Chapter 37
37
BLAKE, 1999
18 years old
The house smelled like whiskey and cigarettes.
I curled into myself, knees tucked to my chest, my ribs pressing against my skin. My fingers gripped the fabric of my torn shirt, as if I could make myself disappear inside it. The corner was dark, but not dark enough. Nothing was ever dark enough to hide from him. I shuddered violently.
I could still hear it. The slow, measured breathing of a man who had already decided what would happen next. The click of a belt buckle. The feeling of my own heartbeat, pounding against my skin like it was trying to escape before the pain could reach it.
“You think you’re smart? You think you can hide from me?”
His voice slurred, footsteps heavy as he staggered closer.
My breath came too fast, too loud, too obvious.
“Come here, boy.”
No.
No, no, no.
“Don’t make me ask again.”
No, no, no, no, no.
“You think you’re special? Think somebody’s gonna come save you? No one’s coming for you. No one cares.”
I clenched my teeth so hard my jaw ached, pressing my forehead against my knees. If I stayed small, if I stayed silent, maybe ? —
A fist closed around my wrist like a vice, yanking me up, my body colliding with something solid and reeking of liquor.
“Did I say you could sit there?”
Pain bloomed in my arm, sharp and immediate. My head snapped back against the wall, stars bursting behind my eyelids. The room spun. My lungs seized, panic clawing up my throat as the grip on my wrist tightened.
“You useless little shit. I’ll teach you how to run.”
The first hit wasn’t the worst. It never was.
The first was a warning. A promise.
The second? That was the one that made my ears ring. The one that made my head crack against the wall, my skull throbbing from the force of it. The one that sent me gasping, struggling, too dizzy to do anything but ? —
“Don’t cry.” The words echoed in my head, but they weren’t his.
They were mine. A rule I had taught myself.
Don’t cry.
Don’t make a sound.
Don’t give him the satisfaction.
But I was too weak. Too breakable.
“Pathetic,” he spat, voice thick with disgust. “You think I wanna hear you crying? No wonder she never fought for you.”
Something inside me shattered.
Mom. Mom, mom, mom.
“Please,” I whispered before I could stop myself. “Please ? —”
“Please what?”
The laugh that followed was ugly.
“You want your mommy?”
I squeezed my eyes shut. Shut out his voice, his grip, the pain radiating from my ribs. But I couldn’t shut out the words.
“She’s dead, boy.”
I woke up gasping, chest heaving, ribs aching like I’d just run for miles. My hands clawed at the sheets, gripping too tight, desperate for something solid. Every inch of me ached. My skin felt wrong. The sheets felt wrong. The walls were wrong. The air was too hot. The bed wasn’t mine. Panic crawled under my skin, screaming at me to move.
I curled forward, pressing my palms into my eyes, trying to stop the images, to claw my way out of this, but my chest was too tight. “Where am I?” My voice barely sounded like mine.
I twisted, looking for something—anything—that felt real.
And then there was a hand on my arm.
I flinched so violently I nearly knocked her over.
“Hey, hey, it’s okay. It was just a dream.” Sydney’s voice was soft. Her hands hovered near me, as if she wasn’t sure if she should touch me or not. “You’re okay, Blake. We’re at the hotel, remember? In Mexico. You’re okay.”
No, I wasn’t. I wasn’t okay.
My hands were shaking, and my breath came too fast. My ribs ached as if I had been hit, as though I were still curled in that dark corner with his fingers pressing bruises into my skin.
I swallowed hard, my throat burning.
“Blake,” she tried again, softer this time. “It was just a dream.”
I inhaled shakily, forcing air into my lungs, but it wasn’t working. My body wasn’t listening.
Sydney reached out slowly, her fingers brushing gently against my wrist as if afraid to startle me. “Do you need?—”
“Beverly.”
Beverly. Beverly. Beverly. Beverly. I choked on it.
I didn’t realize I had said it out loud until I felt Sydney stiffen beside me. The sound of it tore out of me, broken, desperate, like my body needed her, like I was clawing through the dark and reaching for something that wasn’t there.
And then Sydney was gone.
I was still trying to breathe, still trying to drag myself back into reality, but it wasn’t working.
I needed?—
I didn’t even know what I needed. I just knew it wasn’t this.
It wasn’t Sydney’s careful hands or her quiet sympathy. It wasn’t this unfamiliar bed, this unfamiliar room. It wasn’t this tightness in my chest, this goddamn ache in my ribs that wasn’t even physical.
It was Beverly.
It was the way she used to knock on my wall. The way she used to crawl into my bed without asking. The way she used to press her fingers against my wrist when I couldn’t breathe and whisper, “I’m here.”
I squeezed my eyes shut.
I didn’t really remember Sydney leaving.
I didn’t remember time passing at all.
I didn’t know if I had been alone for minutes or hours.
All I knew was the quiet.
The heavy, suffocating silence pressing against my skin.
The way my hands wouldn’t stop shaking.
I was still sitting on the edge of the bed, my head in my hands, still trying and failing to breathe like a normal person, still shaking as if my body didn’t know I wasn’t in that house anymore, when the mattress dipped beside me.
A familiar weight.
A scent I knew by heart.
“Blake?”
I flinched before I even processed it. I wasn’t sure if it was real. If my mind was just giving me what I wanted.
Warm fingers brushed against my wrist, hesitating for only a second before curling around mine. “Blake,” she whispered.
I lifted my head. Beverly’s blue eyes locked onto mine, sharp and wild and full of something I couldn’t name.
My throat closed.
Her hair was disheveled, her cheeks flushed, her breathing uneven—as if she had run to get here, as if she had sensed it before Sydney even said a word. She smelled like sunscreen and coconut, like every summer we ever had, like every memory I never let myself hold onto.
I let out a breath that wasn’t really a breath.
More like a shudder. A broken thing.
And suddenly I couldn’t do it anymore. I couldn’t stop it.
The sob broke loose before I could even think to hold it back. My chest caved in on itself, and I was crying too hard to speak, my breath coming in sharp, broken gasps. “B,” I choked out.
Her arms slid around me, pulling me into her. My forehead rested against her shoulder as I sucked in a desperate breath. My fingers curled into the fabric of her shirt, gripping hard, too hard, but she didn’t pull away.
“Hey,” she murmured, her voice soft. “I’m here.”
A sharp, ragged sound tore out of my throat.
I squeezed my eyes shut, my chest heaving, my entire body shaking from the weight of it.
Her hand found my hair, her fingers sliding through it like she had done a thousand times before. She rocked us slightly, whispering something low and soothing into my ear, but I couldn’t make out the words.
I didn’t deserve this.
I didn’t deserve her.
But I needed her anyway. So I let myself be there, with the only person who had ever made the dark feel a little less terrifying.
She let out a slow, shaky breath. “You’re safe,” she whispered. “I promise. I won’t let anything happen to you. I’ve got you.”
She squeezed my hand. I squeezed back.
It wasn’t enough.
I pressed my forehead against her neck, too tired to care about how pathetic I must have looked.
Beverly shifted, leaning back just enough to look at me, but not enough to let go. Her hands came up to cradle my face. “Blake,” she said, voice shaking. “What happened?”
I swallowed hard, my arms tightening around her waist.
I made a sound that wasn’t a word.
I couldn’t speak.
She stroked my cheek, her thumb brushing against my temple. “It’s the room, isn’t it?” she said carefully. “A different place, different bed... Your brain didn’t know where it was,” she added, as if she was piecing things together in her head. “I remember that one time you stayed over at Jamal’s and didn’t sleep at all. You just stayed up reading his dumb wrestling magazines all night?—”
“I’m sorry,” I said, my voice hoarse. “I didn’t mean to?—”
“Don’t,” she said softly. “Don’t say sorry. Not to me.”
I squeezed my eyes shut.
“What do you need?” she asked, her fingers brushing over my knuckles. “Do you want water? Do you wanna… I don’t know…talk? Tell me what you need, Blake.”
The answer was easy. “I want to go home.”
The words barely made it out. They cracked open something inside me, something I had been forcing down for months.
For a second, I wasn’t in this hotel room.
I was in my bed, with the sound of Beverly’s VHS tapes playing in the other room. I was in my own space, in the only place that had ever felt safe. I was back home, where I could count the cracks in my ceiling, where I knew the way the air smelled, where I could press my hand against the wall and know that Beverly was right there, just on the other side.
I just wanted to go home .
Beverly sighed softly. I already knew the answer.
Blake, we’re in another country…
It’s the middle of the night…
We’re supposed to be here for a week…
But she didn’t say any of that.
She squeezed my hand, her fingers threading through mine like a promise. “Okay,” she whispered. Her arm curled around me, stronger this time. “Okay,” she whispered again. “I’ll get Jamal. We’ll go home.”