Page 154 of Creeping Beautiful

And that clue might as well be a little piece of paper that says, Carter was here.

There is no way I’m walking out now.

CHAPTER THIRTY ONE - McKAY

PRESENT DAY

Donovan slams the bedroom door behind him when he leaves, his feet stomping on the stairs on his way down just like Adam’s did.

He’s angry. I don’t blame him. None of this is really his fault. Hell, none of this is really anyone’s fault.

It’s just… fuck if I know what it is.

Indie is standing in the middle of the room staring at the bedroom door.

“I want to hear the tapes, McKay. All of them. Right now. I need to know why this is happening to me. I need it to all make sense.”

“OK.” I scrub my face with my hands. Feeling very alone, and tired, and sad all of a sudden. “OK. We can do that. Which one do you want to listen to first?”

“Does it matter?”

“I don’t know, Indie. I really don’t know. I never listened to them. Not after the first few. It always bothered me.”

She turns to me. “Why?”

“Because… you’re always someone different with Donovan. And Adam, too.”

“What do you mean?”

What do I mean? How can I explain it? “You were just… defiant with them. And you were complaint with me.”

Her shoulders relax a little but her frown deepens. “Because I loved you best.”

“You didn’t. You didn’t, Indie. You just…”

“I just loved you best, McKay.”

There are equal parts of me that both want to believe that and reject it in the same breath. “Indie. I need you to hear something right now.”

“The tapes?”

“No. Yes. No. We’re gonna listen to them. But I need you to know this before we start. You don’t belong to me. You don’t belong to anyone. But if you stay with me, you stay with Adam and Donovan too.”

Her shoulders go tense again.

“I thought that was what you wanted? That’s what you told us on your twentieth birthday. That’s what you wrote in that journal. If I had to choose just one of them, I would die. Remember that?”

She nods.

“So we are gonna listen to those tapes but you are not going to judge them. You hear me? Donovan’s right. We did the best we could.”

We lock eyes and stare at each other. And maybe, for the first time ever, I see the girl who really lives inside that head of hers.

The scared little girl. The one that knows she’s not whole. I want to tell her that it’s OK. That’s she’s other things. She’s brave, for one. And smart. And beautiful, and funny, and if she could just face the monster we’ve kept locked inside her head for the past fourteen years, there will be something good on the other side.

But I don’t say it. Because I’m not sure I believe it myself.

Indie rallies and takes a deep breath. “OK.”