At sunrise, Katarina sneaks out of the Shaw house after the violent night with Lee. She passes Lee asleep in the parlor amid cigarette butts and liquor bottles, then hurries across the family’s lakefront property to the old stable where she knows Heath has gone to hide.

As Katarina walks, she reflects on the Shaw home and what it has meant to her. She describes the family’s long hold on the land, her childhood dislike of the decaying house, and the freedom she found outdoors with Heath by the lake and in the abandoned stable. After Lee banned Heath from the house soon after their father’s funeral, Katarina began secretly bringing Heath supplies and turning the stable into a refuge for him.

Inside the stable, Katarina finds Heath awake, cold, and bruised from Lee’s attack. She gives Heath his warmest coat, lies beside him, and touches the swelling around his eye. Katarina says she wants to kill Lee, but Heath minimizes his injuries and focuses instead on whether Katarina can cover the bruise for Nationals and on his relief that Lee did not hurt her.

Katarina then reflects on Lee’s pattern of hurting Heath in order to hurt her, and on Heath’s habit of enduring abuse without complaint. She also recalls how little she knows about Heath’s past: his uncertain parentage, his time in foster care, and how stunned he was to have even a small room of his own when he first came to live with the Shaws. Those memories make clear why Heath rarely speaks about his earlier life and why Katarina believes it must have been even worse than living under Lee’s control.

Wanting revenge and escape rather than helplessness, Katarina tells Heath to check the coat pockets. He finds the keys to Lee’s truck, realizes Katarina stole them, and understands her plan. After joking that Lee will kill them if they are caught, Heath accepts Katarina’s confidence that they can get away before Lee wakes, and the chapter ends with a kiss that turns their fear into a shared, defiant decision to leave.