thayer’s urn put away, the story wasn’t really over – no matter what I’d said in the book.

Then I took my bags and put them in that shiny new car, and drove away without looking back.

I parked at the far edge of the cemetery, where the Spanish moss hung heavy from the live oak trees and the river breeze whispered through the pines like it knew something I didn’t.

Thayer’s family’s mausoleum sat at the opposite end of the cemetery, limestone and polished brass catching the late morning sun like it deserved to be something holy. It wasn’t. There was nothing sacred about what was being laid to rest inside it.

I didn’t get out of the car right away. Just sat there with my hands clenched tight around the steering wheel, watching people filter in through the massive wrought iron gates. Black dresses. Crisp suits. Sobs muffled by expensive linen handkerchiefs.

They didn’t know. They didn’t want to know.

I’d been there when he died. I’d felt the knife he meant for my heart. I’d watched Alyssa shoot him before he could finish the job. Watched him fall. Watched him die.

And still, there was a part of me that couldn’t quite believe he was gone until I saw his family bury him with my own eyes.

So I waited. Watched from a distance as the procession moved toward the mausoleum, a slow line of grief and denial.

His mother was easy to spot. Her wails of grief carried across the cemetery like a banshee’s call come too late.

She clutched the urn to her chest like she was cradling an infant.

Like she was burying a victim , rather than a monster.

I watched them tuck him inside the family tomb like he hadn’t murdered three people, orphaned Knox, and torn my life to pieces in the process. Like his ashes didn’t belong in the fucking gutter with the other trash.

And still… I felt it. That awful twist in my chest. That pang of sympathy.

Because I hated him. I would never stop hating him.

But I still felt sorry for his family because they were mourning someone who never really existed, and they had no idea what was coming.

I didn’t stay long after they sealed the tomb.

Didn’t wait for the prayers or the final words or the carefully curated sobs for a son they didn’t know. The minute the urn disappeared behind polished stone and the crowd began to gather closer, I slipped away — quiet and invisible — the way I’d learned to be.

My feet moved on instinct, cutting through the older part of the cemetery where the gravestones were worn and the trees arched low, like they’d been carrying the town’s secrets for too long.

I ended up near Knox’s family plot.

Not close enough to make a scene, but close enough to feel it, that cold ache in my chest that never quite went away.

Three names etched in granite. A mother.

A father. A nineteen-year-old girl who would never go to college, never fall in love and get married, never get the chance to grow up and learn that monsters didn’t always wear masks.

Sometimes, they wore letterman jackets and charming smiles instead. And with Thayer? That bastard contained multitudes. He was both kinds of monster, all in one.

I sank onto the stone bench a few feet away from their graves, legs trembling, lungs tight.

The wind shifted, carrying faint voices from the other side of the cemetery. Laughter. Reminiscing. Talking about the good times, the funny stories, how ‘full of life’ he’d been.

I wanted to scream. I wanted to shatter the air with the truth.

He wasn’t full of life. He was full of poison, and Knox’s family paid the fucking price for it. Henry, Victoria, and Ava all died at his hands.

My fists clenched in my lap. I blinked up at the sky, hot tears slipping down my cheeks.

He was gone — really, truly gone. The boy who had ruined my life. The boy who stole my future, who used me, who murdered the only people Knox ever loved.

They’d just put him in a mausoleum like he was some kind of fucking saint. And nobody knew the truth. But they would, very fucking soon.

I didn’t go home to Knox… not right away.

Not even when my hands started shaking so bad I could barely grip the steering wheel, or when my throat locked up with the weight of everything I couldn’t say at the cemetery. I just drove.

Nowhere specific. Just… away.

Away from the mausoleum.

Away from the sympathy that didn’t sit right with me.

Away from the ghost of a boy who ruined my life and only paid for it with his life. Somehow, that didn’t feel like enough.

I ended up at the overlook off Old Sawmill Road. The one that looked out over the water, where the Spanish moss dripped from the trees like veins and the air always smelled like pine and mud and memory.

I used to come here in college. When Gran and I fought. When Thayer got too intense. When I needed to breathe.

Now I could barely manage that.

I shut the engine off and let the silence crash over me. My phone buzzed in my lap — Alyssa again, probably, checking to see if I’d made it back yet — but I didn’t answer. I didn’t even look to see who it was.

I stared out at the wide stretch of the delta, the rippling black water reflecting the last light of evening, and I broke.

Not loud. Not violent. Just quiet and raw and real . Tears slipping down my cheeks one by one, like each one carried its own piece of the weight I’d been hauling for too long. I thought I’d cried it all out at the river house, but I hadn’t – not by a long shot.

He was gone. Thayer was gone. And still, somehow, he was everywhere.

In the scar under my ribs. In the one beside my sternum. In the silence between me and Knox. In every word I’d written about the murders that changed all of our lives.

I curled my arms around my middle and dropped my forehead to the steering wheel.

I didn’t know how to go home. Not yet.

The sky was starting to darken into true night when I finally forced myself to sit up.

I’d been parked at the overlook for at least an hour, maybe longer. My phone buzzed twice more — Alyssa again, then a text from an unknown number.

There weren’t words in the second text, just a timestamp and a location ping. Not home. Somewhere in the woods, overlooking the river. My location.

Shit.

Knox, I assumed. Who else would care where I was today? Who else would admonish me for stalling with nothing but a record of my current location?

I stared at it, my heart thudding slow and hard. I could almost feel him — buzzing with that same wild, barely-leashed energy he always had when something inside him was fraying. When he was holding back so much it made his skin too tight.

He knew I’d stalled. He knew I wasn’t ready to walk through that front door and face him yet.

And, apparently, he was getting sick of waiting.

The air in the SUV felt heavier all of a sudden. Like it knew what was coming, too.

My gaze flicked back toward the river, the tangled edge of the treeline, the first stars of the night twinkling high above the river. The trees looked darker now. Hungrier, somehow.

I swallowed hard.

The writing retreat was over. The truth was written. The case was closed. My stitches had dissolved. My scars were healed.

And Knox? Knox had warned me he was going to be done with being careful when I finally came home to him.

He was going to make me pay — for the danger I’d put myself in, for the silence, for walking into a fucking knife just to protect him from the truth.

I didn’t need to ask what he wanted. I already knew. He was calling me home.

And I? I was going to run.

I didn’t drive straight home. I could’ve. Probably should’ve.

But my hands were shaking too bad to keep a good grip on the wheel, and my pulse had lodged somewhere in my throat. I pulled off the main road and parked at a gas station just outside the Stonewood city limits, sitting in the shadowed corner of the lot like a fucking coward.

My mouth was dry. My limbs felt too heavy. And even though the sun was gone and the air had cooled, sweat prickled beneath my sweater.

I couldn’t make myself move. Not yet. Because I thought I knew what I was walking into.

Knox had said he wouldn’t touch me until I was healed. But that promise — no, that threat — that he whispered the day he dropped me off at the river cabin? It never left me.

“You scared the hell out of me. And I’m going to make you feel every second of it. Not now. Not yet. But when I know your body can take it — Rosalind, you’re going to pay for every second I thought I’d lost you.”

The man who sat at my bedside and kissed my forehead like I was breakable was not the same man who’d spoken those words.

That man was darker. Hungrier. And I hadn’t seen him since, but I could feel him now. Circling. Closing in.

Something had shifted the moment Thayer’s ashes hit the marble shelf in that mausoleum.

It was over. The story was written. The monster was dead. Which meant my time had run out.

Knox had been holding back out of necessity. But now? Now there was nothing left to stop him.

By the time I pulled into our neighborhood, night had descended on Stonewood, leaving everything dipped in darkness, held back only by the familiar glow of street lights.

My stomach twisted the second Knox’s house came into view. It should’ve felt like safety. But tonight, it felt like the last inhale before plunging into icy waters, far out of one’s depth.

I pulled into the driveway and just… sat there. Hands white-knuckling the steering wheel, headlights casting long shadows across the front porch like some kind of warning.

It wasn’t fear, not really. It was anticipation: gnawing and sharp and wrong in all the ways that made my skin buzz.

I knew he was home. His truck was parked crooked in the drive, like he’d come in hot. Like patience had stopped being part of the equation.

A light glowed faintly through the living room curtains. But there was no movement, no sound.

Still, I didn’t get out right away. I couldn’t.

Instead, I stared at my reflection in the rearview mirror — my face pale, eyes too wide. Christ my throat was dry.

The girl who’d left three weeks ago wasn’t the one coming back. And not just because of the scars or the weight loss or the constant ache behind my ribs.

Something had changed in me. Something had to, for me just to survive.

I reached for the door handle and paused.

I knew I wasn’t walking into a warm welcome. Not tonight. Not with everything I’d done. Everything I’d hidden .

But I also knew I couldn’t delay it any longer.

He’d waited. He’d been patient for twenty-one days.

Now it was my turn.

With a shaky breath, I pushed the SUV’s door open and stepped out into the night. And the second my foot hit the top step of the porch, I knew?—

Something wasn’t right. Something was off. And I was already too late to turn back.

The house was quiet. Too quiet, in fact.

I pushed the front door open slowly, the hinges whispering a creak into the thick, still air. No lamps on. No music. Just darkness and the faint scent of cedar and clean linen, like nothing had changed.

Like everything hadn’t changed.

“Knox?” I called, my voice low and tentative.

No answer.

I stepped inside, closing the door softly behind me. My heels echoed too loudly on the hardwood floor. The shadows stretched long across the walls, cast from the streetlight outside bleeding through the curtains.

The hairs on the back of my neck stood on end.

Something’s wrong, my mind screamed at me.

I dropped my bag onto the floor, softly, and my purse slid off my shoulder with a quiet thud as I set it down on the entryway table. I moved deeper into the living room, my pulse humming faster with every step I took.

Then I felt it. That shift in the air. That unmistakable awareness — like I was being watched.