The Darkness I Carry

Chapter 28: The Highway to Nowhere

They didn't speak for most of the morning.

Leah drove, her eyes fixed on the road ahead, the hum of the engine filling the silence between them. Caleb sat beside her, staring out the window, watching the world blur by. Road signs flashed in and out of his peripheral vision, each one a beat in the slow rhythm of their escape. He counted them like prayer beads, hoping that if he counted enough, it might make him forget the mess they were both tangled in.

A billboard flashed by—"Have You Seen Her?"—with a face that looked too much like the one beside him. Only softer. Cleaner. Frozen in the lie of innocence.

Leah didn't blink. She didn't even seem to notice. Her eyes were focused, distant, as if she was seeing something no one else could.

The highway stretched thin, cutting through nowhere. It felt like a place you only found when you were running from something that had teeth. Maybe from yourself.

At a roadside diner, Caleb finally broke the silence.

"You don't have to keep testing me," he said, his voice tight.

Leah sipped her coffee, burned black, no sugar. She didn't react.

"I'm not," she replied.

"Yes, you are. Every time you tell me something worse. Every time you get close and then back away like I'm radioactive."

Leah set her cup down slowly. "I'm making sure you understand," she said. "What I am."

"I already do," Caleb shot back.

"No," she said, her voice quiet but firm. "You think I'm some broken kid with trauma and a knife. But I'm not broken. I'm awake. That's different."

The waitress dropped the check on their table and immediately turned away, her gaze fixed firmly on the floor. Caleb didn't look at the total, didn't need to. His mind was elsewhere.

He leaned forward, lowering his voice. "I don't want to save you."

Leah's eyes flickered, just for a moment, but she didn't react.

"I just want the truth. All of it. Even the parts that make me want to run."

She met his eyes then. For a second too long. It wasn't an answer, just an understanding between them. And then she smiled.

It wasn't kind. But it wasn't cruel, either. It was honest. And that was enough.

Detective Avery's Breakdown

Detective Avery was getting sloppy.

Two cups of coffee too many. Sleep-deprived. Razor-burned. He was starting to see patterns that weren't there, but it didn't matter. He needed answers.

He stared at the missing person board, a collage of faces pinned together with red string and hope, and began to draw new lines. He didn't know why yet, but it felt like something was about to click.

The fourth girl. The one from upstate. The one no one had linked to the rest. Until now. Avery felt the weight of the connection, like a breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding.

She had a sister. Dead two years ago. Overdose. A girl named Rachel Holloway.

Which meant Leah had come back.

To erase anything that might have remembered her.

Avery wiped a hand over his face, fighting the exhaustion. He wanted to scream, to throw the board against the wall, but all he could do was sit there, staring at the lines, waiting for the truth to pull him in.

The Empty Pasture

They camped that night in an empty pasture.

No tents. Just the car, some blankets, and the stars. The world around them was empty just wide open space that felt like it could swallow them whole. Leah lay on her back, staring up at the heavens, the cold air brushing over her skin.

"Do you think people are born like this?" she asked suddenly, her voice breaking through the quiet like a whispered confession.

Caleb didn't answer right away. He wasn't sure what she was asking. Was it about her? About him? About something else entirely?

He finally spoke, his voice low. "I think some people get broken so early that they don't even remember the shape of what they used to be."

Leah didn't move. Her eyes were fixed on the sky, but her mind was somewhere far away.

"And you think that's me?" she asked, her voice flat.

"I think you shattered," he said, choosing his words carefully. "But I also think you liked the sound it made."

Leah's lips twitched, and she let out a quiet laugh more like a sigh. "I did."

She turned to him then, her face unreadable. "You still want to stay?"

Caleb didn't hesitate. He nodded once. "Until you make me leave."

She didn't answer. But she didn't turn away either.

And for the first time, Caleb felt like he was standing on the edge of something he didn't know how to navigate. Something darker than he'd ever imagined. But still—he stayed. Because leaving her behind was no longer an option.

The Shoe

Elsewhere, far down the highway, a deputy was finishing his shift when something caught his eye behind a gas station:

A shoe. Child-sized. Burned at the toe. Stuffed with red thread.

The deputy crouched down to inspect it, his flashlight catching something on the concrete beneath it. It wasn't much, just a smear, jagged and uneven, but it was a word:

BEFORE.

The chill that crawled up his spine wasn't from the night air. He didn't know what it meant, but he knew it was a message.

And it wasn't one he wanted to understand.