Chapter 7
NOW
Paloma
“Good morning, sleepyhead.”
The words are low, but loud enough to have woken me if I wasn’t already awake and staring up at the ceiling.
I press up on my elbows in the bed. My chest squeezes at the sight of the disheveled bedding on the opposite twin bed, knowing full well she stayed by me all night.
“Morning,” I mutter quietly, rubbing at the bridge of my nose.
Sadie slumps against the doorframe, the gray T-shirt she’s swimming in a near-perfect match to her eyes. “Drinking yourself under the table this time, huh, Blake?”
There’s a sarcastic, equally snarky retort on the tip of my tongue—but that’s not what comes out.
I shake my head and duck my chin. “Not really doing great right now, Brown.”
Her brow furrows, teeth biting down on her lip. There’s a slip of understanding in her impenetrable gaze. “Do you want to talk about it?”
My shoulders lift almost imperceptibly. Sadie turns and closes the door. It’s hard to miss the giant letters spelling out KOTESKIY across her shoulders.
There’s a piece of me that will always envy her—that sees her relationship with Rhys and her genuine happiness as some achievement she doesn’t deserve.
And maybe that’s cruel, but knowing I can’t have that, that I tried and still messed it up, haunts me.
Sadie Brown was my friend, once upon a time.
Now she’s a walking taunt about everything I wished for.
“Things have been rough,” I try, eyes ducked down as Sadie sits cross-legged on the end of the opposite twin bed.
It’s their spare room, but with the gaming console in the corner and the scattered Star Wars toys and action figures, it’s clearly become Sadie’s little brothers’ temporary home.
“My roommate hates me and got me thrown out of my dorm.”
Sadie rolls her eyes. “Want me to hit her?”
The dry tone of her voice makes a smile pull at my mouth.
“Maybe.” I shake my head. “I think I was just upset and wanted to forget for a while. It just feels like everything is spinning out of control.”
Sadie nods, chewing lightly on her bottom lip. “Yeah. I get it.”
I know she does. It might be the only reason I’m willing to talk to her about it.
“You can stay here as long as you need, but do you have anyone you can call?” Sadie asks. “I just don’t want you to be alone right now.”
For a moment, my mind flashes to blue eyes and a square jaw, fingers in my hair and a soothing, “Hey, P. You okay?”
I rush the thoughts away and sigh deeply, pressing fingers to my temple as I begrudgingly nod.
“Yeah. I know someone.”
· · ·
“This has to be a joke.” Alessia’s smoky tone reverberates out of my phone speaker next to me on the bed. “I’m being pranked, right?”
“Very funny.” I shake my head, closing my eyes as I tilt my head back. “I need your help.”
Silence—for nearly too long, chafing at my skin.
“You’re cold-calling me after three years of ignored phone calls, texts—everything—and you’re not even going to start with, ‘Hello, Alessia? How are you? I’m so sorry I blew you off and made you think I was dead or worse.
’” Her voice ratchets up higher with every sentence. “Seriously? God, Paloma, I—”
She cuts herself off with a muffled shriek.
“I’m cool, I’m chill.”
“Sounds like it,” I mumble, wincing when I hear another aggravated noise from far away.
“Let’s start this over in a way that won’t have me losing my job,” Alessia says, before clearing her throat and brightening her voice. “Hi, Paloma, dear! How can I help you?”
I roll my eyes but settle back.
There’s a giant lump in my throat that makes it difficult to swallow—and I never know if it’s a buildup of regret or self-hatred. Or maybe the tears I’ve never shed. That I’ll never allow myself to release.
Like the last dregs of fuel in a junkyard car. Sometimes that tight pressure is the only thing to remind me I’m alive.
I tell her quickly, almost clinically, about everything that’s happened in the last twenty-four hours—never mind that I know she’d far rather know what’s happened in the last three years. Even knowing there is no judgment I could ever face with Alessia, I’ll never force my demons on her like that.
“I need to find an apartment,” I finish. “It’s—Sadie is letting me stay in a spare room at her . . . friends’ house.” My head spins a little at the thought of my proximity to the one constant fixation of my otherwise tumultuous life.
“I can stay here again tonight, but I just—”
My voice chokes off into nothing, a flash of blue eyes and slightly sharp stubble against my freshly showered skin.
“Does it have anything to do with Ethan?”
There’s a moment where it feels like I’m being hunted, chest tight—just from the sound of his name. “No. It’s— I can’t—”
“Breathe,” Alessia says, her voice tethering me. “It’s all right. I’ll take care of it, okay? Now, let’s run the gamut. You’ve got money for food?”
“Yes.”
“Have all your things or do you need someone to help you move?”
“I have it all in my car; it’s still at the lot.”
“Okay. Leave this with me, all right?” Her voice is calm and soothing in the same way it was when I was seventeen, sitting in her office with a small bag of my things, scared and crying. “I’ll take care of everything. Do you want me to come get you?”
“I’m okay.” As torturous as it might feel to be in this house with him, there is safety in knowing he’s here. That nothing will happen to me.
“Okay, Paloma.” She breathes, and I listen to the sound like a soft lullaby. “Take care of yourself today and I’ll call you to check in tonight, yeah?”
“Okay.”
I hang up before she can say anything else, or before I can break down in tears.
I sit in the spare room with the assurance from Sadie that she’ll only say a friend of hers needed a bed for the night—and that Freddy wouldn’t say anything either. I’d begged them both to keep my name out of it. Though they don’t know why.
Gripping the velveteen rabbit I’ve kept nearby since I was six years old, I take comfort in the plush for the first time in years—the first time I’ve allowed myself to. My stomach growls and I search my backpack for a breakfast bar I know has been stashed in there for a while.
“Chicken nuggets? Really?” I can almost hear his voice, almost see the grimace. “I said I could make you anything and that’s your pick?”
I remember my blush, warm over my cheeks as I nodded with a self-conscious laugh.
“Yes, please. With spicy ketchup.”
His laugh was loud, more open than usual as he played lightly with a few strands of my hair. “All right. Anything for you, P.”
It would be so easy. I wouldn’t even need the usual Walk me home? text. I could slip into the room down the hall from me, the one that smells like clean sheets and sandalwood, with the lamplight on for me to sleep. He’d offer to run me a bath, braid my hair, feed me, take care of me.
If you cut open my skin, I think his name would be written across my veins, branded on the actual muscle of my heart. And I’d bleed for him over and over to keep him away from me, from the horrid, disgusting girl I became.
Still, I let the Bennett Reiner of my imagination lull me as I step into the unfamiliar bathroom to wash off.