5. Penelope #3
The word “please” from my mouth. Directed at him. Again. The second time in our lives I’ve begged him for something, and the first time was in a closet with my face against a wall.
He holds me tighter. His jaw works. I can feel the war happening inside him—the part that wants to say yes and the part that has decided proximity to him is what hurts me and the two parts tearing at each other while I sit in the wreckage.
“I… I can’t, Penny.”
Three words. Seven syllables. A door closing.
The warmth drains from my body. I pull away from him.
Not slowly—sharply. The physical retraction of a person who has just been handed the final proof of what she already knew: Xander Anderson will hold you on a bathroom floor but he will not walk through a front door with you, and the distinction between those two things is the distinction between someone who loves you and someone who is willing to be there for you, and they are not the same thing.
“I should have known better.”
“Penny—wait—”
He reaches for my hand. I rip it away.
“No. I’m done waiting on you, Xander. I have been waiting for you to show up—really show up, not just hold me when I’m crying but actually be there when it’s hard and public and uncomfortable—and you can’t do it.
You can hold me in a closet and you can hold me on a bathroom floor but you can’t hold me in front of my parents. You’re a fucking coward.”
His face. The words landing. Each one finding bone.
I stand. Wipe my face. Walk out of the bathroom. Through the hallway—ignoring the stares, the whispers, the phones aimed at me like weapons. Through the front entrance. Across the parking lot. Into my car. Door shut. Engine on. Out of the lot before Xander can reach the door.
I don’t drive home.
The thought of walking through my front door—of facing my mother’s tears and my father’s disappointment and the silence of parents who have been gentle and patient and trusting and are about to learn that all of it was wasted on a daughter who has been lying to their faces for months—is more than I can carry right now.
The weight of it presses on my chest like a hand.
My phone rings. Mom. I answer because not answering is worse.
“Hi, Mom.”
“Where are you, Penny? I know you left school.” Her voice has changed since the last call.
The anger has thinned. What’s underneath is worse: fear.
The terror of a mother who is starting to understand that what’s happening with her daughter is bigger than photos on an app.
“Your father is on the phone with the school. We’re trying to get the photos taken down.
Just—come home, baby. Please come home. We’re not angry. We’re scared.”
We’re not angry. We’re scared.
Worse. So much worse than anger. Anger I can fight. Fear I have to carry.
“I’m not coming home right now, Mom. I’m sorry.”
“Penny—”
“I love you. I just—I need a minute. I’ll be home later. I promise.”
I hang up before she can respond. Before the tears in her voice can become tears in mine.
Before the word “scared” can settle any deeper into my chest and make me turn the car toward home, toward the warm stone house with the copper gutters and the porch light that never goes off and the parents who have done everything right and still ended up with a daughter who snorts pills in bathroom stalls and gets photographed unconscious at parties.
My hands are shaking on the steering wheel.
The withdrawal is screaming now—not a hum, not a whine, a scream.
Full-body. Every nerve ending firing distress signals.
My skin crawls. My teeth ache. There’s a cramp in my abdomen that doubles me over at a stoplight and I have to white-knuckle the wheel until it passes.
I call Reece.
He picks up on the second ring. “Yo, Penny. What can I do for you?”
“I need something. Now.”
“Bad day, huh?” He doesn’t sound sympathetic. He sounds pleased. The satisfaction of a dealer who knows his customer has passed the point of choice and entered the territory of need. “Come to the house. I got you, little mama.”
I drive. Out of Edgewood. Past the stone walls and iron gates.
Past the neighborhoods where the money lives behind hedgerows and security systems. Into the part of town that doesn’t make the brochures—the outskirts, where the houses get smaller and the lawns get browner and Reece Hall operates his business from a house that’s close enough to keep tabs on everybody but far enough that the people who matter don’t have to see it.
I pull into the driveway. Sit. Stare at the house. The paint is peeling. The front steps are cracked. A BMW sits in the driveway next to a lowered Honda—the money and the hustle parked side by side.
Don’t go in. Turn around. Drive home. Call Cat. Call Darla. Call anyone. Don’t walk through that door.
The craving doesn’t listen to reason. That’s the thing about addiction nobody tells you—it’s not a choice.
It stopped being a choice months ago. The choosing part of my brain has been overwritten by the needing part, and the needing part doesn’t care about consequences or parents or photos or the boy on the bathroom floor who called me “good girl” in a voice so tender it made me believe, for three seconds, that he might actually stay.
He didn’t stay. He never stays.
Reece comes out the front door. Beanie low. Dark eyes. The smile that never reaches them but always reaches his hands. He walks to my car. Leans against the window frame.
“Gonna come inside?”
I open the door. Get out. His arm slides around my shoulders—heavy, proprietary, the weight of a man who knows you need him and enjoys the leverage.
Inside, Daisy is on the couch. Danny’s sister—beautiful, wrecked, the particular hollowness of a girl who has been in Reece’s orbit long enough that the orbit has become a cage. She smiles at me. The smile doesn’t reach her eyes either. We’re a room full of people whose smiles stop at the surface.
Reece sits between us. Puts an arm around each of our shoulders. Pulls us in. The cologne. The cigarette smoke. The particular closeness of a man who understands that touch is a tool and uses it accordingly.
“Let’s fucking party,” he says.
And the seed Cat planted last night—the one that said maybe you can survive without the pills, the one that was so tiny you could lose it between your fingers—gets buried under Reece’s arm and Daisy’s hollow smile and the first pill he presses into my palm. I take it.
And the world goes quiet. And I hate myself. And the quiet is still better than the noise.