15. Penelope #2
The tears come. Quiet. The post-everything kind. Not sadness—exhaustion. The emptying of a person who has felt too much in too short a time and is leaking the excess through her eyes.
“I can’t do this, X.” Into his chest. “I’m not strong enough. The cravings. The withdrawal. This.” I press closer. “Us. I’m not strong enough for any of it.”
He’s quiet. His hand in my hair. Stroking. The patience of a boy who has just been inside a girl and is now holding her while she cries and is learning that these two things can coexist—that the body’s hunger and the heart’s grief can occupy the same moment.
“You’re going to get sober, Penny.” Quiet.
Not a command this time. A fact stated with the gentleness he reserves for the moments after the masks fall.
“Not for me. Not for your parents. Not for Cat or Darla or any of us. For you. Because you deserve to be happy. You deserve to live a life where the noise doesn’t need chemical intervention. ”
He tilts my chin up. Looks at me. His eyes are different now—not the storm, not the animal. Just the boy. The one from the swings. The one who chose yellow.
“And if being with Iz is what keeps you sober—if his kind of love is the kind that makes the noise quiet—then I’ll step back.
I won’t like it. It will fucking destroy me.
But I’d rather watch you happy with someone else than find you on that treehouse floor again.
I just want you alive, Penny. That’s all I’ve ever wanted. ”
The tears come harder. I press my face into his chest and cry—ugly, gasping, the kind that shakes your whole body—and he holds me through it. Doesn’t talk. Doesn’t fix. Just holds. The way my dad is teaching him. Showing up. Being present. The boring, ugly moments.
I fall asleep against his heartbeat. The craving humming under my skin. But not as loud. Not tonight. Tonight, it’s buried under the weight of a boy’s arm and the sound of his breathing and the particular fact that Xander Anderson just told me he’d let me go if letting me go meant I survived.
That might be the most loving thing he’s ever said. And the most terrifying. Because if he’s willing to lose me to keep me alive, what does that say about what we do to each other?
The bed is empty.
I open my eyes and my hand reaches for him before my brain is fully online—the involuntary reach, the muscle memory of a girl whose body expected warmth and found cold sheets.
He’s gone. Of course he’s gone. Because Xander Anderson’s particular talent is being there when it matters and disappearing before the sunrise can hold him accountable.
I knew. I knew when I fell asleep against his chest that I’d wake up alone. The pattern is as reliable as the tide—take, hold, leave. The closet. The bedroom the first time. The alcove. Last night. Always the same choreography: the intensity, the tenderness after, the empty bed in the morning.
My body is a map of him. The bruise on my hip where his fingers gripped.
The marks on my collarbone from his teeth.
The ache between my thighs that is not pain but the memory of pain and pleasure braided so tight they became the same sensation.
The rawness in my throat from sounds I made and sounds I swallowed.
I get up. Shower—hot, standing under the water, watching the evidence rinse away. Get dressed. Uniform. The bruises hidden under the blazer, the collar, the tie pulled tight enough to cover the marks on my throat. The camouflage of a girl whose body has secrets and whose clothes are the alibi.
Downstairs. Kitchen. Breakfast.
Xander is at the table. Chatting with my mom. Juice in hand. His body language is relaxed—easy, casual, the performance of a boy who did not spend last night doing the things he did to me and is now sitting across from my mother discussing, apparently, the weather.
I sit. Take food. Try to eat. The soreness makes sitting uncomfortable. X catches my eye across the table. The grin—small, private, the smile of a boy who knows exactly why I’m shifting in my chair.
My mom watches me. “Are you okay, Penny? You look like you’re in pain.”
“Just slept wrong, Mom.”
“Drink some tea and use the arnica cream in the bathroom. You can take two Tylenol as well. But nothing stronger.”
The “nothing stronger” lands like a brick. The caution of a mother who has to monitor her daughter’s pain management because normal pain management is a gateway and gateways lead to Reece’s phone number.
“God forbid we give me something more.”
I hear the snap in my own voice. The venom. The withdrawal’s fingerprints on my tone—making me sharp, making me cruel, turning the most minor frustrations into weapons I aim at the people who love me most.
My mom’s face falls. Not anger—hurt. The particular hurt of a mother who is trying her best and being punished for it. “Penny. Don’t start this early in the morning. It’s for your own good.”
I stand. Grab my bag. Head for the stairs. My door is halfway closed when it flies back open. Xander. In my room. Again. The persistence of a boy who treats my door like a suggestion rather than a boundary.
“What the fuck, X?”
He closes the door. Walks toward me. The particular walk—deliberate, slow, the one that backs me against walls and makes my body do things my brain doesn’t approve.
“Is there a problem, Penelope?”
“You mean besides the fact that you fucked me last night and then left before sunrise like I’m a hotel room?”
His jaw tightens. “That’s not—I didn’t want to be here when your parents woke up. You know that.”
“Right. Can’t have anyone know you touch me. Dark rooms only. Secret hours. Your dirty little secret.”
He grabs my arm. Not rough—firm. “Did we not have a conversation last night about staying sober, Penny? About getting clean? And then you walk downstairs and ask your mother for something stronger in front of me? In front of the woman who cleared your room of pills and sat up every night watching you breathe?”
The truth of it stings. He’s right. The snap at my mom was the craving talking, not me.
“I just—”
“Just nothing. Take an over-the-counter pain med like an adult. You’re stronger than one bad morning, Penny.”
He lets go. Walks to the door. “Ride with me today.”
Not a question. I nod because the alternative is fighting and I don’t have the energy for another fight with a boy I’ve been fighting for months.
The car is silent. Xander drives—fast, the way he always drives, like the road is something to be conquered rather than traveled. Deftones through the speakers. My playlist. He put on my playlist. The gesture of a boy who is trying to tell me something without using words.
We pull into the school lot. He parks. Turns off the engine. Sits.
“Last night—” he starts.
“Don’t.” I grab my bag. Open the door. “If you’re about to tell me it was a mistake, save it. I already know the script.”
I slam the door. Walk across the lot. Don’t look back. Cat is at my locker. She takes one look at my face and knows.
“What happened?”
“X and I slept together last night.”
Cat’s hand flies up. “What the fuck?!”
“I know.”
“Start from the beginning. All of it.”
I tell her. The abbreviated version—the withdrawal, the fight, the things I said about Iz to make him snap, the way he responded. The roughness. The possession. The marks I’m hiding under my uniform.
Cat listens. Her face does the thing Cat’s face does when she’s processing something complicated—still, focused, the analytical engine running behind the green eyes.
“Penny. I need to ask you something and I need you to be honest.”
“Okay.”
“Was it consensual? All of it? Not just the ‘you didn’t say no’ version—the real version. Did you want what happened?”
I close my eyes. The question Cat always asks. The question that matters more than any other question because Cat knows—from personal experience, from the basement, from the particular education that trauma provides—that the line between wanting and allowing is not always where people think it is.
“Yes. I wanted it. I was pulling his clothes off. I told him to mark me. I said ‘prove it.’ I was… I was an active participant, Cat. Every second of it. The roughness, the possession—I wanted that. I crave that. And I know how that sounds and I know it makes me complicated and I know a therapist would have a field day with the connection between my trauma and my sexual preferences but yes. I wanted it. All of it.”
Cat nods. “Then I’m not going to judge it. But I am going to ask: did he stay?”
“He stayed until I fell asleep. He cleaned me up. He held me while I cried. He said things that—” My voice cracks. “He said he’d let me go if letting me go kept me alive. And then I woke up and the bed was empty.”
“Classic Xander.” Cat sighs. “He’ll burn the world to keep you warm and then walk out before you can thank him.”
“There’s something else.” I look at my hands. “Iz was over last night. Before X. In my room.”
Cat’s eyebrows rise.
“We were… together. Getting close. He was everything I said I wanted—slow, gentle, asking. He was perfect, Cat. And I stopped him. Because it wasn’t X. My body wouldn’t let me go through with it because it wasn’t Xander’s hands, and that’s so fucked up I can barely say it out loud.”
“It’s not fucked up. It’s honest. Your body knows what it wants even when your brain is trying to override it. That doesn’t make you broken, Penny. It makes you specific.”
“Iz is kind and gentle and everything a girl should want. X is rough and possessive and leaves bruises. And I want X. Every time. What does that say about me?”
“It says you’re a person who knows what she responds to. Kaid and I aren’t gentle either, Penny. What matters isn’t the style. What matters is the respect underneath it. Does X respect you when he’s—”
“He cleaned me up afterward. With a warm cloth. And held me. And told me to get sober for myself, not for him.”
“That’s respect wearing a rough exterior. That’s not the same as what happened in the closet.”