Chapter Thirteen
Erica
I stand at the curb and stare at the house like it’s a stranger.
Or maybe I’m the stranger now.
Same porch. Same sloping front walk with the crack Dad keeps saying he’ll patch “next weekend.” Same sagging screen door that sticks when it’s humid. The hydrangeas along the steps are half dead because I forgot to water them yesterday—because yesterday wasn’t my life.
The car Nico sent me home in has already pulled away. The driver got out, opened my door, and was supposed to wait until I got inside, but I sent him away. What did I tell him? I needed to water the grass first?
Lies. I just can’t make myself go inside yet.
My stomach is churning with how stupid I’ve been lately.
Yesterday, I left here in a car sent to deliver me to that hotel. But there were no plans to give me a ride home. That should’ve been my tip-off that none of them cared what happened to me by morning, after the money changed hands, after the “special guest” stopped being special.
The ride there was part of the product. The ride back was never included.
But Nico did exactly what he said he’d intended to do last night: put me in a car and send me home.
Now I’m standing here in the extra clothes I brought—jeans, a hoodie, sneakers—and my backpack feels like it weighs a hundred pounds.
It’s cash.
Seventy thousand fucking dollars in my backpack.
Just like that.
Well, not just like that.
My fingers tighten around the strap anyway, like it could evaporate if I loosen my grip.
Like I’ll blink and find myself still in that suite with the smooth sheets and the too-wide bed and the ache between my thighs that won’t let me forget what I did.
What happened to me. What I let happen. What my body did while my mind tried to pretend it wasn’t mine.
A breeze pushes through the street, carrying the scent of cut grass and someone’s grill starting up early. The neighborhood is waking up. A dog barks two houses down. Somewhere, a lawn sprinkler ticks like a metronome.
Normal.
My house is normal.
This is the house I grew up in. The only house I remember.
It’s small, not sad-small, but cramped in the way a place gets when there’s not enough money and too many years of making do.
White siding that’s faded more on the sun side.
A shallow roofline. One big front window with curtains I’ve washed a thousand times.
The porch light Dad insists on leaving on all night, “just in case.”
It was always just him and me. As far back as my memory goes, it’s Dad cooking dinner, Dad signing permission slips, Dad sitting in the bleachers cheering my name. Daniel Crawford has been the only constant in my life.
My mom is nothing but a story. She died too long ago for me to remember her voice. I know her from a framed photo on the hallway table—her smile, the shape of her cheekbones, the way Dad’s eyes soften when he looks at it.
He never got remarried.
Two years ago, I left this porch with a couple of suitcases and a grin so wide it almost hurt. Rutgers University. Campus. Independence. A roommate.
Maddy.
She was messy where I was neat, loud where I was quiet, fearless where I planned every step. She dragged me into her world. We were both there on scholarships, both trying to prove we deserved the spot we’d been given.
Mine was athletic—women’s soccer—and I’d spent my whole life running until my lungs burned and my legs turned to jelly because running had always felt like control. Like if I kept moving, nothing could catch me.
I can still remember the first time I walked into the Rutgers training facility and saw the field under the lights and thought, I did it.
Less than two years later, Dad got sick.
He tried to hide it at first. He tried to keep being the same man who never asked for help. But sickness has its own timeline, and it doesn’t care about pride. It doesn’t care about schedules or plans or scholarships.
I dropped out.
Dad fought me on it like he was fighting for my future with his bare hands.
He told me to stay. Told me he’d be fine.
Told me I’d regret it—the scholarship wouldn’t wait for me.
But I couldn’t sit in a dorm room or go to class or run around a field while he was here alone, getting weaker by degrees.
So I came back. Back to the house with the sticking screen door. Back to the front walk crack. Back to the porch light. Back to being the only person he had, the only person he’d let close enough to see how bad it was getting.
I swallow, and my throat tightens like it’s trying to close.
The timing, at least, is a mercy. Classes just let out for the summer.
Campus emptied out. The world slowed down the tiniest bit.
And Maddy wasn’t due to go back home to her family ranch in Montana for another week, which meant she was still here—still close enough to drive down when I begged.
Still close enough to sit with Dad when I couldn’t last night.
I stare at my front door.
I can’t stand here forever.
I shift my weight and the soreness in my body answers immediately, a dull reminder that moves through me like a warning. My face heats. My stomach twists. The backpack strap cuts into my shoulder, heavy with money I can’t explain.
Seventy thousand.
I take one step toward the walk. Then another.
And I don’t let myself think past that point.
The screen door sticks like it always does, catching on the swollen frame, and I have to shoulder it open with more force than I want to use this morning.
The smell hits me first.
Soup. Something warm and familiar, the kind of smell that belongs in this house even when everything else in my head is wrong.
I step inside and let the door thud shut behind me.
My backpack drags at my shoulder like a confession.
I keep it on for two more steps, as if I take it off too soon, I’ll fall apart, then I force my hands to move. The straps slide down my arms, and the bag lands on the floor of the entryway with a soft, heavy thump.
Too heavy.
My stomach flips.
I don’t look at it. I don’t let my eyes go there. I lock my attention on the kitchen.
Dad is at the stove.
Daniel Crawford stands in front of a pot like he’s always stood in front of a pot—shoulders squared, hair a little too long at the sides because he keeps saying he’ll get it cut, one hand on a wooden spoon.
He’s thinner.
That’s the first thought that cuts through me, sharp and unwanted. His T-shirt hangs looser than it should. His jeans sit differently at the waist. He’s moving like he’s trying not to show that it takes effort.
But he’s still here.
He’s upright.
He’s making food.
I cross the room fast.
“Dad,” I say, and my voice comes out too loud, too tight. “What are you doing?”
He glances over his shoulder, and his face shifts into something warm.
“Hey, kiddo.”
I’m at his side in two strides—despite the protesting ache between my legs—reaching for the spoon like it’s on fire. “Let me do that. You shouldn’t be standing here.”
He makes a small sound that might be a laugh if he had more energy. “I can handle stirring a pot.”
“You can handle a lot of things you shouldn’t,” I mutter, and I hear the tremor in my own words. I press my hand lightly to his arm like I’m checking that he’s real.
He waves me off, gentle but firm. “Erica.”
I roll my eyes because it’s what I’ve always done when he says my name like that. “Yes, Daniel.”
The corner of his mouth lifts. “Don’t call me that.”
“Then sit down.”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re not,” I say automatically, then clamp down on it because I don’t want to start. I don’t want to say the wrong thing and watch his face change.
He turns back to the stove, and I use the moment to do what I always do.
I take over.
I slide in front of him, hand closing around the spoon, and I stir like it’s my job, like stirring is control, like I can keep the world from tipping if I keep the soup moving.
He exhales through his nose, a patient sound. “You just walked in, and you’re already taking my kitchen away from me.”
“It’s my kitchen too.”
He leans his hip against the counter, watching me with that look he’s always had—fond, a little tired, like he’s trying to memorize me.
“Did you just get in?” he asks.
My stomach drops.
The question is simple. Normal. The kind of question that shouldn’t make my pulse spike.
But guilt doesn’t care what’s reasonable.
“No,” I say too fast.
He blinks. “No?”
I keep stirring. I keep my eyes on the soup. “I got in really late last night.”
The lie tastes bitter in my mouth.
I hate lying to him.
I hate it because he never lies to me. He doesn’t sugarcoat. He doesn’t dodge. Even when it hurts, he tells the truth like it’s the most important thing.
My original lie had been bad enough.
Hanging out with Maddy one last time before she flies out for the summer last night.
It had sounded normal. It had sounded safe.
Now I have to build on it, brick by brick, because the alternative is him looking at me and seeing something he can’t explain.
“Late,” he repeats, and there’s a small crease between his brows. “You left this early?”
“I had to,” I say.
My throat tightens around the next part, but it slides out anyway, like my brain is grabbing the nearest excuse and clinging to it. “I had an appointment at the bank.”
He goes still for a second.
I feel it, even without looking. The shift in him. The tiny change in the air when you say the wrong word.
Bank.
Loan.
Surgery.
The way those things have been circling us for months, like a storm that won’t move on.
Dad’s voice softens, and that makes it worse. “Erica, you don’t have to keep doing that. We’ve been over this.”
I swallow. “I know.”
He pushes off the counter, coming closer, and I can feel him trying not to lean too much on anything. “They’re not going to suddenly decide we’re worth the risk,” he says. “Don’t spend your mornings begging strangers to pretend to care.”
My chest squeezes hard enough that it hurts.
I turn the heat down under the pot. I grab a ladle and lift it, letting the broth fall back in slow ribbons so I have something to do.
“Actually,” I say, forcing the word out, “I spoke with a new loan officer this morning.”
Dad’s eyes narrow. “A new—”
“And…” My voice catches. I clear my throat. “And I got it.”
His face doesn’t change at first.
Then his eyes widen.
“Erica,” he says, like he doesn’t want to believe it. Like belief is dangerous.
“I got the loan,” I repeat, and the lie swells bigger in my chest, pressing against my ribs. “Approved. Signed. Done.”
His mouth opens, then closes.
He grips the edge of the counter, and I see his knuckles go pale for a second.
“Why now?” he asks quietly. “They’ve been denying us. Over and over.”
My heart bangs against my sternum.
Because I stood on a stage and let men with money decide what I’m worth.
Because I let my body become a bargaining chip.
Because seventy thousand dollars is sitting in my entryway, and I can’t tell you where it came from.
“Because I had proof,” I say instead, letting the lie grow because it has to.
His eyes stay locked on me. Not suspicious. Not yet. Just… searching.
I keep moving.
I pull a bowl down from the cabinet. I open the drawer for spoons. I keep my hands busy because if they stop, I’ll shake.
“I told her,” I say, “that the insurance company is going to pay it out soon.”
Dad’s brows lift. “They said that?”
“I said it,” I admit quickly, and then I rush the rest before he can interrupt. “I told her the payback is all but guaranteed, and if they don’t move fast, it’s going to cost more, and…"
“Erica.”
I keep going anyway, because stopping means he’ll ask questions I can’t answer.
“And I have employment now,” I add. “Real, steady employment. I showed her my pay stubs. I told her I can cover the payments if insurance drags its feet.”
Dad’s face tightens.
Not at the loan. At me.
At the idea of my putting my neck out.
“You shouldn’t have done that,” he says, voice low. “You shouldn’t have put yourself on the line for something like that.”
Something like that.
My stomach twists.
“For what?” I say, sharper than I mean. “Your life?”
Dad flinches like I slapped him.
I hate myself for that instantly.
I set the ladle down too hard, then pick it back up and move with exaggerated care.
I scoop soup into the bowl. The broth is thin, but it smells good.
I grab the bread from the counter and lay two slices on a cutting board.
“What are you doing?” he asks, quieter now.
“Making you a sandwich,” I say, like it’s obvious.
He gives me a look. “I can make my own sandwich.”
“Sit,” I tell him without thinking.
The word is flat. Direct.
A command.
My chest tightens.
I hear Nico in it.
I hate that I do.
Dad sighs and eases into the chair at the small kitchen table, moving slowly like he’s trying not to make me notice.
I notice anyway.
I spread a thin layer of mustard. I add turkey from the fridge, then a slice of cheese, then tomato, because he likes it even when it makes the bread a little soggy.
I cut it in half and carry it over with the soup.
Then I stand there, staring at him like I can force him to be okay by watching closely enough.
Dad looks up at me, and his eyes soften. “You shouldn’t have had to do any of this,” he says.
The words hit too close to too many things at once.
I blink fast.
I force a smile. It feels like bad acting.
“I love you,” I say, and my voice cracks on the last word, so I say it again, firmer. “I love you. I’d do anything for you.”
He reaches across the table, slowly, and covers my hand with his. His palm is warm. Familiar.
“Baby,” he says quietly. “I don’t want you doing anything that costs you yourself.”
My throat closes.
I squeeze his hand once, then pull back before I start crying.
Because if I cry, it won’t stop.
“I’m going to call the hospital,” I say, too bright. “Right now. I’m going to schedule it. We’re going to get this done.”
Dad starts to speak.
I cut him off. “Eat.”
The word comes out sharper than I intend.
Again, the same tone.
Again, Nico echoes in my head, and my stomach flips.
Dad blinks, then gives me a small, helpless smile. “Yes, ma’am.”
I grab my phone from the counter with fingers that don’t feel steady.
I turn away before he can see my face.
I detour to the door and grab my backpack before taking the stairs to my room to make the call.