Chapter 13
Thirteen
Blair
I can’t sleep.
Not because of some romantic, starry-eyed reason like missing a guy.
No, I can’t sleep because I’m bored out of my goddamn skull and starting to feel like a padded-room patient.
It’s been a day since Noir walked off like a ghost with a grudge and a god complex, and Dagger’s been MIA since he dropped the “stay put” line like I’m some kind of sheltered housewife from a mob movie.
The motel is quiet—too quiet. No music bleeding through paper-thin walls, no moaning from the hooker two doors down. Just silence. Suffocating and stale.
I kick off the motel blanket and sit up, staring at the peeling wallpaper like maybe it’ll start dancing. My skin itches. My head feels foggy. There’s this… buzz crawling under my ribs. A hum that used to mean I needed a fix.
And fuck me, it’s the first time since that night with Dagger that I feel it again. That gnawing, twitchy, just-one-hit-and-it’ll-go-away sort of itch.
But I haven’t used. Not since that night. Not since he touched me like I was his, like he could drown out the high with his hands, his mouth, and—fuck—that pierced cock. Yeah. That one’s still branded into the inside of my skull like some twisted, horny watermark.
He didn’t just fuck the craving out of me. He wrecked it. Rewired it. Replaced it with something sharper. Dirtier. More addictive.
The worst part?
Thinking about it now—about him buried deep, about the way those little metal bars dragged over my walls like a promise I wasn’t ready for—makes my thighs clench tight like my body’s trying to chase that ghost all over again.
Dagger was the high, and I haven’t stopped twitching since.
Until now.
Now he’s off handling “shit” (his words), and I’m left staring at the ceiling with my brain chewing through its own wires like a starved rat.
Nope. I need air.
I throw on the jean shorts I wore yesterday, grab the flip-flops I got from the gas station—beach chic, don’t judge—and yank the little crochet top over my head.
The one I bought off a sunburnt girl on the boardwalk last week when Dagger took me for overpriced shrimp and a walk along the sand like he was trying out a new personality.
I crack the motel door open just enough to peek out.
The guy Dagger posted up to babysit me is still out front, holding down the world’s saddest bodyguard post like some budget Bond villain.
His name’s Ruck. Or Ruff. Or something equally testosterone-scented.
Sleeves rolled, tattoos out, toothpick dangling from his lips like it’s a weapon. Real subtle.
He’s got one of the girls from Room 14 giggling at him like he’s the second coming of James Dean. Bleached hair, six-inch heels, and the kind of laugh that says she’s either really into him or just trying to distract herself from her tragic life choices. Honestly? Relatable.
“Hey, sweetheart,” she coos, twirling a fried-blonde curl around her finger. “You got a smoke?”
Ruck—or Ruff, Reek, Regret, whatever—grins. “Only if you got a light.”
Wow. Shakespeare lives.
Perfect. I’m invisible. Not that I mind.
I slip past, light on my feet, flip-flops smacking the pavement with just enough noise to keep it interesting.
Sneaky in that “teen-girl-breaking-curfew” kind of way.
I cut across the parking lot like a ghost with a death wish, past the busted vending machine that looks like it’ll electrocute someone one day (fingers crossed it’s Ruck), and head toward the boardwalk.
The beach is mostly dead, just the hiss of waves and the occasional hum of distant neon.
Even the air feels low-effort tonight. Lazy wind, all salt and secrets and maybe a little melted sugar from the popcorn stand that’s been shuttered since nine.
The moon’s hanging there like a swollen bruise, low and orange and dramatic as hell. Honestly, same.
I keep walking until the pavement turns to sand. Until I’m far enough from the flickering lights and idiot men that the world softens, like a lens blur on a bad memory.
Then I sit.
Because honestly? Where the fuck else am I gonna go?
Just me and the stars and the waves and the goddamn silence.
Brynn loved the beach.
She used to say it made her feel small in the good way. Like the world was big enough to swallow our problems if we let it.
We used to sneak down here after midnight, wrapped in towels that still smelled like fabric softener and rebellion. Warm beer clutched in our hands like it meant something. We’d sprawl out in the sand, stare up at the stars, and make up stupid stories about the people we were gonna be.
Brynn always said she wanted to be wild—like, untouchable, legendary wild.
Said she’d marry a rockstar one day. Because, in her words, they were “bad boys with money and issues, which is basically hot guy currency.” She used to say she wanted her heart broken at least once—just so she’d have something to write a sad song about. Like trauma was some rite of passage.
Funny how that worked out.
I guess she got that wish. In the worst possible fucking way.
I pick up a shell, run my fingers along the ridges. My chest tightens, and my throat aches.
I haven’t let myself cry for her in a long time. Not really. Not the messy kind. The kind that makes your face go hot, your nose run and your chest collapse like a house of cards.
But tonight, in this stupid little slice of sand, I do.
It starts slow. A sniff. A small, barely noticeable tremble.
Then it floods. All of it. Every version of her I tried to keep alive. Every what-if. Every could-have-been.
She’s gone.
And I think, somewhere deep down, I always knew.
But now I feel it. In my bones. In the way the stars blur and the sand sticks to my knees and the cold presses into my spine.
She’s not coming back.
I wipe my face with the hem of my shirt as I stand up.
My legs shake. My flip-flop sticks in the sand and I have to hop a step to yank it free—and just like that, I’m eight again, chasing Brynn down this same stretch of beach with a plastic shovel in one hand and seaweed in the other, threatening to make her a kelp crown because she said she wanted to be queen of something.
She’d screamed, laughed, and flung wet sand at me until our mom yelled from the blanket to cut it out.
Then she pulled me behind a rock and whispered that we were gonna run away someday.
Buy a van. Paint it pink. Live on the beach and only eat ice cream and chips. No rules. No bedtimes. No bullshit.
And I’d believed her.
Because Brynn always said things like that—like magic wasn’t a maybe, it was a promise.
Now the sand’s too quiet. The stars don’t look like magic—they look like dust someone forgot to sweep.
And me? I’m just some half-wrecked girl caught in a never-ending dick-measuring contest between a drug dealer with a god-tier cock and a DJ who, despite being a total insufferable asshole lately, has hands that could probably make Mother Teresa moan.
Which—honestly—is rich, considering I used to believe in a lot of things. Like fairy tales. And rehab. And that Brynn was just lost, not gone . Like I wasn’t slowly turning into a fucking cliché with smeared mascara and a dead sister-shaped hole in her chest.
But hey. At least the sex is fucking top tier.
I head back the way I came. The vending machine hums in the distance, a dull electric drone. I don’t realize I’m being watched until I hear the crunch of tires over gravel.
A van pulls up alongside me. Slow. Too slow. My head snaps to the side. It’s matte black. No plates. Windows tinted so dark I can’t see inside, and the guy behind the wheel?
Wearing a fucking ski mask.
Oh fuck no.
I spin on my heel.
But the door slides open before I can take a step.
Hands—big, gloved, fast—snatch me by the waist. A cloth bag comes down over my head while another guy zip ties my hands behind my back. I scream, and kick.
“Let go of me, you fucking psychos!”
My teeth find flesh, I bite down hard, and get a sharp curse in return.
“Bitch, bit me!”
“Just get her in the fuckin’ van!”
A knee slams into my ribs. I cry out. Pain rips through my side. My feet leave the ground.
“No—let go of me! I’ll kill you—I swear to God!”
I try to twist, to run, but my legs are already off the ground. I’m lifted. Thrown.
My shoulder hits metal. Hard. The floor of the van is rough, slick with something I don’t want to think about. My knees scrape. My hip slams into a bolt sticking out from the side panel. I twist, try to buck free, but someone’s already on me. Holding me down.
The door slams shut behind me, the echo like a gunshot. Tires screech. The van lurches forward.
We’re moving. Fast.
“Shit, bitch. You’re tiny but you fight like your sister,” one of them mutters near my ear, breath hot and disgusting. “She had spirit too. But guess what? It didn’t fucking save her.”
I go still.
Voices echo around me.
“You think Dante’s gonna want her clean?” someone snickers. “Or can we break her in a little first?”
“Nah. He paid for fresh.”
“Still,” the darker voice adds, thick with something cruel. “I wouldn’t mind a little taste. This one’s hotter than the other one. And it’s not like he’d ever know.”
Their laughter claws at me. Scrapes down my spine like broken teeth.
I can’t breathe.
I can’t fucking breathe.
Every nerve in my body screams—rage, fear, disbelief. My skin prickles, my blood turns to ice.
These are the guys that took her, and now they have me.
My head spins. My hands curl into fists so tight my nails cut skin. I press my forehead to the cold, stinking floor of the van, trying to steady my breath.
No one knows I left. Dagger told me to stay. I didn’t listen.
And now?—
Oh fuck no.
I am not going out like this.
My ass will not die soft or scared.
If I’m meant to die tonight, I’m dragging one of these fuckers with me.