38. Lottie
Chapter 38
Lottie
M y heart shatters.
The water on my jeans is cold now, clinging like a second skin. The book lies limp and ruined on the table, pages curling, but that doesn’t matter.
He’s gone. And it’s all my fault.
I sit still, hands in my lap, fingers clenched so tightly my knuckles ache. My heart isn’t beating… It’s hammering, a dull, desperate thud inside my chest that keeps asking the same question.
What if it’s true?
What if the only person who ever gave half a damn about me in my old life is gone?
I haven’t reached out to him, never tried, because he told me to run and never look back.
Grief claws up from the dark and wraps around my throat.
Will’s voice is calm and distant, saying something about calls, checking, and confirming.
I nod. Or maybe I don’t. I can’t tell.
The pressure in my head is rising, crowding everything else out. It’s like my body can’t decide whether to shatter or scream.
I wrap my arms around myself and close my eyes.
If he’s gone…
If I let him die thinking I was dead, then Roman’s right in ways he’ll never even understand.
Because I can’t take it back… I can’t rewrite the silence.
I thought I could rebuild myself from the wreckage. But now, sitting here, soaked, cut to the bone by Roman’s words. I feel hollow.
Not strong.
Not angry.
Empty.
“Lottie,” Will says gently, crouching in front of me. His voice is steady, but I can hear the thread of worry underneath it. “We’ll find out the truth. Okay?”
I nod, but I don’t trust myself to speak. If I do, I know I’ll break and I won’t be able to stop.
So I retreat into the silence, pressing my fingers to my lips like I can hold the grief in, and let Will lead me to his car. He directs me to the passenger seat and drives me home.
The silence follows me like a shadow, thick and clinging. I don’t speak, and Will doesn’t push. When we pull up to the house, I expect the stillness to keep swallowing me whole, but Archer’s already on the porch.
“You okay?” his voice filled with concern.
“I need to dance,” I say, barely recognizing my own voice.
His expression shifts. Concern turns into understanding, and he doesn’t ask anything else. He nods once and grabs his keys from his pocket.
Fifteen minutes later, we pull into the back lot of The Velvet Room. The neon sign buzzes above us, glowing dull red. It’s not even late yet, but the place hums like it’s always alive.
Oscar’s already inside, posted at the entrance like a sentry. He lifts a hand when he sees me, eyes flicking from my face to Archer’s, then back to me.
“What’s wrong?” he signs worriedly as he approaches.
I shake my head and keep walking.
I don’t need to talk.
I need to move.
Because if I say the words. It means it’s true and I… I can’t.
The dressing room is quiet, and I change quickly—black lace, stockings, boots that hit hard against the stage. I paint on eyeliner like armor, and pull my hair up with shaking fingers.
When I step out onto the floor, the DJ is waiting for my cue.
I nod once.
The lights drop. The music starts.
And I start to dance.
At first, it’s routine—muscle memory—the sway of hips, the slow bend, the drag of fingers down skin. But then it starts to build—this pressure in my chest, this burn that I’ve been forcing down, and I stop pretending.
I stop performing. I let it out.
I ignore the whistles and shouts.
The anger and grief bubble to the surface. The bitterness that’s been living under my skin since I was a child.
Roman, sneering at me like I was something less than human.
Crew, laughing while I broke in silence.
Elijah, whispering pretty lies to me in the dark, only to throw me to the wolves by morning.
And his father… the man who wanted to lock me away—who stole my voice and gave me fragments of a nightmare.
They took everything from me, and for a long time, I let them because it was the only way I knew how to survive.
But not anymore.
I drag my nails down the pole, bend backward, twist into the light until the spotlight above me feels like fire, and I am burning. I feel my heartbeat in every motion—raw, furious… alive. I throw every ounce of pain I’m feeling into the music pulsing through the club, and for once, I don’t feel empty.
I feel angry, and it feels good.
The crowd cheers. They always do, but I’m not dancing for them, I’m dancing for me.
For the girl who never got to scream.
The song ends.
The lights dim.
And I’m left standing in the aftermath—skin slick with sweat, chest heaving, the echo of music still pulsing in my veins. The crowd claps, loud and mindless, but it’s all just noise now.
They didn’t see what I left behind up there.
They didn’t feel it bleed out of me.
I step off the stage, boots striking the waxed floor in sharp, defiant clicks. My body hums with adrenaline and fury, but I don’t slow down until I hit the hallway leading to the dressing room.
Archer’s already there.
Leaning against the wall, arms crossed over his chest, jaw tight with tension. He looks like he’s carved from stone—still, watchful, dangerous.
I eye him, heart still pounding. “You good?”
He nods once, but his voice betrays him. “I get it now.” It’s low and rough, thick with something I can’t name. “Watching you up there… watching them watch you…” He shakes his head slowly, and my heart plummets. “It was fucking brutal. I wanted to tear every single one of them apart just for looking at you like they had the right.”
A pause. His throat works like it’s hard to swallow the fire burning in him.
“But I get it. You needed that stage. Needed to let it out.”
His gaze drags down my body and back up again, reverent and raw. “And you were… fucking unstoppable .”
My breath catches.
I swallow hard, heat curling low in my stomach, grateful he understands—but equally undone by the rasp in his voice, the edge of hunger in his tone beneath the protectiveness.
Possessive.
Fierce.
Unapologetically mine.
And it terrifies me how much I want to belong to him and Oscar. To feel loved again.
Oscar joins us a second later, brows knit as he studies my face. “Feel better?” he signs.
I nod, too out of breath to speak yet. He tilts his head… studying me, but I turn away from them both. The heat is still simmering in my chest, but it’s not the kind that leads to comfort.
It’s the kind that lingers after a storm.
Oscar closes the door, and the silence swells, pushing at the walls like it wants to crawl inside my skin.
I grab a towel from the bench and start wiping off the sweat, but my hands won’t stop shaking. My throat tightens, the edge of grief curling around my ribs again like barbed wire.
I can feel their eyes on me. Not talking, just standing there—watching me unravel one breath at a time, ready to catch me when I fall.
I turn, signing and talking. “I thought it would help. Dancing. I thought if I let it out on that stage, the guilt wouldn’t hurt as much.”
“Did it?” Oscar asks, and I swallow.
I thought it would.
“For a minute. Then it came back. The anger. The guilt. Everything I thought I buried when I left behind the name Scarlett.”
I pace the room, then stop, looking at the two men who are holding me together. “He told me to run. My dad gave me my freedom, and I never once looked back. I didn’t even try to find out if he was okay. I just… died.”
There’s a crack in my voice I can’t smooth over, and it costs me everything not to fall apart in front of them.
“I thought I was protecting him,” I whisper. “But if Roman’s telling the truth… if he’s gone… then I left the one person who ever gave a damn about me to grieve a daughter who wasn’t even dead.”
Archer steps closer, but doesn’t reach for me, like he knows I can’t be touched right now, or I’ll break apart at his feet. “You were a kid, Lottie. Eighteen years old and doing what you had to do to survive.”
“I’m still doing it,” I say, blinking fast. “Still trying to survive. Only now I’m doing it with his blood on my hands.”
He pulls me into his chest. Oscar at my back. Neither blinks at my lack of clothes. “We’re with you. I promise.”
I nod, wishing I could believe them, but the truth is, it doesn’t matter how many people are around me.
Grief is a door only I can walk through.
* * *
“So, it’ll stain?” I ask, standing at the kitchen island with the bag of red dye clutched in my fist.
Oscar tilts his head, then signs with a crooked smile. “Roman and Crew won’t have an inch of skin left unstained by the time the water hits.”
Archer leans back against the marble countertop, arms folded. He’s calm in that deadly way, he always is—eyes sharp, lazy smile. “We won’t have to sneak in at least. Already made a call. Whitmore owes me. He’s going to hold them in a fake meeting for ‘student conduct concerns.’ We’ll have their dorm to ourselves for at least an hour.”
I exhale slowly. “Just Roman and Crew,” I say again, looking between them. “Leave Elijah’s en-suite alone.”
Oscar smirks. “Because he’s been forgotten?”
“Exactly.”
But we all know it’s more than that. It’ll eat Elijah alive, knowing I still care enough to come after the other two, but not him. The silence will scream louder than any dye ever could.
“You’re hot when you’re getting revenge,” Archer smirks, eyes tracing me like I’m something dangerous he wants to touch anyway.
I roll my eyes, but a smile tugs at the corner of my mouth. “You’re just saying that so I don’t stain you next.”
He leans closer, voice low. “Might be worth it.”
Oscar taps the counter to get our attention. “Don’t mean to be a buzzkill, but if you want to do this, we need to go now.”
* * *
The en-suite bathrooms are identical—clean, clinical, tiled in sterile white. Roman’s reeks of expensive cologne. Crew’s has damp towels on the floor, and I try to ignore the empty pill bottles laid beside the toilet.
“Come on, let’s get this done. I want pizza,” I gesture, nodding my head to the doors.
I slip into Roman’s, guilt gnawing at me for doing this to Crew, so I get Oscar to do his while Archer stands at the door as a lookout.
We unscrew the showerheads. Fill them. Re-seal them carefully.
The dye is sealed in packets, designed to burst under pressure and dissolve instantly—bright, cherry red, clinging to anything it touches.
Skin included.
Oscar comes into Roman’s en-suite a few minutes later. “All done,” he grins. “They’re going to look like they were involved in a murder.”
“Good. It’s what they deserve.”
I screw the showerhead in tight, then climb down, wiping my hands on my thighs. For a moment, I just stand there and look at it. Nothing out of place, but waiting to rain hell down on the boys who made me silent.
This isn’t chaos… or even revenge, really.
It’s control, and for the first time, I finally feel like I have it.