Chapter 6 #3
Not one of the main girls. Not one of the ones who had stood in the center of the bonfire storm and lit matches with other people’s lives.
He had been around the edges. Older brother to Celia Harrison, one of the girls whose group chats had helped JD flip the table.
I remembered his family now. Country club money.
Father with perfect hair and a habit of calling women sweetheart like it was a leash.
Mother who donated to hospitals and treated servers like stains on tile.
Brett had gone to USC.
Of course he had.
“What are you even doing here?” he asked. “Thought they shipped you off somewhere after everything.”
“College,” Lily said. “It’s this thing people do when they can spell their own names without a family lawyer present.”
The second guy laughed.
Brett shot him a look.
I touched Lily’s arm gently. Not because I wanted her quiet. Because I wanted her safe.
She didn’t move back.
That warmed something in me and terrified something else.
“Walk away,” I told Brett.
“Or what?” His eyes moved down the sidewalk. “You gonna call Daddy? Or one of those leather-wearing psychos who cleaned up your mess?”
My stomach tightened.
I did not look away.
“I don’t need anyone to clean up anything.”
“Really? Because from what I heard, that’s all you people do. Start fires, cry victim, then hide behind bikers and rich old men.”
My hand curled around my phone.
Lily saw.
So did Brett.
His gaze dropped, and he laughed softly.
“There it is,” he said. “Go ahead. Make the call.”
“I’m not scared of you.”
That was true and not true at the same time.
I wasn’t scared of Brett. Not exactly.
I was scared of what my body remembered when men blocked my path. I was scared of hands grabbing. Voices cornering. Laughter turning cruel. A night tipping from ordinary to dangerous before anyone else noticed.
I was scared of being back in that old version of myself where survival was a room with no doors.
Brett stepped closer.
Lily moved with me, shoulder brushing mine.
One of the girls behind him crossed her arms. “Can we not do this here?”
“Oh, now you want privacy?” Brett snapped. Then his eyes came back to me. “My sister lost Princeton because of you.”
“No,” I said. “Your sister lost Princeton because she drugged, harassed, and threatened people, then laughed about it in writing like an idiot.”
His face went red.
That felt good.
Dangerous, but good.
“She was a kid,” he said.
“So was I.”
The words landed.
For half a second, no one answered.
Then Brett’s mouth twisted. “Yeah, well, you always did know how to look innocent after ruining everybody else’s life.”
Lily made a sound. “Wow. That is a fascinating amount of projection for someone wearing loafers without socks.”
“Shut up,” he snapped.
“Make me,” Lily said sweetly.
My head turned.
“Lily.”
“What? I’m from Idaho. Men named Brett don’t scare me. We have bulls.”
That should not have been funny.
It was.
The laugh almost made it out.
Then Brett grabbed my wrist.
Not hard enough to bruise.
Hard enough.
The entire world flashed white.
Not visually.
Inside me.
A bright, soundless burst of memory and fear and old smoke.
My body stopped being nineteen on a crowded Santa Monica sidewalk. It became seventeen again. Drugged. Trapped. Pulled. Moved. Hands deciding for me. Men deciding for me. Girls laughing. Red paint on stone. Blood on my lip. Fire behind my eyes.
I didn’t scream.
I went still.
That was worse.
Brett leaned in, voice low. “You think you can wreck my family and walk around out here like nothing happened?”
Lily’s voice cut sharp. “Let her go.”
He ignored her.
His thumb pressed against the inside of my wrist.
Right over my pulse.
Wrong place.
Wrong night.
Wrong boy.
My free hand moved before my brain fully caught up. I twisted the way Tarak had taught me over Christmas when he decided my campus self-defense class was “cute but insufficient.” Brett cursed when my wrist slipped halfway free, but he caught me again, tighter this time.
Lily swung her tote bag.
It hit him in the shoulder with a heavy thump because Lily carried textbooks like weapons.
“Let go of her, you boat-shoe fungus!”
The other guy grabbed Lily’s bag strap.
That was when I stopped trying to be brave.
I used my free hand, hit the emergency contact in my phone by muscle memory, and prayed I had not accidentally called Regan because she would somehow teleport from wherever she was and commit a felony in designer sandals.
The line connected on the second ring.
A male voice answered. “San Diego.”
I swallowed.
The sidewalk blurred.
“I need help.”
Everything in me hated those words.
I said them anyway.
The voice changed immediately. “Location.”
“Santa Monica. Third Street area. Outside Mariposa Tacos. Four men—no, three men, two women. Santa Fe connection. I don’t want Dylan.”
A pause.
Then Nate’s voice, clearer now, lower.
“Too late, sweetheart.”
My heart slammed once.
The call ended.
Brett yanked my wrist. “Who’d you call?”
I looked at him.
And maybe something in my face finally told him he had miscalculated.
Because his grip loosened.
Not enough.
But enough for me to breathe.
“You should leave,” I said.
He laughed, but it sounded thinner now. “You think I’m scared of some biker trash?”
“No,” Lily said, snatching her tote back from the other guy. “But I’m scared for you, and I don’t even like you.”
“Lily,” I whispered.
“I’m just saying. They have a brand. He has a face that bruises easily. This feels bad for him.”
Brett shoved my wrist away like it had burned him.
“There,” he said. “Happy?”
My skin crawled where he had touched me.
I tucked my hand against my stomach and forced myself not to rub the spot. I would not give him the satisfaction.
But Lily saw.
Of course Lily saw.
She stepped in front of me, small and furious. “You’re done.”
He looked down at her. “Move.”
“No.”
“Move, Idaho.”
“That’s not even an insult. Idaho is beautiful, and our potatoes have more social value than you.”
One of his friends muttered, “Dude, let’s go.”
Brett ignored him.
His eyes stayed on me.
“You don’t get to hide forever,” he said. “People remember what your mother was. People remember what you did.”
For once, the words didn’t gut me the way they used to.
Maybe because I had worn Mandy’s diamonds every day for a year.
Maybe because I had her turquoise on my hand.
Maybe because Regan had taught me the difference between inheritance and guilt.
Maybe because Lily was standing in front of me, ready to fight a man twice her size with a tote bag full of pharmacology notes.
“I didn’t hide,” I said. “I survived.”
His expression faltered.
Only for a second.
Then tires rolled hard against the curb behind us.
A motorcycle engine cut through Santa Monica like a memory with teeth.
Then another.
I knew before I turned.
I hated that I knew.
I loved that I knew.
Two bikes pulled up at the corner, black against the neon and streetlights.
The first rider swung off with easy violence in every line of his body.
Beard back. Hair wind-tossed. Dark jeans.
Black shirt. No cut, because California had taught him something about subtlety, but there was no disguising what he was.
Dylan.
A year older.
Harder.
Realer than every dream I had tried not to have.
Nate got off the second bike behind him, helmet in hand, looking like he had already decided which jokes would be funniest after no one died.
Dylan’s eyes found me first.
Not Brett.
Not the others.
Me.
They moved over my face, down to my wrist tucked against my stomach, then back to my eyes.
Everything in him went still.
That was the scariest version of Dylan.
Not angry.
Not loud.
Still.
He walked toward us.
The crowd shifted without knowing why. People made room. Conversations dipped. Some tourist with a margarita stepped backward so fast he bumped into a planter.
Dylan stopped in front of me.
Close enough that I could smell leather, ocean air, and him.
“Beautiful,” he said.
One word.
A year disappeared.
My throat closed.
Behind him, Nate sighed. “Well, this just got emotionally complicated.”
Dylan didn’t look at him.
He looked at my wrist again. “Did he touch you?”
I should have lied.
I wanted to lie.
I was not some girl who needed rescuing on a sidewalk in Santa Monica.
But the spot still burned.
“Yes,” Lily said for me. “The one dressed like a country club apology grabbed her and left marks.”
Dylan’s eyes moved to Brett.
Brett took one step back.
Smartest thing he had done all night.
Dylan smiled.
It was not a nice smile.
“Brett Harrison,” he said.
Brett’s face changed. “How do you know my name?”
Nate stepped up beside Dylan, cheerful as poison. “Oh, buddy. We know lots of names. Yours was filed under rich boy with poor impulse control.”
Brett looked between them. “You can’t do anything to me.”
Dylan moved fast.
Not movie fast. Not dramatic. Just quick enough that Brett didn’t have time to look tough before his back hit the wall beside the taco place.
Dylan had one hand twisted in the front of Brett’s shirt.
That was all.
No punch.
No blood.
No public spectacle beyond the fact that everyone nearby had gone silent.
But the way Dylan leaned in made it clear he did not need to hit Brett to hurt him.
“You grabbed her,” Dylan said.
Brett swallowed. “I barely?—”
Dylan pressed him a fraction harder into the wall.
“Careful. Your next words decide whether you walk away with a warning or with dental work your father has to explain to his country club friends.”
“Dylan,” I said.
His jaw flexed.
He heard me.
He did not look away from Brett.
“You’re lucky she said my name like that,” he told him softly. “You’re lucky she’s standing here with a future and doesn’t need me adding legal problems to it.”
Brett’s breathing had gone shallow.