by Nicole Fox
“Not good at all,” J.C. agrees.
“I didn’t bring you here to get your fucking input,” I snarl. “I brought you here for your help. We need to get him out of here. J.C., you grab his legs. Caleb, get his arms. I’ll go pull the car up front.”
“Why do we have to do the heavy lifting?” J.C. complains.
“Just shut the fuck up and do what I told you.”
He keeps grumbling, but they both do what I said, hoisting Dallas’s limp body up and carrying him down the stairs.
I go ahead of them, making sure everyone else is either gone or unconscious. No need to add eyewitnesses to the list of problems I have to solve. On the way out, I find Viktor and Noah slumped on the downstairs couches. I wake them up and make them come with me.
I bring the Escalade around and we throw Dallas in the backseat. Caleb climbs up front, while the others clamber into the back. Then I peel out of the driveway.
It’s a quiet drive at first. Each of us nursing our hangovers. J.C., of course, is the one to break the silence.
“That motherfucker is heavy,” he sighs, rubbing at the back of his neck. “You gonna tell us what happened, Finn?”
“Nope.”
“So we’re just accomplices to a crime we know nothing about.”
I tighten my hand on the steering wheel. “I’m handling it.” Even with my sunglasses on against the early morning glare, I feel exposed. I’m not sure why.
“And the girl? What happened with that last night?”
“I’m handling that, too.” J.C. is really starting to piss me off.
And now Caleb decides to chime in. He frowns at me. “What does that mean? We were all there that night. Shouldn’t we have some say in what happens to her? I mean, she deserves—”
I cut him off when I reach over the center console and seize his t-shirt in a fist. “I told you I’m fucking handling it.”
He holds up his hands in surrender. Even Caleb knows not to fight back against me. “For fuck’s sake, don’t get your dick in a twist, Finn.”
“Seriously, bro. Calm down.” J.C. claps his hand on my shoulder from the second row, but I shrug it off. “We trust you.”
They all nod in agreement, but I can see them looking to one another, trying to gauge what they’re each thinking.
I growl and press the accelerator harder. I don’t care if they trust me or not. The reality is that I will be the only one dealing with Lily DeVry, regardless of what they think.
I pity any one of them who tries to stop me.
I stop the car at the exit to the hospital. It’s still a few hundred yards to the actual front doors, but I don’t want to risk us getting picked up on any security cameras.
“Set him up behind the sign,” I order. No one is in a mood to argue after my outburst, so they all do what I say.
We leave Dallas propped up between the hedges on the backside of the sign for the county hospital. I check his pulse one more time before we leave. Still beating.
Too bad.
On the way home, I stop at a pay phone.
“911, what’s your emergency?” the operator asks in an urgent tone.
I pitch my voice as flat and Texan as I can get it. “There’s a boy behind the sign at the county hospital. He’s hurt bad. Someone oughta go look after him.”
“Sir, what’s your name—”
But I’m already hanging up. My work here is done.
Time to go back to my main concern…
Lily DeVry.
12
Lily
I wake up in Finn’s bed. For one long breath, my memory is blank.
Then it all comes rushing in. Everything that happened.
Finn. Cora.
And Dallas. Oh God, Dallas.
No matter how hard I try to drown out the voice in my head, it comes back, repeating the same thing over and over again.
Dallas Martin is dead.
At least, that’s what my worst fears are saying.
Truth be told, I don’t know anything for certain. Finn never said he killed him. I asked him, and he said it didn’t matter. He didn’t say he did or didn’t do it.
Dallas was at a party. Maybe he drank too much or overdosed or … something. Maybe it was all an accident, and Finn wanted to keep it quiet so he wouldn’t get in trouble.
Worse will happen to you if you tell anyone.
I wish I knew what to believe.
Finn is sleeping next to me. He doesn’t have a shirt on, and his arm is thrown over his head, lying across the dark pillowcase. He looks so peaceful.
Beautiful, even.
Then, I feel the faint stickiness across my chest, and the crust of tears at my eyes. And I know.
It was all real.
Everything.
I try to get out of bed silently, but Finn wakes up and rolls over, his eyes opening instantly. There’s no sign of sleep in them, and suddenly I’m not sure whether he’s been awake the entire time.
“Leaving so soon?” he purrs sarcastically.
“I have to get home.”
He nods and sits up, crawling across the bed towards me.
His muscles contract as he moves. He looks like a tiger. Like a lethal predator, hunting down prey.
He reaches out and drags a single finger from my bare shoulder down to my elbow. Goose bumps rise in the wake of his touch.
He smiles when he notices my body reacting to him. “Just remember what we talked about.”
“What did we talk about?” I ask.
He raises a dark brow. “I want to make sure we understand one another.”
I frown. “It’s hard to understand you when everything you say is a riddle.”
Suddenly, Finn grips my elbow and pulls me against him until my body is flush with his. His other arm circles around my waist, crushing me to him, forcing the air out of my lungs.
“Then let me make myself clear,” he said. He bends low, his dark hair falling over his forehead. “You, Lily DeVry, belong to me now. Speak a word of what you saw last night, and I’ll strip you of more than your innocence. Do you understand?”
I don’t know how I’ve found myself here. How or why Finn has chosen me. Was this something he did with all the girls?
“Do you understand?” Finn repeats.
“Please let go of me,” I whisper.
His jaw clenches, and his cheeks flush with angry color. Maybe he’s about to do something worse.
Then, all at once, the emotion is gone.
Once again, he is a neutral slate, and his eyes are a cold, flat blue.
“I hope, for your sake, that you do understand. Or else I’ll be forced to do things to you no one else is willing to say out loud.”
“Like kill me?” The question bursts out of me before I can think better of it.
But I want to know. I have to know.
If Finn really did kill Dallas, then I need to know so I can figure out what the fuck I’m going to do next. I need to know the cards in my hand before I decide how to play.
“Is that what you mean? Will you kill me like you killed Dallas?”
Finn’s gaze darts away for just a second—a hesitation of some kind—before he shakes his head. “Dallas isn’t dead. He just got hurt. Hurt himself, actually. We took him to the hospital this morning.”
I stay silent. I don’t know if I believe him or not. But what choice do I have?
“I’m not a killer. I’m not nearly that merciful. I’ll do horrible things to you, Lily. But you’ll like it. You’ll like all of it. You’ll beg for more.”
A shiver runs down my back, and I know Finn can feel me tremble. He lets go of my arm and rolls back.
“By the time all is said and done, you’ll beg for it.”
He doesn’t stop me when I swing my legs out of bed and leave in a hurry. I’m tempted to check and see if Dallas is still where I left him last night, but I can’t.
Whether he is or isn’t, I don’t know what I’d do.
13
I spend the weekend in bed, eating when my mom brings me food and watching whatever she puts on the motel’s crappy television.
“What do you want to do?”
My head snaps up, and my mom is standing in the doorway, light from outside shining around her and illuminating the dark motel room.
“What?”
“Today,” she clarifies. “What do you want to do today? You’ve been a bum all weekend. I thought maybe we could go to the running trail. I won’t run, obviously, but I’ll walk around the park while you run. I could use the exercise.”
Mom is already thinner than normal. If anything, she needs to sit down and eat, not more exercise.
I shake my head and pull the covers higher. “I don’t feel well. I just want to lie here.”
“Not gonna happen, sweetheart. You need some sunshine. Up and at ‘em.”
I groan, but she doesn’t even bat an eye.
Maybe she’s right though. Maybe a little exercise will help clear these horrible thoughts out of my brain.
After what happened over the summer, Mom considered moving us out of Ravenlake altogether. We moved here with my dad when I was still young.
Then, when he died, everything fell apart. We only stayed because it felt impossible to leave. To move off the couch. To move out of the house we’d all shared. To move on.
But when the bank foreclosed on the house, we were forced to start fresh. We moved into a shitty apartment and my mom worked hourly jobs to get by, all while dealing with her own grief.
We weren’t equipped to move on, but we were in stasis. An endless loop of getting by, until the routine became easy.
Then The Incident this summer happened, and our routine was shattered.
Just when Mom was applying for fast food jobs several towns over, trying to figure out which pieces from her dwindling jewelry collection would be enough for a down payment, Ravenlake Prep called.
Mom had applied for an open position there years before and been roundly rejected after her first interview. Suddenly, the school where Nico Barber had gone was offering her a follow-up interview.
As much as I wanted my mom to refuse it, it was solid hourly pay plus free tuition and schoolbooks for me, and she seemed so happy about our good fortune that I couldn’t say no when she asked me if I was okay with it.
The truth is that I am not okay with it. Especially not after what happened with Finn.
In fact, I’m very fucking far from okay. And I don’t see that changing anytime soon.
But lying in bed won’t change that. And Dr. Sharon has been very insistent that I “reclaim running for myself,” as she puts it. That’s therapist-babble for facing down what happened over the summer.
So, I lace up my running shoes and get in the car.
It’s a short drive over to the park. Mom puts the car in park and waves goodbye as I take off down the nearby trail.
It is a large circuit around a park with various trails that split off into the trees before reconnecting with the bigger trail later on.
Even when we lived on the other side of town, I would take the bus to get here and run on the trail. It was better than running through our neighborhood, and being surrounded by the press of foliage and the shade of the trees helped me think.
Once upon a time, I liked that isolation.
Now, I keep to the main path.
Running has always been my escape. I only took up art because I couldn’t physically run for hours every single day. I had to find a less strenuous outlet, but running is still my favorite. It is my first love, the enduring constant in my life.
There is a large hill in the middle that keeps half of the park hidden, but otherwise, I can see everything from the main trail. It isn’t quite as calming as running through the trees, but I can’t be in any enclosed space now without my heart racing and my breath quickening.
I know the exact path I took into the trees that night months ago.
As I pass it now, even in the light of a full Texas autumn day, I can almost hear the owls hooting in the trees the way they were. I can almost smell the dew that was gathering.
Looking up, I can see the sky. It is bright and blue right now.
But back then, it was jet-black, washed clean of stars by the city lights.
The path in question—the one that led to the worst night of my life—appears to my right. It is a well-worn dirt trail, taken by countless others over the years, and as I pass it now, I can feel my body turn towards it.
As if it wants to go that way, for some masochistic reason.
But I resist.
I don’t want to relive that night ever again.
I turn right and stay on the main trail, and do my best to breathe through the sudden tightness in my chest.
I’m fine. My legs are working. My blood is pumping. And I’m alone. No one is closing in behind me. No one is chasing me through the trees.
I’m fine.
I’m fine.
I’m fine.
But it’s not enough. The memory comes crashing back over me. Worse now than it was when I ran into Finn in the hallway at school yesterday.
It’s dark. Trees all around me. I’m sweating, running.
I think I’m lost. I don’t usually run in the dark, so I might’ve missed a turn somewhere, and now I’m not sure if I’m running back towards home or just getting deeper and deeper into the woods.
I can’t hear much over the sound of my own breathing and the crunch of the ground beneath my feet…
Until the sound of a girl’s pained whimper stops me cold.
Then, I see the girl.
She is bent over the bench seat on the other side of the table with a naked guy standing behind her. There is another naked guy in front of her. Two or three more standing around waiting their turn.
Her mouth is open. It looks like she’s screaming.
“Stop!” I yell the words out loud. In the present—not in the memory. My heart is pounding way harder than it ought to be.
I press a hand to my heart and try to remember where I am.
It’s midafternoon. The sun is out.
I’m fine. I’m safe. I’m alone.
I look around to be sure, and I am alone.
I release a shaky breath. My heart beat climbs back down and the cold sweat ceases.
But I don’t feel like running anymore. I’ll go wait for Mom at the car.
Turning around, I do a slow jog back to where we parked.
Dr. Sharon wondered in our first therapy session after The Incident whether details about that night might come back to me.
“Sometimes, in traumatic situations, the brain wipes your memory as a form of protection. It is your body’s way of protecting you from the trauma,” she said. “Sometimes, though, over time, those memories come back. I just don’t want you to be alarmed if you start remembering things.”
I wish I remembered something new, though. The details are always the same in these panic-induced flashbacks. The faces around the girl are still a mystery to me. Who else was there? Who else attacked me?
As much as I want to remember who attacked me and why—did I run? Did I scream? Did they try to attack me, too?—I don’t care.
It won’t matter, anyway.
I remembered one face, and it didn’t do any good. Despite going directly to the police, Nico Barber received a slap on the wrist, and his parents rushed him overseas to a luxurious boarding school. Hardly a punishment.
The police never found the girl I swore I saw, so they didn’t have any proof of rape. Just proof that I’d been beaten and knocked unconscious. And apparently, my life isn’t worth more than Nico Barber’s. Not to the Ravenlake police, anyway.
I’m almost back at the parking lot now. I see Mom seated at a picnic table with her back to me. She must’ve finished up her walk early, too.
But when I get close, she jumps up, startled.
She wipes at her eyes, but no amount of wiping can hide
the obvious signs of distress. Her eyes are bloodshot and swollen. Fresh, wet tears coat her cheeks.
“Mom?”
She waves me away and tries to smile, but her lip trembles. “I’m fine.”
I recognize the words for what they are: a lie. I know because I just repeated that lie to myself a thousand times.
She’s not fine. I’m not fine. None of us are fine.
I’m sweaty, but I wrap my arms around my mother’s trembling frame. She doesn’t resist the comfort. She lays her head on my shoulder and lets out a sob.
“I’m the mom. I’m not supposed to cry.”
“Says who?” I ask, smoothing down her hair.
I look over her head and see her cell phone sitting on top of the picnic table. The screen shows a picture of her and my dad when they were younger.
My mom and I look so much alike that, if it wasn’t for the frosted lip gloss and white eye shadow, I could almost believe it was me. We have the same long blonde hair, the same heart-shaped face, and the same crooked smile that tilts up on the right side a bit more than the left.
I can’t look at my dad.
He hardly aged over the years. His hair thinned, but his face was timeless to me.
Looking at him at twenty was akin to looking at him at thirty-five, and truthfully, I don’t want to see pictures of him at any age. Not when so many other things are going on.
If I do, I’ll be weeping right alongside my mother, and I can’t do that. She needs me to be her rock right now.
She has grown thinner over the years—this last year more than ever before. My mom doesn’t run or exercise the way I do, but we are almost the same size. Except, where I’m strong and curved, she is sharp bones.
There have been many times over the last few months where she didn’t eat.
Especially while I was in the hospital.
“Let’s go get something to eat, dear,” she says, pulling away from my hug and patting me on the cheek. “We can do pizza or hamburgers or ice cream. Whatever you want.”
“We don’t have to,” I say. “If you want to save the money, then I’m fine eating a sandwich.”
She shushes me with a frown. “No, we both deserve a treat after this week. My vote is ice cream and French fries.”
