Chapter 1
“A man betrayed learns quickly. Trust is a luxury. Memory is a weapon.” The Count of Monte Cristo
LILAH
We all have things that trigger us, things that make us cringe, flinch, laugh, react in some way that tells the world around us that we are in fact capable of human emotions like fear and distress.
I’ve spent years trying to make my reactions small, just about the same amount of time spent trying to appear like things don’t bother me even when they do. If people knew the actual herculean strength it took for me not to start screaming every time a text alert went off they’d be shocked.
Yeah, a text alert. Because text alerts aren’t always good news. And I received the worst news of my life, of my best friend dying, via text. A freaking text.
I’ve tried them all of the different sounds and notifications.
From the cheerful ones to the annoying ones, it doesn’t matter.
It’s still a random little blip in my day that feels foreboding like something really bad or really good is about to happen.
It annoys the hell out of me when I see people get a text and smile.
I instantly hate that person and then tell myself it’s irrational and they’ve done nothing to earn that hate except for have a purely natural response to something funny or cute.
It could be a cat video or declaration of love for all I care, and I still felt this gut reaction of complete and total dread.
I hate a lot of things about myself, but that may actually be the one I hate the most because it seems so stupid and petty at the same time.
Even if I don’t like surprises and can’t feel joy like most people doesn’t mean they should also walk around like a zombie just trying to make it through the day.
Ugh, I’m annoyed and hate it when I’m like this.
You’d think after seven years I’d be better at hiding it. If anything, I think I’ve gotten worse, maybe it’s exhaustion from the effort of hiding and forcing the world to believe that I’m okay, who knows.
Most days, when I’m not stressed I can manage the smile. I can repeat all the reasons that I should be smiling because I’m breathing and I can power through, and then I’ll see the sun through the clouds and remind myself I’m alive and the past is in the past.
Where it belongs.
Gone.
Dead.
Buried.
Ugly.
Destroyed.
I shudder. I dreamed of him again. He ruined me.
And I’ll never forgive him for it. “Get it together Lilah.” I shake it off and stare straight ahead.
It’s not like I should even be allowed to hate him, and sometimes my hate matches how much I miss him.
I take a deep breath. I can do this. I’m almost done.
I’m about to start one of two final classes I need in order to graduate this semester.
This is the moment I should feel joy that I can see the finish line.
Two classes left.
That’s it! If I just focus on that, I’ll forget about the dream.
I need to be proud of myself. I actually managed to finish college without having a breakdown and while convincing my mom I’m not still broken.
Graduating means freedom, a small piece of paper that says I’ve earned it and a whole new life.
I will finally be the oyster—or wait that’s the world is my oyster I’m just the— Huh, what would I be, then?
Has anyone ever asked that question? If the world is my oyster, then am I water?
A fish? A pearl! No that’s a clam. Or is it also an oyster? Why am I getting hung up on this?
And why is my dumb ass staring up at my ceiling debating it?
Guilt assaults me from all sides. He won’t ever see that piece of paper.
Am I doing this more for me or for him? What would he even say?
Probably that I’m an idiot and overthinking it.
Either way, I’m moving forward, and he’ll forever always be the boy that I saw get buried.
Wow, that got dark and morbid really fast. What’s done is done.
I can’t take it back any more than I can resurrect the boy who took my first kiss.
I groan and roll onto my side. Stupid oyster analogy. Stupid TikTok.
It’s a merry-go-round I can’t get off, between my own ADHD brain and the sheer amount of work I know acting normal is going to take today, I’m ready to bang my head against the table.
One day, my past will find me. Let’s just hope that day isn’t today.
God, I sound like a bad movie. Or a Dateline episode waiting to happen.
I already know I wouldn’t be painted in a pretty picture.
They’d say I deserved everything I had coming—they’d probably be right, though at the time, I did the right thing, that doesn’t necessarily mean I did the right thing.
It’s confusing even to me. Sometimes right is wrong and wrong is right, and I did, in fact, deserve to burn in hell.
I wouldn’t escape it, no number of wrongs done to me justified it and when I found out, it was too late.
He was gone. Dead. Buried. And I hadn’t even known until it was too late.
Different name. Different hair style. Lots of baggage. I’m literally seven years from my past and hours away from Seattle in Portland.
My lies are so good, even I started believing them when I got to college a few years ago.
Now I don’t even remember what my childhood home looked like; then again I think that was mainly me trying to force the memory away so that I wouldn’t think about him as much.
It was his mansion that was the real stain on my past. I forced all recollection of that place straight into a file folder in my brain labeled Hell.
Having ties to anything from my past was just another trigger like the text messages, just one more thing that caused present me to stumble and future me to eventually crash out.
I had to take it a day at a time and constantly looking back only made it harder to move forward.
Another life. Another person. And too many broken pieces to count.
That’s the thing about starting over though, when you’re all by yourself you can only pick up the shards of what happened and attempt to make yourself whole again and in that panicked moment you miss pieces which make it even more difficult of a process.
All that matters is I left enough of the pieces that I don’t know that girl anymore. She was weak, easily manipulated, she was a completely different person back then.
And honestly? That girl was never going to college. She would have followed him anywhere. She would have given up every last dream she had for more of him.
And he would have broken her. I have to believe that because the other option is too heartbreaking to even process.
He would have turned out just like his dad, he would have gone into the family business, he would have been bad news.
At least according to my mom, who’s drunk half the time.
Yeah, because our family is full of so many winners.
I shudder when I think of what my dad’s doing.
I’ve been able to avoid him despite him being the reason I was able to even get into this university without crippling debt.
Two more classes, don’t think about it. Focus!
I stretch my arms over my head and sit up just as my alarm blares.
“IT’S TIME!” a voice shouts.
My door flies open, and Charlie bursts in like she’s been shot out of a cannon. I brace for impact but she doesn’t throw anything or jump on me, I don’t know what’s more terrifying her large smile or her lack of movement. Shit, did she seize?
“Okay listen—” She claps four or five times.
I jump a foot and nearly fall out of bed.
“I know you need your peace in the morning, but I’ve been standing in front of the Nespresso machine for at least ten minutes waiting to make you coffee and bring you carbs slathered with your weird soy cheese that doesn’t even spread—all in an effort to celebrate the first day of the rest of your life, you bitch! ”
She says it so fast that if I wasn’t used to her speaking like she’s permanently caffeinated, I’d miss half of it. She’s a good distraction—a much needed distraction since freshman year.
“Anywaysssss…” She holds out a plate with a sad bagel, even sadder soy cream cheese, and my green mug that says YO.
“Happy first day of the last semester! Now all you have to do is finish these last two amazing classes and the world is your oyster.” She really, really just had to say Oyster didn’t she?
“Just don’t end up on the Dean’s List. Also—have you seen the dean of the art department?
I’d do him, wouldn’t touch the Dean of Business, gross he’s like sixty and stares way too hard.
I’m not into fake teeth even if they’re made of gold.
Your dean? Yeah, and his son Professor hot pants?
Yeah I’d call him daddy. Silver fox energy dad and son, honestly. ”
She winks.
That was just so much information at once I can barely exhale.
I stare her down. “First off, that was…a lot this early even with caffeine.” She winces.
“Second,” I grin. “Thank you for the snack and soy cream cheese tastes good.” Lie, it’s horrible, but it fits the image of perfection I started back when everything happened to keep my mom off my back.
I need to keep, a list of foods was also necessary to keep up the lie.
Gone is the girl who likes fries and ketchup.
Enter in organic Kimchi, kale, and soy. I hate that part of the lie the most. Can’t change it though and it’s easy to remember I’m vegan, plus when I smell fast food I think of him.
And only him. It’s the only excuse that keeps me safe from the nightmares, from his crooked smile and annoyingly taunting eyes and from every single place he’d haunt if he was here or still alive.
“Second, wait was I already on second, sorry third,” I yawn.
“The Dean’s list is a myth in order to keep professors from sleeping with their students and you know it.
” Clever though. Most people were so petrified of being found out that they kept it in their pants for the most part.
Nobody wants to get kicked out of Brighton.
Every school has urban myths, rumors, this one is ours.
They warn you about it when you enroll and you thank God when you graduate without being on it.
Some say it goes back to the school being founded by catholic nuns, others say it’s a ledger that has information on underground gambling, either way.
It’s one of the many things that make the school unique—other than our incredible observatory and fetish for lacrosse instead of football.
She levels me with a concerned stare. “The Dean’s List doesn’t exist until you end up on it and your entire social life and future is killed, remember Professor Sanders?”
I frown trying to remember his lore. “He got divorced. Divorce happens.”
She shakes her head. “Yeah, and a year later, Stephanie Reynolds had his twins.”
I wince. “She was his TA, hardly a crime, and they weren’t his remember.” But I know it goes deeper than that, because I know that everything and everyone has an origin story. I would know that better than anyone on this campus. Sadly.
“He was literally teaching here from Shanghai,” she points out.
“Stephanie’s twins are adorable; they also lack every single one of her Irish features.
The math isn’t hard, bro. But props to her because that man was fiiiine, could C drama his way into any of my historical fantasies I wouldn’t be mad at his sword play…
Sorry, I’ll stop. It’s just so hard once I get going, you know? ”
I laugh. “Yeah, it’s why I keep you around, so I don’t have to talk so much and because you fill the world with your wise words of swordplay and silver foxes, now, let me stress out in peace.”
She walks farther into the room. Well, it’s more of a shuffle than a walk.
“I’ll just set this here. Show your tits—you never know, might help more than your brains.
Not that we’re against brains, we just believe in using every tool in our arsenal.
Women. Rawr. I’ve said too much again.” She yawns dramatically.
“I think I need a power nap after all that.”
Her. A nap. Really? Does she even know what that word means?
“Love you,” she adds, backing toward the door. “Also, red’s a lucky color and it means power, so… wear it.”
“I feel like red resembles more of my inner rage,” I call after her. “And it’s Evans, I’ll get an A.”
She ignores me. “Manifest your good luck!” she shouts back. “I am, and it’s the only advice my mom gave me before college—other than don’t come back if you get B’s.”
I smirk despite myself. It took me watching her mom chase her around with a shoe one time to decide we should be friends. Well that, and her clever way of hiding behind me so her mom couldn’t hit her.
“Fine. Red socks,” I finally grumble staring down at my bare feet. “Happy?”
“Thatta girl!” she calls. “I’m gonna shower now that my moment with Nespresso has passed. Knock ’em dead, Lilah.”
The door clicks shut.
She has no idea what that last sentence does to me.
What it pulls from the shadows.
His voice.
Low. Rough. Right against my ear.
“Knock ’em dead, beautiful.”
A pause.
A breath.
“Take their souls… the way you’ve taken mine. Love is like that, Delilah, it’s a taker, and if you don’t offer it up, then like the Grim Reaper, it will follow you to death until you sacrifice it on its altar. Love, just like death, rarely plays fair, that’s the kind of love I have for you.”
I shoved him away. He’d already won my heart again and again before ever touching me and if he was going to kiss me, I wanted it to be when he didn’t smell like whiskey.
“You’re drunk. Stop being dramatic.” He grabbed my hand and kissed along my fingertips.
“I know my truth, and you’d be terrified if you knew what my dad knew.
Mom says—Mom says she’s going to do something. ”
I stared him down. “What do you mean?”
“He’s done bad things, and bad people have to pay for their sins.” He leaned in and grabbed my hand. “Sometimes I think I’d die without you.”
“Don’t say that.”
“It’s true.”
“Nope,” I scold myself. “Don’t go there. You didn’t cause it.”
But when I look in the mirror. I don’t see the girl I’ve fought to become, the lie I’ve constructed. I see the girl who said yes when she should have said no.
I see a murderer A liar. A fraud.