Chapter 7
You Do Not Deserve This
Summer
Iwake on the sofa, spine digging into metal springs, every bone aching like it’s been borrowed and returned broken. My clothes are dry, but my skin still remembers the water—icy and unforgiving.
I had stripped out of the soaked pajamas on the bathroom floor and threw on whatever I could find—a hoodie that smells like mothballs and old perfume, joggers from the bottom of a drawer.
My hair’s still damp, curling against my jaw in cold tendrils.
The towel lies crumpled beside the sink, half-frozen, like it gave up too.
Last night won’t stop replaying in my head.
The rush of dancing with Benny, the thrill of being wanted, even if it was by a stranger.
But then—Jacob. The way the air shifted when he pinned me to the wall, how the fear tangled with something I shouldn’t have felt.
How close I came to wanting his mouth on mine.
I keep wondering what it would feel like if he did kiss me—how desperate, how starved it would be.
He’s been there for so long, watching, invading, haunting every inch of space I own.
And now I can’t stop thinking about what it would be like to give in—to let a man that obsessed, that dangerous, have me.
He put me under the shower, made sure I was drenched, shivering. Then he told me if I ever showed interest in another man, he’d fuck me anyway. He said it like a promise, not a threat.
The twist in my stomach isn’t fear—it’s something worse, something I can’t justify. I hate him. I tell myself that over and over. But the truth is, every time he pushes me, something inside me answers back.
I drag myself off the sofa and fold the comforter neatly.
The house is quiet. Too quiet. No boots on gravel.
No keys in the lock. No footsteps upstairs.
He’s gone, or he’s watching. He does that sometimes—lurks in doorways, blends into shadows.
Waits until I forget he exists before reminding me exactly who I belong to.
There’s a buzzing behind my eyes, like my brain’s been scrubbed with steel wool. The flickering bathroom light pulses in the hallway mirror—on, off, on again. Everything feels used. My body. The house. Even the morning.
I go to the kitchen and fill the coffee machine.
I flick it on, gripping the counter, fingers curling into the wood like maybe I can anchor myself before I float too far away.
The world tilts. My stomach turns. I need breakfast. I need something stupid and normal.
But nothing is normal anymore. Not since he made me his.
I move to the eggs.
Tap. Crack. Spill.
One splits wrong. Yolk dribbles across the counter. I grab the hem of the hoodie and smear it up without thinking. It stains. Sinks. The mess never really disappears—it just changes color. Toast burns. I scrape it. Coffee’s cold. I drink it anyway.
I sit at the table and cry. Not loud—the kind of crying that comes without sound. The kind that leaks. My face stays blank. My body still. But my insides are hollowing out with every slow blink.
Tick. Tick. Tick.
The clock counts out my sentence. I think about running. I always do. Ever since that first day—the way Papa wouldn’t look at me, the way the door clicked shut and I realized that no one was going to stop him. Not the law. Not the town. Not my mother.
“Jacob is the law,” I remind myself.
If I run, who’ll stop Jackson’s men? No one. He made that perfectly clear. And he’d rather kill me himself than let them tear me apart.
Rosefield doesn’t forgive. It erases. People here disappear, but townsfolk know better than to ask questions.
Like the mechanic’s shop—what’s left of it—and the guy who owned it.
Dead. Apparently, it was suicide, but who dies of a gunshot wound next to a running vehicle with the door open?
This town is corrupt through and through, and Jacob is the one pulling all the strings and ticking all the boxes.
I wipe the mug until its surface gleams, rinse the plate, fold the dishcloth over the sink’s edge in a gesture so small it hardly matters—one less thing for Jacob to notice, one less excuse for him to tilt my chin, whisper I’m slipping, then carve the reminder into my flesh.
I peel back the curtain enough to see the drive. Empty. The sky looms low, swollen with grey uncertainty.
A stray tear escapes from my eye, rolling down my cheek. I wipe it away before it has chance to fall and catch the scent of the manky hoodie. I need to change.
I climb the staircase, make my way down the hall and stand before my wardrobe, hands trembling, and pull out the lilac dress he told me I’m only to wear inside his house. Soft. Short. Too much flesh he’d said—ironically precise, like a spotlight trained on my bruises, my shame on display.
He must get some sort of sick kick out of seeing the marks he makes on me.
In the mirror I see someone unrecognizable—skin stretched tight over silence; hollow eyes haunted by the echo of my own name. A husk. My hair, too long, auburn, Mama used to beam—now hangs limp past my shoulders, heavy with the memory of hands running through it that never belonged.
I close my eyes once, twice, and wonder: how much of me can remain when every choice is a cage?
When I open them, the first thing I see are my green eyes.
People always notice them first. Striking, they say.
Like moss in sunlight. Like they’re something soft, but there’s nothing soft left.
I look and I look— but I don’t see myself.
Just a warning. This is what happens when a woman forgets she’s a person.
Instead, something built to be owned. To be used.
My eyes sting. I force them dry. I think of Mama. Her trembling hands as she folded this dress into my suitcase. She knew. She saw his actions. She saw me flinch when Jacob touched my shoulder. She let me go anyway. They both did.
Once, I thought love meant bedtime stories. Lavender oil. Red ribbons in my hair.
Now I know better. Love looks like silence. Love looks like shame. Love looks like survival.
And then… there were my girls.
Constance. Adelaide.
My light when the world started to darken. My anchors in a sea that kept trying to drown me. They were late-night secrets and bruised toes from dancing barefoot on wet pavement. They were warmth when everything else turned to frost.
“Poison,” he called them. “Loud-mouthed little sluts.”
He said they were waiting for my downfall. That he was the only one who’d catch me.
But he didn’t see me. Not really. He saw what he hadn’t broken yet. He saw them for what they were—A threat. Women who would go to the ends of the earth for me. Hell, they’ve tried.
When I first moved with Jacob, they tried to come see me often. But Jacob had warned me. I had to pretend to be happy, I had to pretend that I wanted this life with him. If the girls caused a scene, Moore’s men might target them, too.
I smooth the lilac dress over my knees. The fabric snags on scabbed skin. I sit cross-legged in a patch of fading sunlight—childlike, breakable, like a paper doll left out in the rain. The silence shifts and my imagination springs to life. I close my eyes, and I see them.
Constance—rough-edged, dark-eyed, unapologetic.
Adelaide—all softness and sunflower seeds, wild laughter and secrets under her breath.
Then— Crunch. Gravel. Sudden. Wrong. My body locks. Breath caught. Heartbeat frantic, wild, panicked.
I creep toward the window, one hand trembling as I hook back the curtain.
Not his truck. Not Jacob’s.
This one’s red. Old. Beaten to hell and proud of it. The bumper’s got a dent like it grew there—scarred, unashamed. A truck that’s been through fire and came out laughing.
The door creaks open. A man climbs out. Tall. Dark-haired.
Benny.
My chest folds in on itself. He takes the porch steps slow. Every creak in the boards sounds like an admonition. Like we’re already in trouble. Before he can knock, I open the door.
He freezes. His eyes lock onto mine—and something in him cracks. I see it. The fracture. Like glass under pressure. Shock. Confusion. Then—concern.
Raw. Bare. Blinding.
His jaw tightens. I watch the muscle jump.
He takes me in—all of me. The dress. The finger mark bruises on my arm.
The silence. His gaze lands on my wrists—on the fingerprints Jacob branded me with.
He stares like he wants to bury him for them.
Flaring his nostrils and releasing a sigh of fury.
But he swallows it. Keeps it tucked behind clenched teeth.
I tuck my hair behind my ear, suddenly too aware of the puffiness under my eyes, the hollowness in my face, the way this dress clings to skin that doesn’t feel like mine. I look like prey. I feel like prey.
"Is he here?" Benny’s voice is quiet, like Jacob might crawl out of the walls if he speaks too loudly.
I shake my head. “No. But he comes back. Random times. To check.” To test. To remind me I’m still his. “How did you know where I live?”
“Got your address from the bar owner. Had to ask twice.” A pause. “He warned me not to mess with Jacob.”
I swallow hard.
“Sit with me,” I say, nodding toward the top step of the porch before lowering myself down beside him.
The wood bites into the back of my legs as I sit, and pain flickers up my thigh—harsh enough to make me wince. I try to hide it, pressing my palm there like that’ll somehow quiet the ache. I glance toward the dark stretch of road where Jacob’s truck should be and swallow hard.
“Why would you… risk that? Coming here?” My voice cracks on the last word. Fear creeps into my chest, cold and heavy. “If he finds you here….” His eyes meet mine again—and this time it’s a threat against whatever’s hurt me. He drops onto the porch steps, taking a seat beside me.
“Because I can’t stop thinking about you,” Benny admits, voice cracking. “About last night. The dance. The way he grabbed you—like you weren’t a person, just something that belonged to him.”