Prologue #2
I wish the answer were always no, but that’s a lie, and we both know it. I slipped into their circle and watched, dead-eyed, as they bullied the hell out of her, and I did nothing. I would never hurt her, not on purpose, but I didn’t stop them, and my cowardice makes me worse than all of them.
“Meet me for lunch. Our spot,” I try, reaching for something that used to matter to her.
“No,” she snaps, her refusal immediate.
“No?”
“No, Phoenix. I don’t know what you think’s been happening, but I haven’t been sitting around missing you. I don’t even know who you are anymore.”
“You know me.”
“You think so?” she spits out. “Let’s test that.”
She looks right over my shoulder at Ava and Cassie, who are standing there with their judgment and plastic smiles.
I made out with Ava at a party once just because she’s the head cheerleader.
It was supposed to make sense, but the second her lips touched mine, I wanted to rip myself out of my own skin, and when she slipped her tongue into my mouth, my only instinct was to headbutt her into the nearest wall and wash the taste off with gasoline.
“You still wanna have lunch today, Phoenix?” Shannen says, loud and breezy, like she’s performing for the whole room. It doesn’t take long before eyes lift from sketchbooks and attention starts pulling toward us.
“Oh, that’s so cute,” Cassie sneers, her voice dripping with fake sweetness, and I feel my fists curl at my sides.
“Are you really having lunch with the trailer trash loser, Phoenix? Or do you wanna get blown?” Ava’s voice slices through the room, and laughter explodes around us. Every head swivels to watch the drama unfold, and for a split second, all I see is red.
I want to slam her face through the window, watch the glass split skin from bone, and smile down at her as she bleeds out. I want to carve her up like that pumpkin on the windowsill, just so she can feel what it’s like to be gutted for fun.
Instead, I stand there, silent and useless, feeling like the biggest piece of shit in the room.
There’s nothing I can say—nothing that could ever make up for what I let happen.
I turned my back while they shoved garbage through the vents in Shannen’s locker.
I knew they scrawled “slut” in black marker across her sketchbooks, filled her backpack with tampons soaked in fake blood, and laughed until their faces turned red.
I passed her in the hallway when her books were kicked across the floor, while she scrambled to pick them up, and they circled her like wolves.
I walked by when her jacket was stolen and strung up the flagpole with the word “trash” taped to the back of it.
Shannen laughs, but I see the tears she’s trying to hide. “Your silence says it all, Phoenix. You don’t know me anymore. So go back to what you’re good at and pretend I never existed.”
She brushes past me, her bag slung over her shoulder, and some asshole yells, “Run along to the trailer park, skank!”
I don’t move, but it takes everything in me not to turn around and slam my fist into the nearest jaw.
Whoever said that just made my list.
I’m going to hurt them one day.
Maybe not today. Maybe not tomorrow.
But one day.
“What the hell was that, Phoenix?” Ava laughs, tossing her hair over her shoulder. “I mean, I know you used to hang around with that little dork, but seriously? You don’t have to lower yourself like that anymore.”
“Fuck you, Ava.” Her mouth drops open, and I don’t wait for whatever bullshit she’s about to say next.
Lunch comes, and instead of joining the noise and the crowd that never really felt like mine, I drift to the back of the bleachers— the place that still feels like ours, even if I lost the right to call it that a long time ago.
I didn’t expect her to be here after this morning, but she is, tucked into the shadows and curled up so tight she looks like she’s trying to disappear into herself.
The girls at school don’t understand her, so they hate her. They call her weird. They call her poor. They say she dresses like she’s ashamed of her body, but I’ve seen the envy in their eyes. They pretend they’re above her, yet they still watch her out of the corners of their eyes.
She doesn’t show her body off, but I’ve felt it.
Once, in the hallway years ago, she slipped on some shit on the ground and fell straight into me.
My hands caught her without thinking, and for maybe three long, greedy seconds, her whole body was pressed against mine.
I grabbed her by the waist, my hands spanning almost the entire width of her, and she looked up at me with those wide eyes behind her cracked glasses.
I felt the soft dip of her hips and the way she fit against me, then she mumbled something before pulling away, brushing it off like it meant nothing. But it wasn’t nothing, not to me.
Maybe I got a little obsessed.
Maybe I still am.
Standing here, looking at her now from just a few feet away, all I want is to cross the distance between us, kneel beside her, wrap my arms around her, and drag her into my chest until she realizes I never stopped being hers.
“Shannen…” She looks up slowly, and I raise both hands in surrender, not because I expect forgiveness, but because I want her to see I’m not here to fight. “I just wanna talk.”
“Go away.”
“No.”
“Oh my god, just fuck off, Phoenix.”
“Can’t do that.”
She shoves herself to her feet, her bag slamming against her, and the anger radiating from her makes me tense. She storms toward me, and I brace myself, jaw clenched, ready for whatever she’s going to throw at me.
“Why are you doing this to me?” she demands, her voice breaking as the words tear out of her. “Do you seriously not think I’ve had enough of everyone’s shit already? Do you think I need yours on top of it?”
“I miss you.” There’s no filter, no walls, just the ugly truth. “I miss my best friend.”
“Best friend?” she spits out. “You are so fucking dumb. Seriously. Is that why you’re pushing so hard with football? Because it’s the only way someone like you can get into college? Run fast, throw hard, and maybe no one will notice you’ve got nothing else going for you.”
Yeah, that one hits hard.
“Wow, low fucking blow.”
“Don’t care,” she snaps, already turning away from me. “Now leave.”
“Why are you here, Shannen?”
“It’s lunch,” she throws over her shoulder, like that explains anything.
“No. I mean here. In our place.”
“Our place?” she repeats, then turns on me with a hollow laugh that feels like a knife to the ribs. “You stopped showing up two years ago. I never did. So it stopped being ours, and now it’s mine.”
“Do you always come here?” She nods, and it takes everything I have not to reach out, not to tilt her chin up with my fingers and force her to look at me.
I want to see if the girl I lost is still buried under all that anger, but I don’t because she’s bristling, wrapped in all that defensive energy, and I know better than to push her right now.
“I never stopped… I thought… I don’t know what I thought, but whatever it was, it never happened. Now I come here so I don’t have to be hounded by your friends.” She tugs her gray hoodie tighter, shrinking into the fabric like she can disappear entirely. “You never came back, not once. So why now?”
Because I wake up every morning with your name in my mouth and blood under my fingernails.
Because I fucked up so badly, I don’t even know where to start when it comes to asking you to let me back in.
Because I miss you so much, it makes my bones ache.
But I don’t say any of that.
“I’m going to Ohio. I got a football scholarship.”
For a second, just a blink, I see pride flash in her eyes. I know I saw it. But just as quickly, she closes herself off again.
“Congratulations.”
“You’re the only person I’ve told.” She shakes her head, like she wishes I’d just disappear. “As soon as I found out, you were the only person I wanted to tell.”
Because, despite what everyone else thinks, none of this would’ve happened without her. She saw me with a ball once, told me to go for it, and pushed me to try out when no one else gave a damn. If I’m anything, it’s because of her.
“I’m happy for you. You can go now.”
“Stop, Shannen. Please stop cutting me out.”
“How dare yo?—”
“I know, I know. But I’m still me.” I reach out, cupping her cheeks in my palms and forcing her to see me.
“I know I can’t fix what I’ve done. I wish I could go back and undo every second of it, but I can’t.
I can’t change the past. Just give me a chance to be someone better.
Just… please.” I swallow hard, my hands still cu pping her face, my heart breaking with the quiet and hurt between us. “Please let me back in.”
I look into her eyes—those deep, gold-flecked eyes that used to gaze at me like I was the only thing in the world that mattered—and I search for that light she used to hold just for me, desperate to find even a flicker of what used to be mine.
But it’s not there.
“You hurt me. More than anyone else, it was you who hurt me.”
I don’t deserve a single piece of her.
“I’m sorry,” I rasp, my throat burning like I’ve been swallowing fire. “Fuck… I’m so sorry.”
She stares at me, eyes glassy with everything she’s held in, everything I broke. “I hate you.”
“No, you don’t.” I exhale, shaking my head because I can’t—I won’t—let that be true. “You don’t.”
“I do,” she snaps, louder now, trying to step back like she wants to run, but I won’t let her. “I hate you because you made me love you. You made me believe I mattered, and then you abandoned me.” The confession hits me like lightning, and suddenly, I can’t breathe.
“Say that again.” She tries to jerk away, but I hold on, fingers digging in, desperate to make sure I heard her right. “Shannen, say it.”
“Like you didn’t know. You were my best friend, of course I loved you.”
The second those words leave her lips, I move. My mouth finds hers in a kiss that’s two years too late—two years of silence, resentment, ache, and obsession all detonating in one violent, desperate moment.
This is how it was always meant to feel.
Not soft or slow, but burning, consuming, and holy in the way only ruin can be.
She tastes like home and heartbreak and the parts of myself I left behind when I stopped choosing her.
I kiss her like I need her to feel every ounce of the guilt and love I buried under years of pretending.
She breaks the kiss, gasping, her eyes wide and wild and locked on my mouth. It’s like the world stops spinning for a second, not just for me, but for her too.
“Jesus,” I whisper, my forehead pressed to hers. “That’s not enough. I need more.”
I lower my lips to hers again, breathing her in like I’ll never get another chance, when laughter erupts behind me.
The sound freezes my blood and turns my veins to ice.
My lips are still pressed to Shannen’s when I open my eyes and watch in slow motion as she starts to pull away, the spell shattering around us like broken glass.
I turn, dragging her behind me with one arm, my body becoming a shield between her and whatever fresh hell is about to rain down on us.
“This is fucking gold,” Greg crows, grinning like the asshole he is, phone out with the camera pointed straight at us. “The trash is all in love and stuff. This is better than porn.”
“Aww,” Ava coos, fake-pouting as she lifts her own phone to record. “Look at the big bad quarterback kissing the school’s little pet freak. You guys gonna post engagement pics next? Maybe register at the dollar store?”
“Stop,” I warn, glaring at them, willing—begging—them to put the phones away, but they just keep recording, faces lit up like the sick fucks they are.
“No way, dude. This is the best thing that’s ever happened in this shithole school. Quarterback going full Beauty and the Beast , only the beast’s a grease-stained loser. I mean, come on—the whole school’s gonna lose their minds.”
Yeah. No question now. I’m gonna murder Greg .
“Oh my god.” Cassie giggles, her dark eyes glittering with the same toxic joy.
“What if we played it? Like on the big screen at the dance. Seriously, nothing’s scarier than a poor, ugly nobody begging the quarterback to love her.
News flash, greasebag—you don’t get the guy.
He’s only doing this because you need to be put in your place.
” I step forward again, one breath away from breaking someone’s jaw, but Shannen’s fingers curl into my sleeve, grounding me with a grip that says, Don’t .
I whip around to face Shannen, ready to do whatever it takes to claw back the moment that’s already slipping through my fingers.
“I had nothing to do with this, I swear. I didn’t know… I didn’t plan this. I didn’t know they were?—”
For a second, she actually listens. For a split fucking second, I see the tiniest crack in the wall she’s built just to keep me out. But Ava’s already twisting the knife.
“Then how did we know where you’d be, Phoenix?
Don’t lie to her. You just did what nobody else in this school would ever lower themselves to do, and now it’s going to be out there for everyone to see.
So anytime she’s alone—and let’s be real, she’ll die a virgin—she can pull it up, watch it on repeat, and pretend that Phoenix Cassidy ever actually wanted her. ”
I feel Shannen go rigid beside me, and when I turn to meet her gaze, I watch my entire world collapse.
She believes them.
There’s no one else to blame. No excuses left to give. Her lack of trust is all my fault, and I can see her dying all over again.
“Don’t listen to them. I didn’t?—”
“How could you?” she chokes out.
“Give me your fucking phones.”
“Hell no, man.” Brandon grins, cocky and already dead in my mind. “This shit’s gonna go viral. ”
“Shannen, I swear to you.”
“Fuck you, Phoenix.” Her scream tears right through me. “Fuck you for making me believe you again.”
She’s already backing away when I lunge after her, grabbing her arm, needing to fix this, needing anything but the way she’s looking at me like I’m the monster under her bed. She whirls on me, and her palm cracks across my face so hard that my vision explodes into white-hot stars.
“If you ever breathe in my direction again, I’ll chop you up into tiny pieces and use your blood for paint. Now leave me alone.”
I never imagined this would be the last time I spoke to her. But it is, because after this, she’s gone.