Chapter 1 #2
Z’s eyes flick to me, chocolate smeared at the edges of his mouth as he gulps down the last of the chocolate. “You should have told me that was all you had and I woulda shared!”
“I wanted you to have it.” I reach forward and give his knee a quick squeeze. “I know Frank’s been a shit lately. Have you been staying hydrated? I read the other day that we’re supposed to be drinking like a gallon of water every day. I know we get shit for food, but water’s free at least.”
“No one takes care of me like you do, Harp.”
I’m a little startled by the tenderness in Z’s voice, and when I look up again, he’s staring at me.
Not with his usual sarcastic, gamer-boy-chaos stare. This one’s different. Intense. Serious.
I don’t like it when Z gets serious. Z isn’t serious. Z is jokes and rage-quits and the best friend who holds me at night when I climb in his window to escape this Todd and the one before him and the one before him—without ever asking questions because we don’t do words. We do survival.
We keep it casual even though we both know we’d fucking stab a bitch for each other.
Except in this little modern fairytale, the monsters are real, older, and bigger, and we’re both too scrawny to actually defend each other from anything that matters.
“Remember the day we met?” he asks.
“Uh, yeah, dork. Not like I’m gonna forget.” I laugh, glad he’s moving things to lighter territory. “I was hiding from one of Mom’s other Todds and ran into you being a delinquent in the woods, staring at that fat blunt like it was a brick of solid gold.”
“Man, I scored that weed in a legit heist,” he says, and I can still hear the pride in his voice.
“You thought you were so cool.”
“I was so cool,” he corrects.
“Oh, right, my bad. You were so cool. You had a fat blunt and absolutely no way to smoke it.”
“But you had your dad’s Zippo,” he says, and his smile goes softer.
My throat tightens at the mention of Dad. I pull the Zippo from my pocket out of habit—S.T. engraved in the silver—and open it. I roll the thumb wheel even though it’s been empty for as long as I can remember. The sound used to mean he was home.
Silas spent most of my childhood locked up in the slammer for one con or another, always promising he’d changed. Always lying.
By the time he got out two years ago, I wanted nothing to do with him. He showed up once. Going on and on with apologies I didn’t believe and promises I’d heard before.
I told him to get lost.
Last I heard, he married some rich lady and was playing house with her and her kid. Probably already running his next con.
Tucker men don’t change. They just find new marks.
“You and me were always perfect like that,” Z continues, oblivious to the ache in my chest. “Like fire and oxygen. We’re only complete together.”
I shake my head. “Fire and oxygen burn each other up, and then they’re both gone, silly.”
“But it’s fucking magic while it burns,” he whispers, staring at me with those soft eyes again.
The ones he’s been giving me a lot lately.
The ones that want something I can’t give.
Z and I have our whole lives planned out. We’re going to get an apartment. Be roommates. Get the hell out of this place and start over. Become different people.
Like they are on TV. Living in a city, with fun jobs and tons of friends and fancy coffee shop drinks with foam on top—
And the soft eyes could ruin it.
Don’t ruin it, I want to say. But acknowledging the it would bring the whole house of cards crashing down.
He’s the only stable thing in my world.
“I knew I had to keep you around after that,” he says, clearly still lost in the memory. “Especially after we got so high that you saw those unicorns running through the forest.”
“They were really there,” I protest, smacking his shoulder.
“Yeah, ’cause you’re a lightweight, pipsqueak. You were seeing colors before I even lit the thing.”
“Well, that’s true,” I mutter. If Mom’s any indication, I’ve got the tolerance of a fruit fly. She can get drunk off a Mike’s Hard Lemonade, which is why she’s been basically continuously wasted since 1999.
“We laughed so hard that day,” Z says.
I close my eyes, sinking into the memory. We lay on our backs in the woods—just like we are now on his bed—watching the light filter through the trees above. The light that eventually turned into prancing unicorns that only I could see.
“So hard you almost peed yourself,” I snort-laugh. “You got so upset when you couldn’t get your zipper down.”
“What?” he objects. “You’re remembering it wrong! I wasn’t upset. You were. You were freaked out because it was your first time trying weed.”
I shrug. He’s probably right. “Well, I was out in the woods with a stranger getting high for the first time. And it wasn’t even fair because you could just go pee in the woods. Squatting is way harder. Especially when you’re high.”
“Whatever, whiner.”
I smack him again, giggling.
He pretends to wince and rub his shoulder. “Whoa, dude. Mean left hook.”
I mock-threaten him again, and we both crack up.
Then he rolls onto his side, propping his head on his elbow.
There’s only twelve inches between us, but with Z, it never feels like an invasion of space. We’ve spent too many nights curled up together, holding each other through nightmares and bad days and the general hellscape of our lives.
“How come we never got together, Harp?”
The laughter dies in my throat.
Don’t ruin it.
“I tried to jump you in ninth grade, and you weren’t having it,” I joke, desperate to keep it light.
“Well, I wasn’t gonna take your virginity when you were fourteen.” His jaw hardens. “My mom had me at fifteen, and I always thought it was fucked up that anyone was messing with her at that age.”
I roll my eyes. “I wasn’t going to get pregnant. I know better. And you were fourteen, too.”
“That’s not the point. You deserve better than to be a statistic of this place. Isn’t that what you’re always saying? That we’re gonna get out and not be statistics just ’cause we’re dirt poor?”
I breathe out hard and turn away so I’m staring at the ceiling.
“It wasn’t about that. I just wanted to get it over with before some other fucking Todd took it...”
His hand wraps around mine, squeezing hard.
I squeeze back. Because Z is my lifeline. Z is family. Z is my center.
“I know,” he says quietly. “I know it all, Harp. Because I know you better than anyone else ever will or ever could. I know you only fuck guys that don’t mean anything to you. But we’re not fourteen anymore. I’ve been sorta hoping you’d realize that for a while now.”
The heat of his hand suddenly burns. Why is he talking about who I fuck?
Yeah, he knows I hook up with Greg and sometimes Emilio lately.
None of it’s that serious. I’m never letting a man control my life like Mom does.
I tell Z everything, and the guys I hang with know the score, too.
My pulse picks up. I just don’t know why Z’s suddenly talking like this—
“What if we could get out now?” he asks, his whisper cutting through the silence. “What if I found a way?”
I frown. “You know there’s no way. Not with all of Frank’s connections. He threatened boot camp if you ran again.”
“Yeah, but I found a way where Frank and his freak-ass cop friends can’t touch me.” His eyes light up like he’s just figured out how to beat the final boss. “And we could leave now.”
I sit up, heart pounding. “What? How?”
He sits up too, still holding my hand like a lifeline.
“If two seventeen-year-olds get married, they’re automatically emancipated.”
The words land like a bomb.
My jaw drops, and my stomach churns. I can’t process what he just said.
“You want to—” I stutter. “Are you—? You want to get married?”
He shrugs, eyes darting between me and the floor. “I mean, yeah. Wasn’t that always kind of our plan?”
Was it? Because this is the first I’m hearing about it.
“So you’re asking me to marry you?” My voice climbs an octave.
His eyes lock on mine. “Harp, it’s the only way. If you stop and think about it, you’ll see.”
I spring off the bed, hands digging into my hair. “Jesus Christ, Z. You can’t just throw that at a girl!”
“Why not? I thought this was what you wanted!” His voice rises, defensive. “You can get away from fucking Todd. And… I can get away from Frank.”
His voice darkens on Frank’s name, and dread coils in my stomach.
“Did it happen again?”
He shrugs and won’t meet my eyes.
“Show me,” I demand.
He hesitates.
I sit back down beside him on the bed and ask more softly this time. “Show me.”
He sighs and lifts his shirt.
Two ugly bruises bloom across his ribs like storm clouds.
“Oh my God, Z.” I throw my arms around him, careful to avoid the bruised areas, my heart breaking into a thousand pieces.
It’s getting more frequent. It used to be just every couple of months, but now it’s every other week.
It’s like the older Z gets, the more he intimidates Frank, even though Z never fights back. I hate Frank.
So I’m about to say yes. Of course, I’ll marry him. I’ll do anything to get him away from that monster—
But then there’s a loud commotion—voices shouting, a crash like dishes breaking—outside that makes my head snap toward the window.
“Oh shit, is Frank home?”
Frank’s caused enough fights in the park that everyone knows his temper. He’s in an ongoing feud with Angelo at the other end of Grass Alley, and honestly, it’s only a matter of time before someone gets seriously hurt.
Z joins me at the window as a woman’s shrieking and a man’s shouting get louder.
“It’s probably just Tonya getting in another argument with Bill’s mistress,” Z says.
I squint, scanning trailer to trailer. You never need reality TV when you live in Grass Alley.
Then the male voice gets louder, and my heart stops.
No. No fucking way.
I know that voice. But what the hell would he be doing here?
And then, holy shit, I see—
It is him.
Beyond our brief encounter the last time he got out of the slammer, I essentially haven’t seen him in over five years.
Not since I was twelve years old, clinging to his leg and begging him not to go run one last job—the one that got him put away again.
Always one last job, no matter how hard I cried.
My father.
Silas Tucker.
Stomping straight toward Z’s trailer like he’s on a goddamn mission.
And suddenly, I know with terrible sinking dread: whatever’s about to happen, it’s going to change everything.