Page 18 of Where Daisies Breathe (Star Meadows #2)

The words whisper through my mind in Clover’s voice, as if she’s reaching out to me from the grave, pleading with me to solve what happened to her, to find a clue to her truth.

Maybe that’s why I thought I saw her tonight, because she’s haunting me until I find the answers, not just for us, but for her.

And I do find one as I turn the next page of the diary.

I think he might be drugging me. Every time I go to a party and pass out, I wake up with no recollection of what happened the night before.

Not that that’s totally out of the norm.

I do sometimes get blacked out drunk. But on certain occasions, it feels different.

My body feels heavier, and I have these bruises on my arms that look like injection sites.

And yeah, I’ve put a few of them on there myself, but these are in odd spots, like on the side of my arm where a doctor would inject or something.

Thump. Thump.

Thump. Thump.

Thump. Thump.

My heart is pounding as I reread the words. Then my fingers travel to the bruise on my arm, the one I woke up with after that night in the bar where I got blackout drunk.

This isn’t the first time I’ve had bruises like this. There was a period in my life when I frequently woke up with them. Jason accused me of being a junkie. My mother insisted I was anemic, although I was never tested for that.

What if I was being drugged? But by who? The same person who carved slut into my flesh and on my locker? But how would this person continuously be able to drug me? I’d have to be around them a lot.

My thoughts drift to my mother. I loathe that I have to question if she’s the one who’s done this to me. She’s cruel, but this is so much more than cruelty. These are wounds that will never heal, scars that will never fade away.

I trace my finger along the current bruise on my arm. It aches, but I barely flinch.

Could this bruise be from being drugged?

It’s such a ridiculous idea, especially considering it’d mean that the “ he ” Clover is referring to in her diary is someone I know and have crossed paths with recently.

I can’t think of a connection, but that doesn’t mean one doesn’t exist. After all, my mind is a maze that I haven’t figured out a way out of yet.

“I think… I think I may have found something,” I say, glancing up at Ellis.

He looks at me, his fingers pausing on the keys. “What is it?”

I stand up, walk over to the bed, and sit down on the edge. Then I hand him the diary. “Read that entry.”

As he does, I stare at the bluish-purple splotches on my arm. I need to tell him about these.

But what if I do and he thinks I’m crazy?

What if he thinks I did it to myself?

“No one will believe you,” my mother tells me. “You’re just a girl, Ava. It’s your word against theirs.”

I remind myself to breathe—that my mother lies and that Ellis wouldn’t do that to me. He believed me last night. He has to believe me now.

“Shit,” he mumbles under his breath. “If this is true, then what I thought about the autopsy reports has to be.”

I pause for a beat. “There’s something else.” I skim my finger along the bruise on my arm one more time to feel the sting of pain before showing him my arm. “The other night at the bar, when I blacked out, I woke up the next day with this on my arm.”

He drops the diary as he sees the bruise on my arm. He makes no effort to pick it up as he gently takes my arm to examine it. My instinct is to pull away, but this time I fight the compulsion, knowing he needs to look at it.

“Jesus Christ, Aves.” His gaze collides with mine. “Why didn’t you say anything earlier?”

I shrug, a lump welling in my throat. “Because I’m not used to talking about stuff.” I pause at the feel of his hands on my arm. “Also, this isn’t the first time these kinds of bruises appeared on my arms. It happened when I was younger, too.”

His fingers spasm. “Even when I knew you?”

I nod. “Yeah.”

With a quiet sigh, he lets go of my arm. “I wish you had trusted me enough to tell me back then.”

I offer him an apologetic look. “I know, but I didn’t really trust anyone.”

“It must’ve been so damn hard for you to live like that,” he says. “I’m sorry. I wish I’d been a better friend.”

“None of this is your fault. I never said anything about any of this because that’s what I was taught to do.

” I rub my hand across the bruise on my arm.

“Being a liar has been ingrained in me since the day I was born. And maybe that’s the real reason why I can barely remember the truth—because it’s buried beneath so many of my own lies. ”

“That’s your parents' fault. Not yours,” he stresses, carrying my gaze.

“I know.” I partly believe the words.

Perhaps one day I will completely.

We plunge into silence, and his expression is set in deep thought.

He tensely massages the back of his neck. “If you were drugged that night at the bar, then that means this guy Clover was seeing—the one she believed would lead her to Zoey’s killer—could’ve been at the bar too. If that is all connected, anyway.”

“I know. I’ve thought about that too. But I also wonder if it happened after I left the bar.

Like maybe I was drugged there, and then someone did it to me in my house.

Because this kind of stuff happened to me when I was younger, so it had to have been happening at my house.

” I fiddle with a loose thread on the hem of my shorts.

“Also, I talked to the driver who drove Clara and me home after we left the bar that night, and he said I was acting paranoid and kept saying I thought someone was following us.”

“Really?” he asks, and I nod. “That was smart of you to ask him—the driver, I mean.”

Did he just call me smart? I don’t think anyone has before.

It makes me feel weirdly uncomfortable, like it’s not anything I deserve.

“But if someone did follow you home,” he continues, dazing off with his thinking face on. “And drugged you while you were at your house, that’d mean they would’ve had to have broken in.”

“Or they had a key.”

“You think one of your family members did it?”

“I don’t know.” I chew on my bottom lip. “Maybe. But then it’d mean that one of my family members also drugged Clover. And was dating her. That doesn’t seem likely. My mom does hide a key under a mat outside, so if someone looked in the right place, they could've found and used it.”

He mulls this over. “Maybe it’s not one person doing this, but a group of people,” he says absentmindedly.

“You think multiple people are going around drugging and killing girls?” I ask but then shake my head.

“I guess that’s possible since there were multiple people in the woods that day.

” Another thought occurs to me, one I should’ve realized sooner.

“Trystan could’ve snuck into my house at any time.

His parents have a key. And maybe he’s the guy Clover was dating to get to the truth. ”

“I’ve thought about that too, but would Clover really have been able to date him without us knowing? We went to school with both of them. It seems like we would’ve noticed.”

“True.” I remain quiet for a while, willing my mind to remember any sort of clue it’s kept hidden from me.

Ellis clicks the mouse on his laptop. “Let’s solve who owns that house in the middle of the forest. I have a feeling the answer to this starts there.”

As he starts sifting through records online, I return to the sofa to continue reading Clover’s diary. The way she writes about this mystery guy… I feel like these could be my own words.

Control.

Power.

Obey.

They show up time and time again, and they might as well be cut upon my flesh—they’re that familiar to me because they fit his description perfectly.

Jason.

I have to wonder…

I just have to…

What if Clover was dating him too?

My head spins at that thought, not only because she could’ve been dating him, but because it’d also mean Jason would have a connection to all these murdered girls.

And I was married to him for all of those years.

It makes my stomach lurch with guilt for not seeing it, for not going to the police the first time he hit me.

Maybe then he’d have been put in prison and not been able to hurt anyone else.

Then again, it would’ve been his word against mine, and people usually believed him because he had a way of charming people. It’s a mask he wore to hide the darkness inside him, and he was damn good at keeping it on during the right moments.

“I found it,” Ellis suddenly declares, startling me so badly I jump.

My attention snaps to him, and the look on his face conveys a silent warning that whatever he’s about to tell me is bad.

I close the diary. “It belongs to my family, doesn’t it?”

He shakes his head, his gaze returning to the screen. “I honestly don’t know. It all depends on who’s the owner of the business listed on the deed.”

“It belongs to a business?” That wasn’t what I was expecting. I get up, cross the room, and sit down on the bed beside him. “What kind of business would have a location out in the middle of the woods?”

He rubs his lips together. “The Star Meadows Hunting Guide.”

“It’s a hunting guide place?” I swallow hard as he nods.

Cold cement presses against my cheek, and the air reeks of rust.

Drip.

Drip.

Drip.

My vision is blurry as I scan my surroundings. It smells like when my father shoots a deer and leaves it tied in a tree so the blood will drain out. It smells like rot, death, and blood. Where is it coming from, though?

Where am I ? —

“Ava.” Ellis' voice tugs me away from the memory.

I blink, his face coming into focus.

“Where’d your head go?” he asks cautiously, his eyes carrying nothing but kindness.

“To dark and horrible places,” I whisper. “That smell of death.” Tears burn in my eyes, but I suck them back because if I let them out, I might not be able to ever get them to stop. “Are there any photos of the house online?”

He doesn’t respond immediately. “I think we should take a break.”