30. Crew
Chapter 30
Crew
W e spot her the second the truck pulls into the parking lot. Lottie… or Scarlett, as I still think of her, even if she doesn’t go by that anymore.
She’s in the passenger seat of that guy’s truck. Oscar, I think his name is. He’s always following her, assessing everything like it’s a threat to her.
Oscar jumps out of the truck, circles around, and opens the passenger door with a kind of soft enthusiasm that makes my stomach twist.
Not in jealousy… something worse.
The bitter realization that I don’t know who she is anymore. That she’s lived her life for the last two years and has probably never thought of us once while we destroyed ourselves with our grief.
He helps her down, his hand wrapped around hers like it’s as natural as breathing, and my stomach churns. Then he turns her to face him, signing something to her—fingers moving fast but with a purpose—and she laughs. It lights up her whole face. Her shoulders are relaxed, her body leaning towards him like she’s blooming under the attention. And then she rises onto her tiptoes and kisses him.
My heart stutters.
Roman curses low under his breath. Elijah growls beside me, jaw tight, fists already clenched. His whole body is a live wire of rage.
“What the actual fuck,” Elijah mutters, eyes locked on them like he’s ready to storm across the lot and rip Oscar’s head off.
I step back, dragging in a breath that feels like it scrapes against my lungs, and I think I might throw up.
“Elijah,” Roman snaps. “You need to cool it.”
He doesn’t look at us. Doesn’t even blink. His eyes are locked on Scarlett and Oscar like he’s memorizing the way their bodies lean together, like if he stares long enough, he’ll make them come apart, and he’ll be the one there instead.
“She’s kissing him,” he bites out, his voice jagged. “Right in front of everyone… us. Like we don’t exist. Like we never…”
“Like you don’t have a goddamn wife?” I cut in, my hands shaking.
Roman turns toward me, frowning, searching for signs that I’m high, but I ignore him.
“You shouldn’t care, Elijah. You have a whole life now. Remember that? You have a wife. Or is this about the fact she moved on and we didn’t?”
His jaw twitches, his fists curling tighter. “Don’t.”
“No,” I snap, stepping in front of him, not caring that we’re making a scene right now. “Don’t what? Don’t say what we’re all thinking? That she looks happy, breathing easy for the first time in forever. Maybe just maybe she deserves it all after the shit we dragged her through.”
Something in my chest is unraveling—too fast and messy. My skin’s crawling, nerves frayed and sparking like live wires in water.
Roman moves to step between us, playing the peace keeper as always, but I’m not done.
“You… we don’t get to be mad that she’s with him,” I say, my voice trembling. “She’s found something good, and we’re still drowning in her loss.”
Roman scoffs beside me, sharp and bitter. “She’s a fucking liar. That’s all she is. She let us think she was dead for two years.”
“Maybe she had no other choice.”
He shrugs, his eyes dead. “Either did we. Doesn’t mean we ran off and became someone else just because things got hard. She couldn’t handle a little pressure.”
“A little pressure?” My voice rises. “You mean the way we treated her like a punching bag? Or when we took pleasure in the tears that ran down her face because your dad hit you, or made us do a run.”
“We did what we were told,” Elijah mutters, his voice hollow. “Your dad said to make her life hell because her parents couldn’t pay up. So we did.”
Obey or die. That’s what we were told, and when it came down to it, we decided her pain was easier to stomach than our own.
So we laughed when she flinched. Looked away when she broke.
And when she finally tried to tell us why she shut us out, we were way past caring. We silenced her again, locking her in the janitor’s closet, dripping in chili, her thin frame shaking, her mouth parted, and tears in her eyes.
“I haven’t slept in three days,” I say. “And my skin feels like it’s peeling off from the inside. I’m done talking about this.”
Scarlett says something else to Oscar—more signing—and then she squeezes his hand before walking towards the doors.
* * *
I follow her for most of the day, keeping my distance as she goes to her classes.
She’s studying Marine Biology, and a smile spreads over my face as I watch her watching the professor with a smile as he talks about coral reef ecology.
When the class is dismissed, she heads toward the cafeteria… I follow.
She walks different now, laughing with her friends… Zara? I think her name is. They laugh about something I can’t hear, but it doesn’t matter. It’s the way she laughs that gets me. Light. Unburdened.
She doesn’t see me when she stops at the dessert counter, scanning the selection. Her hand hovers over a brownie.
The same kind she used to get when the days were too heavy.
I frown.
What’s wrong today?
She glances away for a second, just long enough.
I reach past her, smooth and practiced, and swap the one on her tray for the one from my bag.
The brownie’s soft and sweet… and laced with enough weed to take the edge off the thoughts that gnaw at your bones. Perfect for getting answers without the other two butting in.
She doesn’t notice the switch, picking up her tray and walking away to sit with her friend, who saved them a table.
I step back into the crowd, another shadow blending into the edges of her world, and try to tell myself I’m only doing this to get her to talk. To let me in, even if it’s only to know why she cut us out.
She drifts toward the library after lunch like she’s on autopilot. Her head swivels from side to side as she walks, and when she reaches the doors to the library, she disappears inside one of the quiet study rooms.
I give her a few minutes to settle, then step in, closing the door behind me. She’s seated at the table by the window, her laptop open in front of her, headphones on.
Her mouth moves, and her eyes flick between the screen and her hands. She pulls the headphones off, turning them off and then on again.
I watch her panic.
“I can’t hear anything,” she whispers, voice rising with dread. She throws the headphones on the desk, ignoring the thunk they make, and clamps her hands over her ears, breathing fast. “Oh my god… I’m deaf.”
Her voice breaks on the last word, and there are tears in her eyes.
I step closer. “You didn’t.”
She jerks, startled. I walk up beside her and press the keyboard gently.
Unmute .
Sound pours out of the laptop, and she stares at the screen like she’s seeing a ghost. Then turns to me, flushed and furious. “You think that’s funny?”
“No. I think you’re high.”
Her face twists, staring at me with disappointment and hurt. “What did you do?”
“You looked away. I swapped it for one of mine. It’s not going to hurt you, just make you feel a bit funny.”
“You drugged me.” Her voice breaks.
“I need answers.”
Scarlett stands, wrapping her arms around herself. “I… I never wanted to get high. Never wanted to feel what they felt. You… you violated me.” I flinch. “What the hell is wrong with you?”
“I want to talk,” I say. “Really talk. Without the defenses.”
She blinks at me like I’m insane. “You don’t get to demand that, Crew. You don’t get to waltz back into my life and ask these things from me. I owe none of you anything.”
“Scarlett—”
“Don’t.” She backs up a step, her voice wavering, lips trembling. “That’s not who I am anymore.”
“You’re still you,” I say, stepping closer.
Scarlett laughs. “You don’t know who I am now. It’s been two years.”
“I do. I always have. I’ve always loved you.”
I swear she stops breathing. “Stop.”
“I mean it, Piglet. I’ve always loved you, and when I thought you had died…”
“That wasn’t love, Crew,” she snaps, and suddenly her voice is sharp and clear. “What you did before? Hurting me. Calling me names. Making sure I knew I was nothing but the shit on the bottom of your shoe. Ignoring me when I was finally asking for help…” Her breath shudders. “That wasn’t love. That was cruelty. Ownership. A power dynamic I have no interest in playing anymore.”
I stand there frozen as she rips out the last piece of my heart because she’s not wrong. We ruined her. Played with her because it made us feel whole again, and lost her in the process.
“I could never love an addict.” Her voice is low… final, shredding the final part of me. “My dad became an addict because of my mom. She dragged him back in every time he decided to try to get sober, convincing him it was better to hide behind the haze of drugs than face reality, as painful as it was. Drugs robbed me of my life. I refuse to fall in love with someone, then not be enough when you realize the drugs are more important than I am.”
Then she walks past me, her breath stuttering as she practically runs out the door. The door slams shut behind her, her bag still on the table, laptop still open, headphones discarded.
She didn’t even look back, too desperate to get away from me.
I don’t blame her, not after everything.
I sink into the chair. My hands shake from withdrawal and everything else because she was right. That wasn’t love. It was control. Obsession. A desperate attempt to destroy something to make ourselves feel better.
I feel sick. Physically, emotionally, in every way that counts.
I press my palms into my eyes, trying to force the image of her trembling voice out of my head.
“That wasn’t love. That was cruelty.”
I can’t live like this anymore. I push out of the chair, away from the table, heart pounding. The walls close in for a second, the hunger already gnawing at me for more.
But I can’t keep doing this, and I know what I need to do.
No more. Cold turkey.
I’m going to tear it out of my system. Lock myself in a room and claw it out if I have to.
For her… for me, because I deserve to feel the pain. Maybe then I can understand how she felt.
We destroyed her, and maybe this is how I can start to put things back together—brick by brick, through the kind of agony she suffered. Agony, I spent years trying to escape until there was nothing left.
The door slams open, and the Marine is standing there, fury like fire in his eyes. His jaw is clenched so tight I’m sure it’s going to snap, his fists already balled at his sides. He doesn’t even take a second to breathe, just walks in like he owns the place. “I warned you what would happen if you came near her again. What the fuck did you do?”
I don’t move. Everything in me is numb, different from the kind I’m used to. This is a bone-deep ache that’s not going away, no matter how much I try to escape it.
My stomach turns, and for a second, I wonder if I’m going to puke.
I’m trying to say something—anything to make this right—but the words don’t come. How do I explain everything I’ve done to her? The poison I’ve fed into everything we did.
But instead, I crack.
I’m not sure if it’s withdrawals gnawing at my insides or the weight of the fact I fucked up again with her, but I break like glass. The pieces fall away before I can stop them, and I cry in front of a man who currently looks like he wants to break me in two.
“I drugged her,” I confess, the words coming out like gravel. “I swapped the brownie. It had weed in it.”
The silence that follows is suffocating, and I swear he’s going to kill me. He takes a step forward, eyes narrowing. “You… I’m going to kill you.”
“I thought if I could get her to talk to me, so I could figure out why she shut us out. Get answers so we can get closure…” My voice trails off, and I feel every single ounce of my guilt crash down on me at once when I realize how selfish I sound. “I thought I could fix it. I fucked up. I fucked up so bad, man. I don’t know what I was thinking.”
“You especially don’t get to ask those things from her,” he finally says, his voice low, lethal. “You don’t get to manipulate her so that you can feel better.”
I want to defend myself, but I know it’s pointless.
He takes another step toward me, his fists clenched, body rigid with restrained anger. “You’re pathetic, Crew. You need to get a grip of your life and leave Lottie alone. She’s doing better. She’s finally happy. Stop trying to destroy that just because you’re miserable.”
I open my mouth to apologize, but it’s too late. His fist connects with my jaw with a sickening thud. My head spins as I crash into the edge of the table. My vision blurs, and for a second, I’m disoriented, tasting the bitter metallic tang of blood in my mouth.
Before I can register what’s happened, he stands over me, his chest heaving. His eyes are cold and lifeless. “You don’t deserve her. Hell, even I don’t, but I swore I’d always protect her, and I mean it. Upset her again, and it’ll be more than a fist to your jaw.”
Then, without another word, he turns and walks out, slamming the door behind him.
I sit here, my body trembling. The pain in my jaw is nothing compared to the ache in my gut because everything he said… It’s all true.