by Jenna Mills
Contents
Copyright
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Epilogue
The DAMAGED Series
Newsletter Signup
Copyright © 2019 Jenna Mills
All rights reserved.
Cover design by Magnolia Lane Books
Book design by Magnolia Lane Books
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means
including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author.
The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.
This book is a work of fiction.
Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely fictitious.
Author website: authorjennamills.wixsite.com/jennamills
Printed in the United States of America
First Printing: August 2019
Magnolia Lane Books
We’re all damaged, every single one of us. It’s not a flaw. The key is how you handle the wound. If you grow, or if you stagnate. If you heal, or if you fester. This book is for everyone who has stumbled, but discovered that simply because you fall, doesn’t mean you have to stay down.
Chapter 1
I used to be invisible.
I was the one nobody paid attention to, Zoe Langley, the girl who could walk into class ten minutes late and nobody would look up, who would ask a question and nobody would answer. In the hall no one said hi. In the cafeteria no one sat next to me. It was like I wasn’t even there.
But that was before. Before the night. The attack. Before the guy came into my bedroom. Before I opened my eyes to find him hovering over me. Before I felt his hot, sweaty hand slide over my mouth, the heaviness of his body press down against mine.
Before I fought back.
Before I realized how badly I wanted to live.
And crushed his windpipe.
Called 911.
Before I was splashed all over the evening news.
Before I became a survivor.
Now people saw me. Now everyone knew my face. My name. Wherever I went, they stared, like I was some kind of celebrity—or freak.
Even when I’m alone, I can feel them, the eyes, the watching. I spin around, heart slamming, knowing that he’s there again, that he’s back, and that this time he’s going to finish what he started—
—even though he can’t. Because he’s behind bars. They caught him. Detective Cooper did. He promised me he would, and he did. I’m safe.
But the unease never goes away.
Sitting in a sliver of afternoon sunlight, I twisted a long strand of white blond hair around my finger and lifted my eyes to the man sitting across from me. He was watching me, too. Quietly. Intently. His eyes were trained on mine, waiting. Quietly. Intently. But it wasn’t cold that washed through me, not like with the others. There was a steadiness in his gaze, a warmth, like a blanket on a cool fall day.
“When I’m awake,” I said, answering his question after a long moment of silence, “I dream of being invisible again.”
His eyes gentled, and for a second I would have sworn I saw the man behind the trained shrink, but just as quickly the professional façade eased back into place. He shifted, lifting his hand to his jaw. Dr. Rivers did that a lot.
“And what happens when you’re invisible again?” he asked.
Always analyzing. Always digging. Probing. That’s what Group was. One question after another. Peel back a layer, then immediately go after another.
We’d been at this for two months, since mid-April.
We met once a week. At first there’d been only two of us, besides him. Now there were three. And we all had one thing in common: death. Or almost death. One by car, one by pills, one by man.
Dr. Rivers called us his survivors, and dreams were one of his favorite topics.
“People don’t see me,” I said simply.
But he wasn’t one to let me off the hook that easily. “Why don’t you want people to see you, Zoe?” he probed, peering at me from over his reading glasses. “What are you afraid of?”
That was another of his signature questions. He had three or four he asked over and over and over. At first I thought he must have forgotten that he’d already asked me what I wanted or what I was afraid of. What I dreamed about. But with time I realized he hadn’t forgotten. That he didn’t forget, anything. Rather, he wanted to know if I did. If I forgot, or if I was changing. Healing. Wanting new and different things. Dreaming about something other than the night of the attack.
Afraid of something new, different…or nothing at all.
“I don’t know,” I said, even though I knew he’d never let that answer stand.
As expected, he lifted a brow, waiting.
I looked away, toward the window, where the Flatirons cut against a vivid blue photographer’s sky. “Maybe I just don’t like being that girl.”
The one from the news.
The one whose mother—
“Well, that’s hardly going to change.”
The snarky comment had me swinging around, toward the club chair on the far side of the room, where Lexi Abbott sprawled with the deceptive grace of a she-lion about to attack. “Not in this town anyway,” she added.
Dr. Rivers cut her a sharp look. “Lexi—”
“I think you should leave,” she announced. “Just go away. Pack you bags. Say goodbye to Boulder. Goodbye to the mountains. Goodbye Colorado. Get as far away as you can. New York maybe. Massachusetts. I hear people don’t give a crap about anybody else up there. You should get lost easily enough.”
I refused to let her get to me. I knew that was what she wanted. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” Lexi was one of those people who had no use for anybody except…Lexi. Which made it kind of strange that she’d tried to kill herself. Of course, she claimed the overdose was accidental.
But we all knew the truth.
“Zo-zo?” She gave me one of her patented poor-little-rich-girl pouty frowns. “How can you say that?”
“Don’t listen to her,” the newest member of the group, Emily, said, speaking up for the first time since sinking down against the far side of the sofa. We hadn’t known each other long, but since helping her get a job at the coffee shop where I worked, we’d become pretty good friends. She was one of those easy to like, girl-next-door types.
“She’s trying to piss you off,” Emily warned.
Because that’s what Alexis Abbott liked to do, mess with people. She got off on it.
“I know,” I said.
Emily knew, too. It had only been two weeks since her attempt to prove she’d moved on with her life had spun horribly out of control, thanks, in large part, to Little Miss Troublemaker.
“You said when you’re awake, you dream of being invisible,” Dr. Rivers cut in. “What about when you’re asleep? What do you dream about then?”
I wanted to hate him for asking that, and maybe part of me did. But I knew it was his job, and I knew he was trying to help. That he wanted to help. That he’d been trying to help, to make the nightmare end. And not just because it was his job, either. He wasn’t cold like that, like some of the others. He looked at me, but he listened, too. And I saw the compassion in his eyes,
the promise, that whatever I said, it would be okay. I was lucky Hannah—
I stopped that thought before it could go any further. I couldn’t let myself think about her, not here, in Group. I still couldn’t accept that she was gone.
It would have been easy to lie, to tell Dr. Rivers I didn’t dream, or maybe it was about something trite like flying or going to school naked. I didn’t want to tell him that on the rare occasions that I closed my eyes and slept, I was there again, in my bed. And that he was with me, the guy who made me visible. And that the dream would start to play, like a movie I couldn’t stop watching, and through the fog I was dying all over again…
Sometimes it all seemed the same, dreaming…dying…
Seconds piled up into minutes. All the while Dr. Rivers waited, quietly, patiently, watching me in that way of his, as if he were reaching for me—reassuring me—without so much as leaving his chair.
“I don’t sleep much anymore,” I finally answered, side-stepping the lie, and the truth. “Not like I used to.” I’d lock my door and do everything I could to avoid drifting off. Music. Yoga. Pacing. Sometimes I’d take the little blue pills the doctor gave me, the ones that sent me so deep I didn’t dream.
“It’s like I can’t let go,” I said. “Sleep’s more complicated than it used to be.”
“That’s perfectly normal,” he assured me, as he had so many times before. “There’s no other room you can use?”
I laughed out loud—Dr. Rivers had never been to my house.
Thank God.
“No,” I said simply.
He frowned.
I could have stopped there. It would have been easy. I’d admitted that I didn’t sleep much, so that could have put an end to the whole dreaming thing.
But somewhere inside me a door swung open, a door I’d been trying to hold closed, and now the truth was scraping through me, a truth I’d been trying to keep buried, to deny, to pretend was over and done with…
“Him,” I whispered, and with the words, my eyes burned. God, I wanted it to be over. I wanted the nightmare to be over so bad.
But I wasn’t sure it ever would be.
“When I close my eyes and fall away, into the darkness, he’s always there, waiting for me. I can hear him before I see him, his breathing…I can feel him…watching me.” Waiting. And then time would tilt backward, delivering me to that night all over again, and the night would become the dream and the dream the night, and I’d be living it all over again.
“And then what happens?” Dr. Rivers asked.
But I couldn’t see him anymore, even though I stared straight ahead. I was back in the room, my room, the one I’d had all my life, the darkness.
“What do you see?”
“Him. Coming for me. Crawling in my bed. His hand on my body—”
“Sounds pretty hot if you ask me.”
I swung toward Lexi.
Sweeping a long, silky strand of hair from her face, she smiled like we were BFFs sharing forbidden secrets. “Just sayin’.”
“Just don’t.”
That was Emily. Contempt glinted from her normally doe-like eyes—it was hard to believe she and Lexi had once been besties.
“Zoe.” I didn’t even realize Dr. Rivers had moved until he sat down next to me, narrowing the room, for that moment, to only the two of us. “You’re still reliving it,” he said.
I nodded. None of his impressive degrees were necessary to realize that.
“That’s perfectly normal.”
“I want it to stop.”
“It will, with time. The memories will fade. You’ll let go of that night and move on. What happened will lose its power over you. It’s over.”
That’s what L.T. said, too. It’s what he promised. “It doesn’t feel over. Sometimes I’d swear he’s still out there, watching me. Waiting.”
“You know that’s not true.”
“I know.”
Dr. Rivers took my hands into the warmth of his. “What you’re experiencing is normal for victims of crime.”
I’d been told that, too.
“Look on the bright side, Zo-Zo,” Lexi mocked, like she had a way of doing. I didn’t understand why Dr. Rivers hadn’t kicked her out of Group. “At least if you get scared, you get to call Detective Hottie to run to your rescue.” The dark brown of her eyes took on an evil little glimmer. “Almost makes me wish I had a stalker of my own.”
I wanted to smack her. Of course, I always wanted to smack her. She either made everything a joke, or about her. Or both.
“Like he’d believe a word you said,” Emily muttered before I could.
Not only was Detective Cooper aware of the dangerous game Lexi had played with Emily—for her own good, of course, no laws were broken—but he’d also been the responding officer the day Lexi’s younger sister found her unresponsive in the bathtub.
An accident, Lexi claimed.
Yeah, right.
Overdoses weren’t accidental.
I tended to doubt she actually meant to die—she was way too narcissistic for that—but she’d definitely meant to put the pills in her mouth.
My vote was on drama.
Alexis Abbott was all about the drama.
“So sanctimonious,” she snarled, narrowing her eyes at Emily. “You think you’re so much better than the rest of us, with your perfect little life and your perfect little boyfriend. But we all know what you used to dream about—what you almost did before you chickened out.”
I winced, not at all sure how Emily would respond, but she surprised me by…not responding at all. “At least I know when to stop. I found my line, and I didn’t cross it. Can you say the same?”
Lexi angled her chin. “I don’t want to say the same. I don’t want to stop. If you do, you never know what’s on the other side.”
Emily just smiled. “Maybe I don’t need to.”
“Maybe I do,” Lexi said. “Maybe I’m not content to waste my life standing in place, too scared to see if there’s something better. Maybe I’m not afraid of my dreams like the rest of you are. Maybe I want them to come true—maybe I want to make them come true. Maybe I—”
She stopped, her perfectly-lined mouth still open, her perfectly-straight chocolate brown hair framing her face, frozen for a second, as if she’d just realized all that she’d said and had literally turned a switch, going from on to off.
I would have sworn I saw the faintest flicker of horror in her eyes.
“What dreams, Lexi?” Dr. Rivers asked, the gentle quiet of his voice taking away the sharp edges of silence. “What dreams do you want to make come true?”
Oh, yeah. Score one for Dr. Soul Gazer.
Slowly her mouth closed, the brief lapse in control replaced by the cool Lexi-esque poise I’d come to know well. “Nothing specific. Just dreams in general.”
She was so lying, and we all knew it.
“Waking dreams,” Dr. Rivers persisted. “—or sleeping dreams?”
The corners of her mouth lifted. “What? You want to know if I dream about a man coming into my bed, too, doc?”
I could feel them the second I reached the park, the people around me, watching. Keep walking, I told myself. Down the path. Toward the clearing. It was no big deal. Parks were public spaces. Of course I wasn’t the only one there. Of course people saw me.
Tucked against the backdrop of the Flatirons, Chautauqua was less than two miles from downtown Boulder, but a world onto itself. My happy place, I couldn’t help but think, going down on my knee to angle my new Nikon SLR just so, to capture the waving yellow prairie flowers in the clearing, framed by two old, decaying pines. I loved the juxtaposition, shadow versus light, stillness versus the explosion of color, life…versus death.
Towering ponderosa surrounded me, tall, ancient sentinels rising up against the postcard-perfect blue sky. Slants of sunlight cut through the branches. Birds sang. A soft breeze whispered. Off to my left three little girls blew bubbles in the tall grass. Two teenage boys t
hrew Frisbee. Closer, a hiker with a blond ponytail and a dark blue backpack paused to look down at his phone. There was a young couple holding hands—
I’m not sure what exactly made me lower my camera and slide my hand toward my side pocket as I turned around. Maybe a sound, a shift in the shadows. Or maybe it was the sensation that crawled through me, like a cloud drifting across the sun.
A man and woman stood a few feet away, dressed in khaki shorts and white t-shirts, his hair military short, hers long and red and whipping in the breeze. Both wore sunglasses—but I didn’t need to see their eyes to know that they were watching me.
Be normal, I told myself. It was no big deal. Be friendly. Once, before that cold April night, I’d spent countless afternoons like this.
“Hi,” I said.
The guy stepped forward, and I realized it wasn’t just his hair that looked military. It was his entire body—shoulders, abs, legs—all tight and muscular. “Nice day.”
I smiled. “It is.”
He didn’t smile back.
“You look so familiar,” the woman said, slipping up beside the man. “But I can’t figure out why.”
In that moment, I was so glad for the cadet hat that hid my almost-white blond hair. I’d come close to dyeing it dark brown, but Dr. Rivers had talked me out of it.
“I get that a lot,” I said, pretending like people recognizing me was no big deal. “Who knows.” But even as I tried to blow it off, I could feel the man’s stare, could feel it slip over every inch of my body.
“Your tattoo,” he said.
Automatically my hand found my neck, the iridescent dragonfly inked at the base of my throat—but the damage had been done.
The woman stepped closer. “Oh-h-h, look at it!”
“Very distinctive,” the guy said.
And I knew. I knew that he’d just realized why I looked familiar, even if he wasn’t saying anything. I also knew not everyone believed I had nothing to do with what happened, that Tucker Cole attacked me. I’d heard the whispers, the victim blaming…insinuations that maybe I’d either led him on and invited his advances, or made the whole thing up.
