Chapter 17
SEVENTEEN
Ten Minutes Earlier
HARPER
I’m in the water. The water eats the fire.
Finally. Finally.
It’s like the world takes a long, slow exhale and I just… drift. The burn in my skin dissolves, and everything turns electric blue.
And quiet.
The pool holds me like a return to the womb. The string lights above blur into golden streaks, sliding lazily across the surface.
Stars. Fireflies. Drunken angels with flashlights. Whatever—they’re beautiful.
I’m not bones and bruises anymore. I’m silk. I’m air.
I’m fine.
This is what dying must feel like. So much easier than living.
Maybe I am dead already. That would explain the muffled, faraway quality of everything—like I’m watching someone else’s life through thick glass smeared with Vaseline.
The girl in the pool might be anyone. Some other broken thing.
Some other piece of trailer trash who got in over her head at a party full of people who see her as. .. nothing.
Poor thing, I think.
And then hands grab me. Big, intrusive, ruin-everything hands, hauling me up out of my perfect blue grave.
No. Why? I was fine.
I try to fight, but it’s like wrestling with concrete.
Then, air hits my wet skin like needles. I scream—at least, I think I do—but it’s drowned under the flood of everything else: the music, the shouting, the splash of water, the smell of chlorine and beer and somebody’s too-sweet perfume.
“Easy there, sweetheart,” a voice says, warm against my ear in a way that makes my skin want to crawl right off my bones. “I’ve got you. You’re safe now.”
The voice is wrong. Wobbly. Like it’s being played backward through an old cassette deck.
I try to focus so I can make the edges of the world follow the rules, but it still all just keeps shifting and stretching. Faces balloon and collapse like reflections in bad carnival mirrors. The patio stones under us heave like they’re alive.
Then I’m lifted and carried away from the pool. Away from the neon glow. Away from the noise.
Maybe this is okay?
Maybe someone finally gives a damn about me? Out of the womb and into my mother’s arms?
I let myself sink into the rhythm of footsteps. The steady bounce almost feels musical. Warm air replaces the night chill, thick and scented with something expensive—candles or soap or cologne.
We stop. I’m lowered onto something soft that molds around me.
A bed, I think. Can I just rest now, Mom? Please? I’m so tired.
“Where am I?” I try to ask. It comes out sounding like I’m chewing my own tongue.
“You’re safe,” the voice says again, closer now, as the mattress dips beside me.
Gravity tilts, rolling me toward the heat of whoever it is. My eyes, half-lidded and traitorous, take in broad shoulders and dark hair. Could be brown. Could be black.
Safe. The word sits wrong in my head. Like a picture hung crooked—fine at first glance, but the more you stare, the more it makes your teeth itch.
Then a hand lands on my knee.
Too hot. Too sure. Creeping upward through the wet denim of my jeans with the confidence of someone who clearly thinks they deserve access to whatever part of my body they want.
No.
The word screams in my skull, but my mouth is still useless.
I try to shove him away. Nothing happens. My muscles ignore me. My body doesn’t even twitch.
Wrong. This is all wrong, oh god!!
Panic hits, sharp and icy under the drug haze. My brain’s slamming the brakes, but the car’s still barreling toward the cliff.
Oh fuck—
I can’t move.
I am here. I am awake. And I am trapped inside myself while the rest of me just lies there like fucking bait.
But I can still feel everything. The cold press of my wet jeans. The heat of his body. The fear is focusing my blurry mind, and it’s enough to realize it’s a he.
I’m focused enough to feel the pressure where the mattress dips under his weight as he sits down too close and the heavy weight of his hand moving up my thigh.
But I can’t seem to do anything about it.
I can’t shove him off. I can’t swing or bite or scratch or scream, Get off me, dipshit!
I just have to lie here, staring at the ceiling like a prop in someone else’s fantasy.
“Don’t—” I manage to whisper, but it’s so faint.
The drugs have turned me into a breathing mannequin. I’m here, I’m aware, but I’m also… not here.
Maybe I did drown, and this is just the part where hell gets personal.
The guy’s hand squeezes higher on my thigh, hard enough that pain shoots up my leg like an electric shock.
“Shhh,” the voice says, and it’s not soft anymore. The warmth has drained out, replaced by something that drips with want. Something impersonal and cold at the core. “You’ll like it. Promise.”
No no no no no.
The word spins in my head like a scratched record, stuck on the groove.
And then I’m twelve again.
It’s not this room anymore. It’s that one. The carpet smelled like beer. The walls smelled like cigarettes. The man—God, I don’t even remember his real name, they all might as well be Todd, another Todd, an unending line of Todds—smelled like Axe and bottom shelf tequila.
Not again.
I swore, never again.
But it’s always again. Because this is what I’m built for, right?
Men see me, and they see prey. The girl from the trailer with the drunk mom and the jailbird dad. Vulnerable. Unprotected. Easy pickings.
The air changes. The sheets aren’t silk anymore—they’re the scratchy Goodwill set I used to have, the one with the faded roses. And his face shifts, and it’s Todd again. Not the most recent Todd but two Todds before that. The one who asked if I wanted to touch it.
I can’t breathe. My body’s screaming—move, fight—but I’m pinned by more than just his weight. It’s the drugs. It’s the memories. It’s all of it, tangled together into a sick knot I can’t get free of.
Daddy, please.
The thought comes out of nowhere, sharp and childish and pathetic. Daddy, come back. Take me with you.
I’m twelve, and last night, Todd asked me to touch it. I managed to run away and hide. But if Dad doesn’t take me with him, if he goes off again and leaves me behind, I don’t know how many times I can hide before Todd traps me in a room I can’t escape.
Daddy, take me with you! Save me!
But I know better. I’ve known better for years. He’s not taking me with him. And he’s not coming back. He left me with Darlene. He abandoned me with Darlene and all her Todds.
“Don’t cry, beautiful,” the voice croons, and it makes my skin crawl.
I didn’t even realize I was crying until he said it.
Then he’s on top of me. The air’s gone. My ribs ache with the weight. The clock in the corner starts ticking loud enough to hurt my ears.
Tick. Tick. Tick.
The same sound from Mom’s nightstand back in the trailer, counting down the seconds until the door creaks open and the newest Todd comes looking for me.
His fingers fumble with the button on my jeans. The zipper sounds like a gunshot in the quiet between ticks.
Please, I think, and I don’t even know who I’m talking to. God. Dad. The universe. Anyone. Please. I’m sorry. I’m sorry for every wretched thing I ever did. I’m sorry for being fucking alive, just please—!
And then—
BANG.
The door slams open so hard the wall shakes.