Beverly

Chapter 10

10

BLAKE, 1997

16 years old

I tried to read. Really, I did.

But the words blurred together, swirling in a mess of letters and sentences that my eyes skimmed over without any real understanding. I’d glance at a line, and by the time my gaze moved to the next, I couldn’t even recall what I’d just read.

I tried again. Flipped back a page, then another, hoping that something would finally stick, but the words remained elusive, as if they were just out of my reach, mocking me with their refusal to settle in my mind.

It wasn’t the book’s fault.

Normally, I would have been lost in it by now, but tonight, my mind wouldn’t let me sink into the story. It wouldn’t let me slip into that peaceful oblivion that a good story always brought.

Instead, it kept drifting—back to Beverly, to the way she stared at those underlined words like they held the meaning of the universe, to the way she bit her lip when she was thinking too hard, to the way she looked at me over the past few weeks.

My mind replayed the message I had left her.

I wish I was braver.

I knew I shouldn’t have left it at that. I should’ve added a joke, softened the weight of it. But I didn’t. Because it wasn’t a joke.

With a sigh, I shut the book, rubbing a hand down my face.

The red numbers on my nightstand clock blinked back at me in the dim light.

2:07 AM.

Sleep wasn’t coming anytime soon. There was something in the air tonight, a shift I couldn’t quite put my finger on but could feel pressing down on me, gnawing at the edges of my thoughts.

Beverly was supposed to be at Tiffany’s.

A “sleepover”—that’s what she’d told Mom.

I knew that was a lie the second it left her lips. The sleepover was an excuse; a convenient answer to avoid questions she didn’t want to deal with. Beverly had always been a good liar. Not in a manipulative way—she just knew how to make things sound believable. But tonight? She hadn’t even tried to sell it, hadn’t rambled about what movies they’d watch, which snacks Tiffany’s mom bought, or which nail polish color she was planning to steal from Tiffany’s collection this time.

She just said she was going. And that was it.

That alone told me something was wrong.

Beverly was innocent, but she wasn’t the type of girl to pass up fun. She loved to dance, to socialize, to laugh. Lately, she’d tried to drag me to countless parties. Maybe if she didn’t think I was so miserable, she would have invited me to the one she’d been at tonight.

Or maybe she hadn’t wanted me there.

Or maybe she had.

Maybe that was the problem.

I stared up at the ceiling, jaw tight.

Maybe I was overthinking it.

Maybe she really was at Tiffany’s, eating junk food and talking about boy bands or whatever girls talked about at sleepovers.

Then I heard it.

A sound too soft for anyone else to notice. But I noticed.

A muffled sob, barely there, seeping through the quiet of the house like a crack in the walls.

A sound so soft I thought I imagined it.

I sat up instantly, my body tensing. For a moment, I wasn’t sure if I’d really heard it or if my mind was playing tricks on me. But then it came again. A quiet, hitched breath, the kind that comes from someone trying to hold it in but failing.

Beverly.

She was here. Crying ?

The realization sent a ripple of unease through me; a slow, creeping tension that curled around my ribs and squeezed.

Beverly wasn’t the type to cry.

Not like this. Not in the middle of the night, not alone, and certainly not in the way that she didn’t want anyone to hear. Something was wrong.

My body reacted before my mind could catch up. I was already out of bed, moving quickly, tension in every step. When I reached her door, I hesitated for only a second before pushing it open.

The lamp on her nightstand was on, casting a warm glow over the room. Her bed was untouched—neatly made, not even a wrinkle in the sheets. There was no sign that she’d even tried to sleep. I scanned the room, my pulse rising with each second I didn’t find her. The sobs were still there, but she wasn’t.

Then I heard the low rush of water. The bathroom.

My stomach churned with a cold, creeping feeling.

I stepped closer, my pulse quickening. The door was closed, but now that I was near, I could hear it more clearly—the soft, uneven breaths, like she was swallowing her sobs, forcing them down so no one would hear.

A part of me wanted to knock. Call her name. Give her the space to say she was okay, even if we both knew she wasn’t. But another part of me—the part tangled up in worry, in dread—knew I couldn’t wait.

I didn’t knock, didn’t hesitate. I turned the doorknob, and there she was. Sitting on the tile floor of the shower, her body curled in on itself, arms wrapped around her legs, water pouring over her.

I didn’t need to touch it to know it was ice cold.

She didn’t even hear me come in.

“Beverly.” My voice was barely above a whisper, but it made her jump, her head snapping up. Her eyes were red, swollen from crying, and her hair plastered to her face in wet strands.

“Blake?” Her voice cracked as she tried to hide her pain.

I stepped forward, reaching past her to turn the water off.

She shivered, arms still locked around herself, staring at the floor like it held all the answers she didn’t have.

“Hey. Hey, B.” My voice came out sharper than I intended, but my chest was tight, my pulse too fast. “Who made you cry?”

She didn’t answer right away. Her hands trembled as she wiped her face, trying to make the tears stop, but they kept coming. “I just—” She choked on a sob. “I don’t know how to make it stop.”

A sharp ache spread from my chest to my throat. I’d never heard her sound so fragile before. This wasn’t Beverly—the girl who always kept it together, who smiled even when things were hard, who threw herself into fun and chaos and noise because she hated silence. Beverly was fire and motion and sharp wit.

This…this was someone lost. Someone drowning.

I crouched down, my hands hovering uncertainly at my sides.

I wanted to reach out, to hold her, but I wasn’t sure if she would let me. She seemed so breakable, like a delicate thing on the verge of shattering.

She shook her head, pressing the heels of her hands into her eyes like she could make herself disappear.

No. Not happening.

“B,” I said softly, trying to make her hear me. “Talk to me.”

She let out a shaky breath, but she wouldn’t meet my eyes.

I hesitated, then reached out, brushing wet hair away from her face. She didn’t move. Didn’t flinch.

Her skin was freezing under my touch, sending a fresh, painful twist through my chest. “You can’t sit in here like this,” I said, softer this time. “Come on, let’s get you out of here.”

I didn’t even realize I was shaking until I reached for a towel from the rack, wrapping it around her shoulders before pulling her up carefully. She swayed a little, but I steadied her, keeping a hand on her arm as she stepped out onto the mat. She wasn’t startled by my touch. Instead, she sank into it, her body leaning toward me as though I were the only thing holding her upright.

When her red, swollen eyes caught mine, a slow, terrible chill spread through my body.

“What happened?” I asked, my voice tight, my throat burning with a rage so raw it felt like I’d swallowed glass.

Beverly’s lips trembled, and her fingers curled around the edges of the towel like she could disappear into it. “He—he touched me, Blake.”

There are words a person hears in their life that never truly fade. They become ingrained in their very being, transforming them into something else entirely.

That was one of those words.

I knew damn well what anger was. I knew it like I knew the back of my own hand, like I knew the feeling of my pulse slamming against my skin, reminding me I was alive even when I wished I wasn’t. Anger had lived in me for years, simmering beneath the surface, coiled like a venomous snake, waiting for a reason to strike. I’d felt it locked away in rooms, in every bruise left on my body by hands that were supposed to care for me. I’d felt it since the first time someone hit me and called it love.

I’d clawed at my own skin in moments of solitude, trying to replace anger with pain, because pain was something I could understand. Something I could control.

But this? This wasn’t anger.

This was something else. Something I didn’t know how to control. Something black and consuming and limitless. It was an entity in itself, a beast roaring to be let out. It dug its claws into my ribs, tearing through my composure, whispering in my ear that violence was the only answer. I wanted to punch the wall with my fist just to feel my knuckles break. I felt as violent as every monster in my past. Maybe I had always been one, waiting for the right moment to show my teeth.

I swallowed it all down and kept my face passive, locked it all away behind a blank mask. I knew that if she saw what was rising inside me, she’d be terrified. Hell, I was terrifying myself.

My jaw was so tight I thought my teeth might shatter. My fists clenched, my fingers digging into my palms deep enough to leave half-moon cuts. I could feel my heartbeat everywhere—my head, my throat, my fingertips. It was erratic, violent, trying to break out of me.

“Who touched you, B?”

She turned her gaze to the side, her eyes momentarily clouded with something I couldn’t quite place. “Mason.”

The name barely registered before the calculations began, my brain working at an inhuman speed. Mason. Her classmate. The one who played on the soccer team. The one whose father was a lawyer. The one who always looked too long at girls who weren’t looking back.

I couldn’t stand entitled brats like him, who took whatever they wanted with this twisted sense of deserving. I’m a king in my daddy’s mansion, and I deserve this car I didn’t lift a finger for. I deserve that woman doing whatever I want.

“What did he do, Beverly? Please, I need you to talk to?—”

More tears. More shaking.

She looked so small that I ached to wrap her in my arms and shield her from the world, keeping her all to myself, away from anyone who might hurt her.

“I don’t know if I deserved it,” she choked out. “Maybe…maybe I sent him the wrong signals…”

My entire body locked up. She did not just say that.

I forced myself to breathe. Forced myself to stay still. Forced myself not to go ballistic because now, now I knew the worst thing of all—she blamed herself.

“What did he do?” I asked again, softer now.

She swallowed hard. “We were dancing,” she started, her voice barely audible. “Not in any way that would make him think I wanted something more. Just…having fun, you know?”

I nodded, but the word fun was already a memory she would never get back.

“He said he wanted to grab another CD from his room because I’d complained about the songs replaying,” she went on, her voice cracking. “I followed him. I felt responsible for making him change the music.”

“You were at his house?”

She nodded. “He was throwing a party.”

“What happened next?”

She tightened the towel around her body like armor. “He told me he’d show me a few CDs and I’d get to choose. He took me there and… I feel so stupid, Blake. I’m so stupid.”

“Tell me, Beverly,” I gritted out.

“He handed me a whole bunch of CDs, and as I was looking through them, he started rubbing my back. I moved away from him, but he kept coming closer. I could smell the alcohol on his breath, he was that close?—”

A thousand equations ran through my head.

The distance between the door and the bed.

The average strength of a teenage girl versus a boy fueled by testosterone and entitlement.

The likelihood of someone hearing her scream over the music.

“Just to get rid of him, I picked a random CD and gave it to him,” she said, her breath hitching. “He took it, threw it on the dresser, and then he—” Her voice broke. “He tried to kiss me. I didn’t want it. I told him I didn’t want it. He got angry and pushy. Shoved me on the bed and climbed over me, and then he pinned me under him and tried to kiss me again, promising I’d enjoy it.”

The rage inside me pulsed, hot and overwhelming.

Beverly’s breath was coming out in sharp, panicked gasps. “His hands went everywhere, Blake. I wanted to throw up. When he started kissing my neck, I reached for his face and clawed at him. Kicked him in the balls. He got off me, screaming about what a tease I was. Everyone heard him. The guys laughed. The girls pointed and whispered.”

I didn’t speak. Couldn’t speak. My entire body trembled with barely contained violence. My chest burned with the kind of rage that made men do terrible things without regret.

“It’s my fault, isn’t it?” she whispered. “You’re not saying anything because it’s my fault.”

And that was when I lost the last shred of control.

My hands shot to her face, cupping it, forcing her to look at me. “Don’t,” I bit out. “Don’t you dare blame yourself.”

“But I followed him to his room?—”

“That doesn’t mean shit, B. You didn’t want it. The second you pushed him away, he should have stopped. The second you said no, it should have been over.”

She watched me with wide eyes. “Do you hate me?”

“Hate you?” My breath left me in a sharp exhale. “I hate myself for not being there.”

My rage was a living, breathing thing now.

I saw Mason’s face in my head, imagined my fist breaking it apart. Imagined his ribs caving under my weight. Imagined him screaming, begging?—

I swallowed it all down, but it wasn’t going anywhere.

He touched her.

He touched her and they laughed about it.

Mason didn’t know it yet, but he had just made the biggest mistake of his life.

“You take me to every party from now on,” I told her. “I want to be there. Do you hear me?” I saw the flicker of hesitation in her eyes before she nodded, but I wasn’t satisfied. I needed verbal confirmation. “Say it, B.”

“I hear you.”

I let out a breath, but it did nothing to put out the fire burning in my chest. “Did he hurt you?”

She hesitated again, and something in me twisted so hard, I thought I might collapse. “Beverly,” I pressed. “Did he hurt you?”

She opened the towel just enough to show me her left wrist.

Red, angry marks marred her skin. Finger-shaped bruises. Proof that he had dared to lay his hands on her.

I could barely think past the white-hot rage curling my gut.

I took her hands, turning them over gently.

The way my body vibrated with a need for destruction was almost unbearable. My thumb skimmed over the bruising, as if the touch alone could erase the damage.

Mason. That pathetic excuse for a human being.

Her body was something that should’ve been cherished, not manhandled by a degenerate.

I fought to keep my expression blank, but inside, my rage burned and burned and burned. I wanted to find him. I wanted to see the light drain from his eyes as he realized he had made the worst mistake of his miserable existence. I wanted to dismantle him, piece by piece, and leave him with nothing but regret. Hell, I wanted his head severed, rolling at my feet.

Instead, I swallowed all of it down, caging the beast inside.

I rubbed her wrists softly, careful, reverent even. “Come on,” I said, coaxing her, “let’s get you out of these wet clothes.”

My throat tightened as my eyes caught sight of her dress—clinging to her like a second skin, soaked, nearly see-through.

My jaw tensed at the realization of how exposed she was to those brain-dead animals at the party. Had I known, I would have been there in a second. Would have dragged her out before anyone had the chance to lay eyes on her. Not because she couldn’t wear it—she had every right to—but because someone should have been there to watch out for her.

My fingers shot to the collar of her dress, and her eyes widened as I ran them down the front, frowning. “It’s torn here.”

She looked down, touching the rip that traveled from the collar to her chest. Her pink bra peeked through, and she blushed, instinctively covering herself. “I didn’t know he did that too…” she replied, her voice small.

My vision blurred at the edges. I didn’t trust myself to speak. What could be said that wouldn’t be laced with venom?

I exhaled slowly, forcing my hands to unclench. Then I took her hand, her cold fingers entwining tightly with mine, and led her to her bed. I rummaged through her dresser drawers, pulling out one of my shirts. I wasn’t surprised that she had it; she was always stealing my clothes. This one was a black band tee, oversized, and I tossed it her way, knowing she’d want to be in something baggy. Then I grabbed some shorts and threw them on her bed too.

“Can you unzip me?” she asked, turning her back to me. “I-I can’t reach it.”

I swallowed and approached slowly, gathering her blonde hair in my hands and sweeping it over one shoulder. She grabbed it, her fingers brushing against mine. I lingered at the touch longer than I should have.

She shivered as my fingers grabbed the zipper and pulled it down. The wet dress peeled away. Water droplets streaked her skin, glistening against the soft glow of her bedside lamp.

I stepped back quickly, turning away as I heard the fabric pool at her feet. Closing my eyes, I forced my breath to slow, but my mind wouldn’t stop conjuring up images.

I felt like a monster—because right now, I was.

I needed to stop thinking about her skin.

And I needed to bury Mason six feet under.

“I’m done,” she whispered after a moment.

I turned, my jaw tight as I nodded. “Good. Get in bed.”

She hesitated, chewing her lip. “Can you stay for a little while? I don’t want to be alone right now.”

Every part of me screamed that this was a bad idea. I needed space. I needed to be anywhere else, where I couldn’t see the lingering fear in her eyes or the bruises on her wrists.

I nodded anyway. “Yeah. Sure.”

She slipped beneath the covers, her face turned toward me, and I sat at the edge of the bed, staring at the window. The images of her wrist wouldn’t leave me. My nails dug into my palms, the anger manifesting as an unbearable tension in my shoulders.

I needed to destroy something.

“Please don’t tell Dad,” she said sometime later. “Please, Blake. It’ll just make everything worse.”

“I wasn’t planning on it.”

“You’re not… You’re not going to do anything, are you?”

A thousand calculations ran through my mind—what she needed to hear, what I wanted to say, what would actually help. Then I pinched the bridge of my nose, forcing myself to think logically, rationally. I couldn’t let my anger dictate my actions.

I had to be smart.

If I went after Mason, I had to be careful. Precise.

“Get some sleep,” I told her, dodging her question entirely.

She closed her eyes, but I knew she wouldn’t sleep.

I sat there, listening to the uneven rhythm of her breathing and the way she still trembled beneath the covers.

“Thank you for being understanding,” she murmured, sniffling. Her voice was raw, stripped bare. “I was scared you’d be disappointed in me.”

Disappointed?

I turned my head, my eyes tracing the fresh tears slipping down her cheeks. It physically hurt to look at them. Without thinking, I reached out and swiped my thumb across her damp skin.

Her eyes fluttered open, cloudy and exhausted, but still hers. Still beautiful, still full of all the things I wanted and would never let myself have.

“You could never disappoint me. You know that,” I told her, my voice steady. “You’re the best person I know.”

“You’re the best person,” she corrected, a wobbly smile breaking through her tears. “You’re the best thing that ever happened to me.”

It took a long time for her breathing to slow and even out.

Sleep claimed her eventually.

I left her room quietly, shutting the door behind me before retreating into mine.My hands shook as I grabbed a textbook, flipping it open at random. I needed numbers. I needed order.

I needed a goddamn distraction.

“A transverse traveling wave moves along a string at a speed of v. If the tension is increased by a factor of four, what is the new wave speed?” My pencil scratched against the page as I worked through the equation. Wave speed is proportional to the square root of tension over mass per unit length. Increase tension by a factor of four, and the wave speed doubles. Simple.

I wrote the answer down.

Underlined it.

Stared at it.

Then I saw Beverly again—her red-rimmed eyes, the way her voice had cracked, the way her shoulders had curled inward like she was trying to disappear.

My pencil snapped in two.

I pressed my fingers into my temples, then dragged them down over my eyes, rubbing hard enough to see sparks.

My mind betrayed me. For the first time in years, it wandered beyond logic, beyond numbers, beyond equations.

I let myself feel the rage, let it fill every inch of me, until there was no room for anything else.

A human skull, on average, can withstand about 520 pounds of force before fracturing…

How much force could I generate with my fists? My legs?

If I drove my knuckles into Mason’s jaw at the right angle, could I break it?

If he thought he could walk away unscathed, then he had no understanding of physics, of consequence.

For every force exerted, there was an equal and opposite force.

Mason had no idea what he had done.

He had no idea what was coming for him.