Copyright 2018 by Colleen Hoover

It’s not lost on me that he mentioned loving her in the past tense. “Did you
eventually find that connection?”
“No, not like I had hoped. But I’ve felt something close to it—a fleeting
intensity that proved a deeper connection can exist.”
“When was that?”
“Several weeks ago,” he says quietly. “In a random coffee shop bathroom
with a woman who wasn’t my wife.”
He kisses me as soon as that sentence escapes him, like he doesn’t want me
to respond. Maybe he feels guilty for saying it. For momentarily feeling a
connection with me after trying to feel that connection with his wife for so many
years.
Even if he doesn’t want me to react to that admission, I feel something grow
inside me, like his words sink into me and expand in my chest. He pulls me
against him and I close my eyes, tucking my head against his chest. We don’t
speak again before we fall asleep.
I wake up about two hours later to his voice in my ear.
“Shit.” He sits up and most of the covers go with him. “Shit.”
I rub my eyes as I roll onto my back. “What is it?”
“I didn’t mean to fall asleep.” He reaches to the floor and then begins pulling
on his clothes. “I can’t be in here when Crew wakes up.” He kisses me, twice,
and then walks toward the door. He unlocks it, then pulls on it.
The door doesn’t budge.
He jiggles the handle as I sit up in bed, pulling the covers over my exposed
breasts.
“Shit,” he says again. “The door is stuck.”
Something drops inside me, and I’m abruptly ripped from the pleasure of last

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night. I’m back in the moment, in yet another scenario where I feel desolate
inside this eerie house. I shake my head, but Jeremy is facing the door so he
can’t see me. “It isn’t stuck,” I say quietly. “It’s locked. From the outside.”
Jeremy turns his head and looks at me, his face giving way to concern. Then
he tries pulling the door with both hands. When he realizes I’m right and that the
door is latched on the outside, he starts beating on it. I remain where I am, scared
of what he might find when he finally gets that door open.
He tries everything to open it, but then he resorts to calling out Crew’s name.
“Crew!” Jeremy yells, beating on the bedroom door.
What if she took him?
I’m not sure she would have. She doesn’t even like her kids. But she likes
Jeremy. Loves Jeremy. If she knew he was in this room with me last night, she’d
probably take Crew out of spite.
Jeremy’s mind hasn’t gone there yet. In his head, Crew is playing a prank on
us. Or the lock somehow accidentally latched itself when he closed the door last
night. Those are the only plausible explanations to him. Right now, he merely
sounds annoyed. Not at all concerned.
Jeremy glances toward the alarm clock on the nightstand and then beats on
the door again. “Crew, open the door!” He presses his forehead against it. “April
will be here soon,” he says quietly. “She can’t find us in here together.”
That’s where his head is?
I’m thinking his wife kidnapped his son in the middle of the night, and he’s
worried he’s going to be caught fucking the houseguest.
“Jeremy.”
“What?” he says, beating against the door again.
“I know you think it isn’t plausible. But…did you lock Verity’s door last
night?”
Jeremy’s fist pauses against the door. “I can’t remember,” he says quietly.
“If by some bizarre chance it was Verity who locked us in here…Crew
probably isn’t here anymore.”
When he looks at me, his eyes are full of fear. Then, in one swift movement,
he stalks across the bedroom and unlocks the window. He lifts it, but there are
two panes of glass. The second one isn’t giving way as easily as the first.
Without hesitation, he reaches to the bed and pulls a pillow case off of a pillow.
He wraps his hand in the case, punches through the glass, kicks it, and then
crawls out the window.
Several seconds later, I hear him unlock my bedroom door as he passes it
and heads for the stairs. He’s already in Crew’s bedroom before I make it out of
the master. I hear him run across the hall to Verity’s room. When he makes it

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back to the top of the stairs, my heart is in my throat.
He shakes his head. He bends over, clasping his knees, out of breath.
“They’re asleep.”
He squats, as if his knees were about to give way, and he runs his hands
through his hair. “They’re asleep,” he says again, with relief.
I’m relieved. But I’m not.
My paranoia is starting to reach Jeremy.
I’m not doing him any favors by bringing up my concerns. April walks
through the front door moments later. She looks at me, then at Jeremy squatting
at the top of the stairs. He glances up and sees April staring at him.
He stands and walks down the stairs, not looking at me or April as he heads
to the door, pulls it open, and walks outside.
April looks from me to the front door.
I shrug. “Rough night with Crew.”
I don’t know if she buys it, but she walks up the stairs like she doesn’t give a
shit if I’m telling the truth or not.
I go to the office and close the door. I pull the rest of the manuscript out and
begin to read. I have to finish this today. I need to know how it ends, if it even
has an ending. Because I’m at the point now where I feel like I need to show this
manuscript to Jeremy. He needs to know that he was right when he felt they
never really connected. Because he didn’t really know her.
Things aren’t right in this house, and until he mistrusts that woman upstairs
as much as I do, I have a feeling something else is going to happen. The other
shoe is going to drop.
After all, this is a house full of Chronics. The next tragedy is already long
overdue.

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So Be It
It’s easy to remember everything about the morning Harper died because it only
happened a few days ago. I remember how she smelled. Like grease. She hadn’t