Letter Fifteen #3
That’s when it registered: the dinner knife in my hand, blade squeezed tight against my palm. The rush of pain. The hot flash of relief.
It was just what I needed. Just what I craved. What Willoughby and Michael had refused to give me.
The pain rippled through me, quelling my rage.
And, for a few glorious seconds, it set me free.
John urged me to drop the knife again, and I let it clang to the table. Libby gasped at the blood. Bree, too.
Michael muttered, “Jesus.” His plate slid across the table, his fork clattering against the porcelain.
Libby dashed to the kitchen for a damp dish towel and the first aid kit, both of which she handed to John. Over the next several minutes, he cleaned the blood from my palm and inspected the cut.
While John dressed the wound, Libby stood over us to watch.
And I don’t know what pushed me to ask—maybe it was having access to the Harrises without my dad present.
Or maybe it was just that the questions were always there, on the tip of my tongue, and I badly wanted them answered. Even if the answers hurt.
“What made her so bad?”
John paused to meet my gaze. “Made who bad?”
“My mom. What made her a bad person?”
John and Libby exchanged another look, this one more loaded than the last.
“She abandoned you, Elliot,” John said.
“I know she left. I know we’re supposed to be better off without her. But what made her so bad? What did she do?”
Libby cleared her throat. “She lied. She manipulated people to get what she wanted, especially your dad.”
“Manipulated him how?”
Libby said, “Honey, I don’t think—”
“Please tell me. He won’t tell me anything.”
John dropped his gaze to the bandage as he finished wrapping it around my hand. “She toyed with his emotions. Ran off and wouldn’t tell him where she was. Did things—horrible things—just to hurt him.”
I didn’t like these answers, because I’d done stuff like that, too. At least, on some level. Tears sprang to my eyes.
“Does he still talk to her?”
Libby clutched her necklace. “No, Elliot. Of course not.”
But she couldn’t look at me when she said it. Plus, I knew—from you, Casey—that Nic had spoken to my mom as recently as a few months ago.
“Am I bad, too? Like she was?” I whispered, tears slipping down my cheek. “Is that the reason he never leaves me alone?”
Libby smoothed my braid between her fingers. “No, sweetie.”
John brushed a tear away with his thumb. “You’re not bad.”
They were nice to say so, but they had to be lying. I’d stabbed their son. I couldn’t walk the streets alone or play tennis without an escort. I lied and hurt people.
So maybe John and Libby weren’t lying. Maybe I wasn’t bad like her. Maybe I was something far worse.
After all, I’d just cut myself with a dinner knife, and it barely fazed them. They handled the incident as though I’d cut myself by accident.
I pushed my chair back and headed for the guest room upstairs, where I locked myself away and wouldn’t answer for anyone. Not Michael when he knocked, or Bree when she told me goodnight.
For hours, I lay awake, too many dark thoughts swirling through my head. My mom. The similarities I shared with her. Greer. His pale blue eyes, dead and vacant, hovering above mine.
Craving the comfort of my own bed, I packed my bags and snuck out of the Harrises’ at midnight. I knew the code to their security system, so it was easy.
When I pushed open the back door, I found you in the kitchen, standing barefoot at the stove, stirring cream into a cup of tea. You wore those blue-striped pajama pants with a white t-shirt, the sleeves of which stretched taut across your biceps. You stopped stirring and searched my face.
With a sigh, I dropped my bags by the kitchen island and pulled out a stool, too tired to run and hide. A minute later, you set a cup of tea on the counter in front of me. The gesture brought fresh tears to my eyes.
“Do the Harrises know you’ve left?” you asked.
I pulled the tea close. Wrapped my hands around the mug. Let the warmth seep into my fingers. “No.”
“Libby was over here earlier—in a full-on panic, Elliot, crying—wondering what the hell had happened to you after school.”
“Sounds like she overreacted.”
“Are you joking?” If I’d looked, I probably would’ve seen thinly veiled anger in your eyes. “She became so hysterical on the phone with your dad that he nearly called the police. I barely recognized Nic’s voice. He sounded desperate. Frantic. Almost…grief-stricken.”
I drew back, startled to hear this.
You went on. “Meanwhile, John and Michael searched the parks, hoping to find you hiding out in one of those places. Then John questioned some woman across the road who must live in one of the townhouses nearby, and he looked quite grief-stricken himself when he came back. It was only after Hal gained access to the video footage from your school and saw you leaving out back with Willoughby that they all started to calm down.”
None of this made sense. At worst, my sudden disappearance might’ve been an attempt to leave the city, but without money or connections, how far could I have gotten before my dad tracked me down?
“Sounds like everyone overreacted,” I muttered.
“For two whole hours, no one could reach you. I personally tried ringing you fifty times, for Christ’s sake. So, no, none of us were overreacting. Given your behavior lately, we were deeply concerned.”
With hot tears stinging my eyes, I studied the bowl of fruit sitting on the counter in front of me, partially illuminated by the warm glow of the light you’d left on over the stove.
“You didn’t have to disappear today,” you added, much softer. “If you’re not okay—if this is too heavy to carry on your own—I’m here.”
You weren’t accusing me of anything. Just doing that thing you sometimes did: opening a door and asking me to walk through it.
While I fought back the lump rising in my throat, your fingers brushed against my forearm, trailing downward. Slow. Gentle. Cautious.
You reached my hand, waiting a moment before carefully sliding it across the counter. And even though I kind of wanted to, I didn’t have the strength to pull away.
My heart sped up as you turned my palm over in yours, thumb grazing the edge of my bandage. But you didn’t ask what had happened, which meant you already knew.
“Let me guess,” I said. “Michael told you what I did at dinner.”
You nodded, staring down at my palm.
“I’m glad he’s talking to you again,” I said, “but I don’t appreciate you two talking about me behind my back.”
“He’s worried about you. I am, too.”
“I’m fine.”
“No, you’re not. And I don’t want you hurting yourself like this, so I want to make a deal with you.”
“What deal?”
“If you agree to talk to someone, I will, too. I’ll see someone for my issues, and you’ll see someone about what you experienced at that party.”
I lifted my chin, skeptical. “You’d really do that?”
“I’m willing to do whatever it takes to have the old Elliot back,” you said, gazing deep into my eyes.
“I miss her smile and laugh. I miss her lying about sneaking into my room and teasing me loads and fussing about…literally everything. Even if she never forgives me for nearly screwing it all up, I need her. I wish she’d come back to me. ”
My throat squeezed. “But it was all my fault,” I said, voice catching on the words. “All of it.”
“No.” You squeezed my fingers. “It wasn’t.”
“I ran my mouth. I said some really mean things to him.”
A couple of tears sprung loose and rolled down my cheek. You brushed one away with your thumb. “Nothing you said gave him the right to put his hands on you.”
“If I hadn’t threatened to go after him, you and Michael would never have done what you did.”
“That’s not true. I was going after them regardless. Besides, Michael and I are responsible for our own actions.” You leveled your gaze with mine. “You didn’t deserve what those boys did to you.”
“I’m not okay,” I whispered, the words breaking free before I could swallow them back.
“I know.” As my face collapsed, you jerked my stool closer to yours and pulled me against your chest, letting my tears soak through your shirt.
The steady beat of your heart lulled me into a state of calm. It was the calmest I’d felt in weeks.
“So will you go?” you asked eventually, chin resting against the crown of my head.
“If you go, I’ll go.”
You sighed with relief. “Then we have a deal.”
“At therapy, though? They dig—deep down inside—where it’s darkest and most painful, until they find the one thing you fear about yourself the most, and then they make you look at it under a microscope. They make you talk about it until you cry. You end up crying, like, a whole fucking lot.”
You stiffened. “Are you—you’re just trying to talk me out of it, right?”
I leaned back to look at you. “No, Casey. It’s really like that. Why do you think I don’t want to go?”
Eyes blown wide, you pulled me close again, holding me tighter, like suddenly you were the one who needed comfort. I chuckled under my breath.
Later, we sat in comfortable silence, sipping our tea.
“I’m still mad at you, though,” I said, still unable to let it go.
“I know.” You traced the side of your cup, then glanced over at me. I happened to be giving you a mini death glare. “Stop it. I hate when you give me that look.”
“That’s the whole point.”
“But you’ve been torturing me for weeks now—and it’s giving me nightmares.”
I arched a brow. “Nightmares?”
You nodded. “I keep dreaming someone’s painted a portrait of you with that chilling look on your face.
The portrait’s hanging on a fireplace exactly like the one downstairs, where I’m sat, being flayed and tortured by it.
Every single day. And I keep thinking how strange it is that something so beautiful can torment me so thoroughly, but I can’t seem to look anywhere else.
Until the actual you walks in, and she smiles at me, and her nose kind of crinkles…
right here”—you touched a fingertip to the side of my nose—“and the sight of that fills me with so much light and happiness and hope that I’m not scared anymore. ”