Just one more chapter to go after this one! Hope you enjoy the reveal

17.

He wakes with a start. It only takes seconds to identify the cause. Hanna's in the doorway, pyjama clad, wide-eyed and with half her hair having fell out of its bun, hanging loosely around her face.

"Sorry," she whispers, "didn't mean to wake you."

He pushes himself up on his elbows. "What's up?"

"Nothing. Just checking you're still in one piece."

"I'm fine. Did you think I wouldn't be?"

She looks down at the floor, scuffing her foot on the carpet.

The lack of reply tells him everything he needs to know. He shuffles across the bed and pats the empty space beside him. "Come on, get in."

She looks hesitant. "Caleb, we said-"

"And we're not," he replies, quickly. "It's just saving you the effort of crossing the hallway next time you want to check in on me."

She rolls her eyes at him but moves across the room and slips beneath the duvet. She lays on her back, still, staring up at the ceiling.

"You had another nightmare, didn't you?"

Her lip quivers but it's the last he sees of her face before she covers it with her hands. "I'm so stupid, I know it's just a dream, but-"

"You're not stupid."

"Well, you're not having nightmares."

"No, I got drunk instead," he says. "Slightly more fun." The joke falls flat. He takes her hand and gently plies it away from her face. "Look, Hanna, listen to me. You are not stupid, okay? You're brave and you're strong and you're brilliant." She cracks open an eyelid. "I'm so proud of the way you're handling this. Going through it twice? It would be stupid if you didn't come out of it with nightmares."

"But I thought I'd put all behind me," she says.

"I know," he says. "I know. But you've done it once so you can do it again. Hanna, I know you're going to get through this. And I'm going to be there with you every step of the way."

He thinks he sees the faintest trace of a smile but when she rolls onto her side facing him, it's gone.

"The nightmare," she says. "It was about you. It always is."

Something inside his chest painfully twists. "What happens?" he asks, his voice no more than a whisper.

"We're back there. You and me. And A.D." She gulps and her whole face seems to move with it. "They're always making me do something to you. To- to hurt you. Holding you down underwater or cutting you with a knife or burning you with that damn cattle prod myself. One time A.D. forced my finger down on the trigger to shoot a bullet at you that killed you. Today, you were tied on top of a table. I had to keep hold of a weight suspended on a pulley above you." She takes a deep breath. "It was too heavy. I let go."

He can't look away from her eyes, damp but not overflowing, and filled with the kind of pain he wishes he knew how to take away. "It wasn't your fault," he says.

"That I let go?"

He shakes his head. "Any of it. There's only one person responsible for the things that happened to us in there and that's the psychopath without a name."

"But-"

"I've been there Hanna," he says. "Blaming yourself isn't healthy. Sure, our plan to trap A.D. was a complete disaster but we can't do anything to change that. All we can change is the future. Our future together."

She manages a proper smile this time. "I like the sound of that."

"I do too."

She's so close. It would be so easy to place his mouth on hers and close the gap between them. He thinks she's considering it too for her eyelashes flutter as she moves her gaze to his lips. He shifts his own eyes back to hers and waits for her to meet them. When she does, he recognises the look within them and it's the look that usually results in their clothes coming off fairly quickly.

"Han," he breathes.

"We can't," she whispers back. That look hasn't left her eyes. "Stop looking at me like that."

"Stop looking at me like that!"

Her expression doesn't change other than looking down at his lips one more time. But then she rolls over onto her other side and curls her knees up to her chest. "We should sleep."

"Are you okay?"

"Yeah."

"We can talk some more if you want."

"Caleb, I'm fine."

He pauses. "It wouldn't mean we have to… you know."

"I know. It's not that. Not just that anyway." She looks over her shoulder at him. "I feel safe when I'm with you. I want to make the most of knowing I can go to sleep without needing to be scared."

"You can do that every night, I'll always be there."

She doesn't reply other than to give him a small smile and roll back into her sleeping position. He hesitates, wanting to shuffle closer and fold his body to the curve of her spine. He wishes he could hold her close and protect her from her nightmares and makes a silent vow that as soon as they're properly together, she'll never have to go to sleep alone.

He lowers his head back to the pillow but stays on one side, watching the slight movement of her body with every breath, waiting just in case there's any signs she's not okay. She fidgets a few times, readjusting her position, but she falls asleep quickly, all things considered. Reassured, he shuts his own eyes and it's not long before sleep takes him too.

When morning comes, he wakes with Hanna facing him, already awake. A dimple flickers in her cheek. He returns the smile. For a moment it feels like they're years in the past, waking up in the apartment they shared. But then he takes in the remains of a split lip and the shadows beneath her eyes, and he remembers.

"How did you sleep?" he murmurs.

"Better," she replies, her volume equally low.

"I'm glad."

For a while they lie together, not speaking, not touching, just sharing space. There's no one else he could feel comfortable with like this. And when Hanna eventually suggests they get up, he knows, just from one look into her eyes, that it's not because she wants to move away from him, but that's it's got too painful, being together but not truly together.

Ashley's already up and in the kitchen which suggests they've slept in.

"Sleep well?" she asks although her expression looks as if she's asked a different question altogether.

"Yes," Hanna replies.

There's a long pause. Caleb takes the opportunity to hoist himself onto one of the kitchen stools, trying to interpret the looks passing between mother and daughter.

"Sweetheart, if you're going to bed hop in the night, I would advise not leaving the door to your empty room wide open."

"Mom!"

Ashley turns to him. "Eggs, Caleb?"

"Uh, please," he says, without looking either of them in the eye.

"Hang on, how come he gets breakfast and I get embarrassed?" Hanna asks.

"You don't eat breakfast," her mom replies.

"That's not what I meant and you know it."

Ashley stops pouring orange juice mid glass and sets the jug down on the table. "Okay." She sighs. She glances at him and then back to Hanna. "I don't have the right to pry on Caleb's relationships but last time I checked, you were engaged!"

"Yeah, so?"

"So, do you think you should be spending the night in another man's bed?"

Hanna rolls her eyes. "It's not like that. Nothing happened."

He fidgets uncomfortably. She clearly isn't ready to tell her mom about the nightmares, but he knows that's the only reasonable excuse for them waking up together. "We did just sleep," he confirms.

"See, told you."

Ashley cracks a couple of eggs into the pan. "And how would you like it if Jordan had a girl just sleeping in his bed while you were out of town?"

"I wouldn't really give a damn."

He manages to stifle a snort.

"Fine, if Caleb did then?"

He's not able to stifle anything this time. From the look Hanna's given him, the awkwardness is written across his face. She doesn't look much happier herself, and he suspects she's thinking about him and Spencer again.

"Mom, he's right here!"

"And I'm happy that Caleb's back in your life, Hanna. But that doesn't give you licence to toss anyone else to the wayside. You know what it was like after your dad decided he'd had a better offer-"

"This isn't the same!" Hanna snaps.

Ashley pokes at an egg with a spatula. "Maybe not for you," she says, her voice gentle, "but for Jordan…"

Hanna's phone buzzes and she snatches it up from the table. She gasps loudly and when he turns to look at her, he can see she's visibly paled.

The photo she's been sent is making her stomach churn but somehow her eyes remain fixed upon her phone like magnets and she can't look away. Her heart is hammering so hard in her ears that she only just about hears her mom ask if it's Jordan who's messaged her.

"It's- uh, we-" she stutters.

"Han?"

Unable to finish her sentence, she feels for Caleb's wrist and gives it a tug, indicating he needs to follow. She heads to the lounge for a bit of privacy from her mom, the click of his crutches proving that he's right behind.

"What's going on?" he asks, "are you okay?"

She takes one last nauseating look at her phone screen and then shoves it at him.

He flinches. "Fuck."

"Caleb, he- he's…"

"Dead," Caleb finishes.

Caleb presses the home screen before handing her phone back but the image is still imprinted to her brain. The man they knew as Elliot Rawlins, sprawled across the floor, bleeding from multiple holes in his chest. She wonders if Ali knows yet.

Her phone beeps again with another message. Her stomach flips.

"Wouldn't it be a shame if the police believed you killed Archer? My house, 1 hour – A.D."

She looks at Caleb in horror. There's no doubt in her mind that A.D. could make them look guilty of killing him if they wanted to. Its predecessor had succeeded in it before.

This time her phone rings and she jumps violently before realising it's only Spencer.

She answers. "You got it too?"

"We all did," Spencer replies. "Come over to mine, we need to make a plan."

By the time her and Caleb are dressed and have made their way over there, everyone else is already there. The same thought going round and round her head is echoed across all their faces; it's happening all over again.

She takes a seat and gives a nod toward Alison. "Are you okay?" she asks her.

"He can rot in hell for all I care. Good riddance," she says fiercely, despite her red and swollen eyes and tight grip on Emily's hand.

"So, what do we do?" Emily asks.

They all turn instinctively to Spencer.

"And where the hell is A.D's house anyway?" Hanna says. If it means that bunker, there's no chance she's returning there.

"I think it means Annabel's house," Spencer says. "I think we should go."

"And get ourselves kidnapped again?" Hanna snaps.

"Well it's that or get ourselves arrested for a murder we didn't commit. Again," Spencer returns, equally sharply. She takes a deep breath. "Look, Hanna, we'd all understand if you don't want to come but I think some of us should scope it out. It might help us identify A.D."

"Yeah, Han," Aria interjects, "perhaps you should stay here."

Somehow the thought of her friends putting themselves in danger without her feels even worse. She straightens her back. "If you're going, I'm going."

"Me too," Caleb says.

"I don't think you were invited," Ali says. "No text."

"Yeah, well this party isn't invite only!"

As the conversation turns to how they're going to convince Toby to give them Annabel's address, the nervousness that has already turned her legs to jelly, spreads throughout Hanna's body.

She turns to Caleb. "Perhaps you shouldn't come," she says in a hushed voice so the others can't hear.

"What? You think I'm letting you go there without me?"

"I need to know you're safe."

"So do I!" he says.

She looks back at the others. Spencer and Alison appear to be in a semi-heated debate. She tries to tune back in but her brain's elsewhere. On Caleb.

"It's not up for discussion," he murmurs in her ear. "I'm coming with you."

As Spencer stands up and starts dialling someone, presumably Toby, Hanna's chest gives a sudden jump. She can't deny that having Caleb there with her will be comforting in some respects. She gives him a look of resignation. "Okay, if you must."

After Spencer's obtained the information they need, they split into two cars and start the journey. Her and Caleb end up in Aria's car, with Spencer driving Emily and Alison, and therefore confirming her suspicions that she still doesn't want to be around them.

On first impressions there's nothing out of the ordinary about the house, yet Hanna starts trembling as soon as they climb out the car. The front door swings open easily when Spencer pushes it and they all follow her in, Hanna and Caleb at the back. The first rooms they view, the lounge and the kitchen diner, aren't lavish but look reminiscent of a show home, everything matching, not a crumb or scrunched up receipt, not an item out of place.

They creep through the rooms, looking around. Hanna's not even sure what they're looking for exactly, until Aria spots something and gasps loudly enough to alert them all. On a door there's a illuminated arrow, indicating that they enter. In front of her, she sees Emily take Alison's hand. She wishes she could do the same with Caleb, instead making do with standing half a step closer to him. She knows, whatever is the other side of the door, she doesn't want to go through it.

But her friends walk through with far less reservations and so she follows. It's dark. Dark like a cellar. Dark like an underground bunker. She shivers. She hopes no-one else can hear how heavily her heart is hammering.

Then the door slams shut behind them. Hanna jumps violently. Someone, Emily she thinks, fails to stifle a scream. The room is dark and the only way she can be sure they're all there with her, is the sound of everyone's heavy breathing. She takes a couple of tentative steps in the direction of where she remembers Caleb being.

Then suddenly, there's a click and the room is floodlit in bright white. She snaps to attention. Each of the four walls they're trapped within has light projected onto it, like a cinema without the film. But then the movie begins.

She recognises herself first of all, on the floor of the barn, sopping wet, screaming as the cattle prod is thrust against her bare skin. Then Caleb, strapped to a chair, kicking and shouting, trying and failing to get free. As it returns to her screaming, this time as hidden daggers pierce her fingers, Hanna's breath hitches and she feels the familiar tightening in her throat.

She turns but every screen is the same. There's no escape. She's stuck, reliving her worst memories. Her nightmares are turning real. "No, no, no," she murmurs.

"Hanna!" Caleb's in front of her, his face mostly silhouetted by the bright light, but as the screen changes, she gets a fleeting glance of his expression. He's hurting too.

She sees herself scuttling backwards away from a hissing snake, Caleb underneath the masked man, yelling as he pulls and twists his already broken leg, the pair of them, slumped in the cupboard, half naked, gassed, and she watches as she vomits down Caleb's chest.

She feels sick at the sight of it but it's not the biggest issue. She hooks two fingers beneath the collar of her t-shirt and pulls it away from her neck. It makes little difference. She lets out an involuntary whimper. She's going to have a panic attack here in front of all her friends.

But Caleb takes her hand and places it flat against her chest just like he always does and starts to count her through. It's hard to tell whether it's the panic attack or the volume of the video, but she can't hear him, can only hear the screaming echoing out of the sound system.

Caleb's on the barn floor this time, unconscious, then again, at the mercy of the cattle prod. Then she's in a glass coffin, rats crawling all over her back. She's thrown through a door, crashing to the floor.

"Hanna, Hanna, don't look at it." He gently turns her head so she's facing him. "Just look at me. It's okay, baby, I promise. Just breathe."

A ripple of water on the screen diverts her attention and as she gasps for breath, it feels like she's drowning herself. She knows what's coming next. Caleb's leg is grabbed by the snare, pulling him down, deeper underwater as he thrashes about.

"Breathe, Han, please. It's okay. Feel my breaths, like normal, yeah? Please. It's just a video. We're safe."

She tries to focus on his words, on the rise and fall of his chest, but it doesn't help that his heart is hammering too.

On the screen, she's dragging him out of the pool, crying, screaming, giving him mouth to mouth. He's coughing, spluttering, wheezing on the floor.

It feels like the walls are closing in on her. It feels like she's trapped in there yet again.

So then, when the door opens, without even taking in the identity of who opened it, she runs towards the daylight. The person blocks her and shoves her back in the room.

"Leave her alone," she hears Spencer say. Her friend comes to stand by her side. "You don't get to mess with any of us again, Charlotte."

Hannah looks up, directly into the cold eyes of the girl from her nightmares.

Charlotte laughs. "Charlotte? I answer to Annabel now."

A voice comes from behind. "You answer to a lot of different names, huh, Cece?"

"Hey, Ali."

Alison pushes between Aria and Emily to stand beside them and look Charlotte in the face. "What did you do to Annabel?"

"You've still not figured it out? Come on Ali, you used to be smarter than this! Or did the asylum fuck you up? They do that to you, you know."

"You pushed Annabel off the bell tower," Spencer says.

Charlotte laughs again. "It was a great plan, wasn't it? I had the inklings of the idea back when the police happily accepted Bethany's dead body as Ali's. If I ever needed a way to disappear, you know? And then who comes to visit me, a secret twin nobody knew about, desperate to build a connection."

Hanna feels like her legs are about to give way from beneath her. "You- you killed your own sister?"

"It's not all I did, is it Hanna?"

The realisation starts in her chest and then spreads to her limbs and her head. This is the person who put her through hell years ago, who left her with nightmare and panic attacks, who tortured her all over again just when she finally started to believe she was free. This is the person who nearly killed Caleb.

She throws herself at Charlotte, ready to slap and scratch and kick. She hears Caleb shout her name but it's Spencer who grabs her by the shoulders and pulls her into a half-embrace, half-chokehold. She tries to pull away but her friend hisses a don't you dare in her ear and holds her tighter than ever.

Once Hanna has stopped struggling and choked out a sob on her shoulder, Spencer passes her backwards, to Caleb's waiting arms. He rubs soothingly at her back, his crutch hanging loosely off his elbow.

"What about Ell- Archer Dunhill?" Alison asks. "Did you set that whole thing up too?"

"Archer loved me. He'd do whatever I wanted. And after I faked my own death, I knew I needed a way to keep tracks on you. He did a good job. Really… committed. Until he got caught showing up here, the idiot."

"And did he know what you were doing to those two?"

"He knew I liked playing with dolls." She shrugs. "Turns out he did too. And he's a lot stronger than he looks, isn't he Caleb?"

Hanna feels him shudder and tightens her grip on him.

"I was almost sad to kill him. Almost. But he'd served his purpose. And it's going to be so much fun getting to pin it on you lot."

Hanna lifts her head off Caleb's shoulder in horror. Around her, her friends all have similar expressions of shock.

"No, hang on, you said-"

"I said what, Ali? That I wouldn't frame you if you came to our little rendezvous today?" She smirks. "Think again!"

With a loud crash, several police officers burst through the door.

"No, you think again," Toby says, his arms steady as he points a gun at Charlotte. "We bugged the place after Dunhill turned up here. We've heard everything."

As his colleagues take hold of Charlotte, she lets out a primal sounding yell. She fights against them as they force her arms behind her back to handcuff her and, for a moment, Hanna thinks Charlotte's going to succeed. It's not much of a relief even when the handcuffs are on as she continues trying to break free, lunging towards each of the girls in turn, as the cops march her towards the door.

As they drag her past Hanna, their eyes meet. A shiver runs down her spine. The cruel, cold exterior has finally broken and Charlotte seems to have lost it, kicking and spitting and screaming. Hanna holds the gaze, unblinking, needing to see every moment of her tormentor getting what she deserves.

It's only when Charlotte's finally in the back of a police car, doors locked, that she lets her composure falter. She crumbles into Caleb and buries her head into his chest.

He plants a kiss on the top of her head. "It's over," he says. "It's over."