Under the Bright Light

“Interrogations don’t always happen in dark rooms. Sometimes they just flick the light on and wait to see what burns.”

“Luke?”

My voice barely broke the surface of the silence—more exhale than speech. It floated into the gloom like a whisper meant for someone long gone, not the man who now stood framed in the open doorway of my bedroom. The harsh hallway light behind him spilled across the threshold like an accusation, slicing through the dim like it had something to prove. It made everything in the room feel exposed—me most of all.

The last tendrils of the Portal’s glow still clung to the air, a faint shimmer fading fast. They trembled once, like breath on glass, and then vanished, leaving only the electric aftertaste of something unnatural. Of something not meant to be witnessed.

He hadn’t moved when I spoke. Just stood there, still and outlined in that stark light, casting a long shadow across the carpet. An eerie kind of stillness, not the frozen uncertainty of surprise—but something else. Something more disciplined. He turned on his heels with unnerving speed, his body snapping toward me like he’d already decided which way this conversation was going before it began.

“What the hell is Duke doing here?”

The words came low and fast, a whisper in technical terms only. It wasn’t a question—it was a detonation. Controlled, barely. The kind of thing that burrows into your gut and sets off every internal alarm at once.

I raised both hands without thinking, palms open, fingers splayed—some useless reflex my body had learned a long time ago, like posture alone could soften a blow. “Luke, I can explain,” I said, the words spilling out in a scramble, all jagged and breathless. I was buying time, and we both knew it. My mind was already trying to rearrange the puzzle backwards—had he spoken to mum? Had he seen Duke’s body? Had he followed the trail of mess I’d left behind like the world’s worst breadcrumb trail?

He didn’t flinch. Just advanced.

“Whose idea was it? Jamie’s?”

The name hit like a slap. I shook my head too quickly, my voice darting out in response.

“No.”

“Paul’s?”

“It was mine,” I snapped, sharper than I intended, but the truth always carried an edge when it finally made itself known. It scraped its way out of me, hot and unforgiving.

His eyes narrowed, jaw working. “What… Where… What the hell were you thinking?”

His voice cracked on the last word, pitched higher than the rest. That break—just a sliver of exposed nerve—cut through the anger and landed somewhere far more dangerous. This wasn’t just about Duke. Not really.

This was about trust. About all the things I hadn’t said. All the things I’d chosen not to share. About him being left out of the story until the consequences came knocking, uninvited and blood-streaked.

And in that moment, the distance between us became something physical. Me on one side, him on the other, both stranded in our respective silences. The room hadn’t changed, but everything else had. The air between us was thick—too thick. Not with noise, but with the weight of everything unspoken. His felt betrayal. My choices. Duke, lying dead somewhere between them.

The dark around us wasn’t just absence of light.

It was everything else.

A figure peeled itself from the darkness behind Luke, emerging with a ghost-like fluidity that made my pulse stutter. Human, yes—but not entirely welcome. Not at this hour, not in this house, not in this moment that already felt as fragile as spun glass.

Then—click.

The light overhead burst to life, harsh and surgical, obliterating the soft veil of shadow that had cloaked the room in something almost bearable. Where a moment ago there’d been depth and nuance—colours dimly dancing on the edge of absence—there was now only absolute exposure. Everything was too sharp. Too loud. The walls, once comfortingly neutral, now glared back in unforgiving detail. Every speck of dust, every poorly patched chip in the paint, every quirk of expression—mine, Luke’s—laid bare.

“Beatrix!”

Mum’s voice landed like a blade—clean, decisive, and far too sharp for the hour. The pitch of it startled me more than the light had, slicing straight through whatever thin layer of composure I’d managed to muster. That tone: surprise, yes—but threaded with something quieter, more calculating. Curiosity, cloaked in maternal concern, but with that unmistakable edge.

“I didn’t hear you get home.”

The words sounded innocuous, but the delivery was anything but. My stomach folded in on itself. Please, no. The memory of her earlier message slammed back into me—Why the hell is there a dead dog wrapped in a blanket in your bathroom?!—and I felt dread rise up like bile.

Her expression was unreadable, but her posture gave her away—one eyebrow arched in deliberate innocence, a half-smile twitching at the corner of her mouth. She knew. Not guessed. Knew. The question now was how much.

Had she told Luke?

“And Luke, when did you–?”

Her voice faltered just slightly at the end, the sentence trailing off like a baited hook.

“We haven’t been home for long,” I interrupted, the words tumbling out faster than intended. Too fast. I winced inwardly. The veneer of calm I was trying to project was as thin as rice paper. “Luke and I were just discussing where we should bury Duke.”

It came too easily—polished, practiced. A lie born from the muscle memory of decades navigating the emotional minefield that was my mother. Smoothing the edges. Making things palatable. Dosing the truth in small, digestible pieces that wouldn’t get spat back in my face. I hated how quickly it slipped from my mouth.

Her arms folded across her chest with the bluntness of someone closing a case file. “Your father is taking care of it.”

Not a suggestion. Not a discussion. A cold, declarative fact. And beneath it, a quiet reprimand—we’ve already done what you should have already done. Her eyes, still fixed on mine, carried the look of someone who thought she knew exactly what was going on and wasn’t about to be caught admitting it.

Next to me, I felt Luke shift. Not visibly—but I felt it. His attention narrowed, his breath held, his stare cutting sideways into my cheek like a blade made of heat. I didn’t turn to meet it. I couldn’t. The weight of it was enough. He was asking questions with his silence, and I had no answers that wouldn’t make everything worse.

Because the truth was, I didn’t know how she’d found out.

I didn’t know why my father, who usually wouldn’t intervene unless something needed hammering or hiding, had suddenly taken the reins.

And I didn’t know what ripple effects were already unravelling beneath my feet.

All I knew—all I knew—was that the walls were closing in. That the brightness of the room had become its own kind of interrogation. That I was the focal point of every gaze, every half-formed suspicion, every silent indictment.

And I had nowhere left to hide.

Suddenly, a sharp thunk sliced through the thick silence—a car door slamming, swift and decisive. It was followed almost immediately by the splutter and grind of an engine struggling into life, coughing once before catching with a low, guttural growl. The sound cleaved through the house like a warning shot. Luke and I moved at once, jerked from our standoff by instinct, not thought.

We rushed to the bedroom window, bodies in synchrony, as though tethered by a single, shared urgency. We reached the glass together, crowding close, the chill of it bleeding through fabric and skin alike. My breath fogged the pane in quick, shallow bursts, ghosts of fear vanishing almost as soon as they formed. One palm pressed flat against the glass, seeking grounding, something solid as my pulse thrashed against my ribs like a trapped thing.

Outside, the garden had been swallowed by the kind of darkness that devours detail. The trees moved restlessly, swaying in the wind, their branches brushing together like conspirators. A flicker in the bushes—a shiver, a shape?—but it vanished too quickly to pin down. The car, though, was gone. No tail lights retreating into the distance. No crunch of gravel. Just absence. A hole left in the night.

“Where’s he going?” The question tore from my throat in a gasp as I spun too quickly. My hip cracked hard against the corner of the dresser—sharp, blooming pain flaring up my side—but I barely felt it. My mind was already sprinting past the injury, tumbling towards worse outcomes.

Mum’s face shifted. Her expression softened minutely, just enough to register—less steel, more calculation now. “To yours, Luke,” she said, the words calm, as if announcing the weather.

“Tell him we’ll meet him there,” Luke snapped. He reached into his pocket with purpose, hand closing around his Portal Key. The metal caught the ceiling light and flared like a beacon—too bright, too revealing.

“Luke!” I hissed, stepping in fast, a warning carried not on volume, but velocity. My hand clamped around his arm, fingers firm. Containment, not comfort.

He spun toward me like a drawn blade. “What?” His voice was flint against flint, eyes blown wide and dark, the whites showing just enough to remind me that this—whatever this was—wasn’t just about Duke anymore. It was about stakes. Lines crossed. Decisions that couldn’t be undone.

I dropped my gaze to his hand. “Not here,” I murmured, barely more than a breath. Urgency wrapped in dread. We were skating on glass already—the last thing we needed was to drive a blade through the middle of it.

He didn’t reply, but the shift in him was instant. Taut. His grip on the Portal Key tightened, knuckles bleaching white, muscles held like pulled cord. He was fighting it—fighting himself—the urge to act, to go, held back only by some residual sliver of reason.

I tore my eyes away, heart still hammering. If I stared at that device a second longer, I’d lose my footing entirely. I turned instead to Mum, who was watching us both with the cool, remote interest of someone appraising a sculpture for cracks.

“I’ll call Dad and ask him to come back here,” I said, willing a layer of calm into my voice. The words felt like scaffolding. Flimsy, but necessary. My hand fumbled for my phone, the glass screen slick beneath my fingers. Performative competence. That’s what this was. Give the illusion of control, and maybe no one would notice the crumbling underneath.

“I doubt he’ll answer you while he’s driving,” Mum replied, tone neutral as granite. The logic was maddeningly tidy. “You know he’s sensible like that.”

Of course he was. The man still did a full head-check before reversing out of the driveway, even when there was nothing behind him but memory. Sensible. Predictable. Right now, both a curse and a comfort.

Still, I pressed the call button. Because sometimes hope isn’t logical—it’s just stubborn. The phone rang against my ear, each dial tone echoing like footsteps in an empty corridor. Waiting. Waiting. Nothing.

And then—from somewhere deep in the bowels of the house—a trill.

Faint, familiar. Like hearing your own name in a dream.

I blinked.

“Oh, I think that might be your father’s phone,” Mum murmured, voice touched with something almost like amusement, though her eyes were narrowing in real time. She didn’t wait for a response. Just turned and swept out of the room like she’d solved the mystery and now had somewhere better to be.

Her footsteps retreated down the hallway, purposeful, echoing.

“Shit,” I breathed, the word leaving me in a rush, not angry, not even dramatic—just weary. Overwhelmed. Like a small leak in the dam of composure. The moment unravelled around me, a tapestry coming undone one stitch at a time. I moved, not because I knew what to do, but because I couldn’t not. Stillness had become unbearable.

“Beatrix.”

Luke’s voice landed like a hook to the ribs—quiet, sharp, and barbed with urgency. It snagged me mid-step, freezing the momentum I hadn’t even realised I’d gathered. His hand closed around my arm—not rough, but immovable. Steady in a way nothing else in this night had been. His grip didn’t hurt, but it didn’t ask permission either. He wasn’t dragging me back. He was anchoring me. To him. To now.

“Let’s get out of here,” he said, voice low and charged, the heat of it brushing my skin more than the words themselves. His eyes, when I met them, were wild and flint-bright. Not panicked—but lit from the inside with something volatile. A refusal to wait around and let the situation calcify into something worse.

For a beat, I just stood there. Held in the still point between motion and decision. Between his hand and Mum’s retreating footsteps down the hall. Between the mess already made and the fresh one still waiting, one Portal Key away. Part of me wanted to run. The other part wanted to... stay. Fix it. Face it. Burn with it, if necessary.

“What about Mum?” The words tumbled out before I could stamp them down, guilt cutting clean through the fog of adrenaline.

Luke’s brow twitched—something small and involuntary. A crack in his mask. But he covered it fast, his features settling into a careful kind of logic. “I’m sure she’ll just assume that we left through the front door,” he said, though his jaw clenched faintly as he said it. A tick of doubt. He was trying to sell certainty to both of us.

His eyes locked with mine, holding steady. It wasn’t pressure, exactly. More like a question held silently between us: Are you with me?

“Fine,” I muttered, lifting my shoulders in a shrug that aimed for indifference and landed somewhere closer to defiance. I wasn’t ready to commit, not fully. Not when part of me still itched with unfinished business, unanswered questions, open wounds.

“I’ll meet you there in a minute.”

Luke’s eyes narrowed, just a fraction—but enough to register. Suspicion flickered across his face like headlights catching something unexpected in the road. He was measuring me now, weighing the odds of whether I’d follow through or disappear in the opposite direction.

I rolled my eyes, dragging a dramatic huff from my chest—a performance, but not entirely untrue. “I’m just going to run downstairs and slam the front door. It'll make it more believable,” I explained, the plan assembling in real time as I spoke. “I’ve already got enough explaining to do with Duke. I don’t need to add our silent vanishing to the list.”

That seemed to land. The tension in his shoulders softened—not much, but enough to count. “Okay,” he said, his voice quieter now, shaded with a kind of reluctant faith.

“But in case she catches me, don’t wait for me,” I added, letting the edge back into my tone. No room for false reassurance. If I got pinned under Mum’s inquisition, I didn’t want Luke tangled in it too.

“We’ve got nowhere else to be,” he said, and there it was again—that dry flicker of humour, rising like steam through a cracked window. It didn’t quite lift the mood, but it stopped it from sinking entirely.

“I know.” My voice was low now, grounded. Honest. “But you know Mum’s not going to let me get away so easily without a full assault of questions.”

He groaned, loud and theatrical, but it didn’t mask the exasperation. “Don’t get caught then,” he said, a line that sounded almost like a joke—until it didn’t.

I gave him one sharp nod. The kind that meant I understand, I’m ready, and I’ll do it anyway, all in one movement. A pact sealed without ceremony.

Then I turned, braced myself against the gnawing pull of dread, and bolted from the room.