Chapter One
Viv
The knock comes at midnight. Quick raps on the door that send me scrambling off the bed and rolling underneath on the dirty motel floor.
My heart races as I peer out, waiting for the door to burst open and for Rick to storm in. Any moment now. Knowing my mother’s boyfriend, he’ll probably start kicking at the door and yelling until I either let him in or risk disturbing everyone in the motel.
How did he find me?
Oh my God, did he follow me to the motel? Or did the lady at the front desk sell me out? I gave her the last of my cash, telling her to call the room if anyone other than my brother came looking for me. And when I called Knox this afternoon, sobbing and asking him to come get me, he was certain he wouldn’t arrive until tomorrow morning. He asked me to wait for him, and I agreed to be patient.
I’ve waited for ten years. What’s one more night?
A whimper slips out of me when the knock comes again, my heart pounding in my ears. I know I should get up and look around for something to use as a weapon for when Rick doesstorm in, but…I can’t make my body move. I can’t think beyond the fear choking me, and the truth is, I’m tired.
Tired of fighting and hiding.
Isn’t it enough that I’ve spent my entire childhood and teenage years trying to take up as little space as possible, staying as quiet as a mouse and doing everything that was asked of me? I got a part-time job as a waitress when I was fourteen, so I wouldn’t have to stress my mother with the task of taking care of me. I was good. No, I was perfect. As perfect as a child can be to the people who raised her.
And now, stuck in a dingy motel with only a backpack full of whatever I could grab as I fled my mother’s house…I’m back to being that terrified child who hid under beds to escape reality.
I drop my forehead to the cold floor to tune out the sound, the way I used to do as a kid. Whenever my mother would fight with whatever boyfriend she was with at the time, my big brother would place his palms over my ears to shut out all the noise.
“Close your eyes and count to a hundred, Vivi,” Knox would tell me. “When you’re done, it will be over.”
It was never over. I could still hear the shouting and the cursing from the next room, but having my big brother around always offered me a sense of peace. Now, I only have the memory of his words to comfort me.
I haven’t seen Knox in over a decade.
Ten years ago, my mother grabbed me and fled Chicago in an attempt to hide from some bad people she owed money to. She left Knox to deal with the wolves alone, and in doing so, robbed me of the one person who ever truly cared for me.
It wasn’t until years later that I got to hear my brother’s voice again on the phone. Under strict supervision. Before I got myown phone, Mother was always present for our calls, making sure I never went off script or revealed what city we were in. Knox wanted custody of me, but our mother wouldn’t hear of it.
I learned to accept it. To adapt. Hearing his voice and knowing he hadn’t paid for mother’s sins with his life was enough.
Knox promised to get me away from her as soon as I turned eighteen, and I had a plan in place to travel to him myself after my birthday. Except, the moment I announced that I was leaving, my mother caused a scene and Rick stole all the money I’d saved up, saying I owed them rent for all the years I’d leeched off them. It didn’t seem to matter that Knox had been sending money for years to support me. No, they just took it all.
Years of savings…gone in a flash.
And now, with Rick on the other side of the door, escape feels like a far-fetched dream.
Close your eyes, Vivi. Count to a hundred.
“One, two, three—”
“Hello?” Knock. “Is anyone in there?”
“Seven, eight, nine—”
A knock. “Vivienne?”
“Eleven, twelve, thirteen—”
“Vivi?”
I stop, my head whipping up so fast I knock it against the metal bedframe. “Ow,” I whimper, rubbing the spot. No one calls me Vivi but Knox. I don’t even think Rick knows my actual name. To him, I’m just “brat” or worse.
“Vivi?” The voice is gentler now, but it sounds nothing like my brother’s. Still, it soothes something in me, and before I know it, I’m pushing out from under the bed and tiptoeing to the door.The first thing I see through the peephole is a black jacket and not much of the man wearing it.
