My feet move. Gravel's too loud under my boots. The first step creaks.
The second one.
The third.
I get halfway up, and my hand locks on the stair rails.
The door's right there. Yellow light bleeding out from underneath. She will be right there—less than twenty feet. I could stay around until she gets back from her drive.
I could say—what? What the fuck do I say?
My throat closes.
Can't breathe right.
My hands are shaking on the rail, blood from my knuckles smearing the metal.
Five minutes pass. Maybe ten. I'm just standing here halfway up.
Every time I try to move, I know I have to tell her why I saw a bruise I put on her skin and couldn't breathe.
What if she won't forgive me?
What if she realizes I'm just as damaged as she thinks she is?
My hand won't let go of the rail.
I step back down.
Then another.
Then I'm on the gravel, walking to my truck, and I hate myself so completely I can't see straight.
The engine turns over. I sit there with my hands bloody on the steering wheel, staring up at her window.
I drive away.
Finn's trailer's dark when I pull up. The couch is already made up—has been for three nights now. Three nights of running.
I don't bother with the lights. Just sit on the couch and stare at the ceiling, trying not to think about Scout's face Saturday night. The way she'd smiled at me. Asked is this okay and I'd said yes because it was—it was more than okay, it was—
Then the bruise.
Twelve years old. My mother's arms. Purple-yellow marks shaped like fingers.
I fell, she'd say.I'm so clumsy.
The sound she made when he shoved her into the wall. Not a scream. A gasp. Small. Expected.
I swore I'd never—
But Scout. The bruise on Scout.
I close my eyes, but it won't help. Finn's words keep looping through my head:She's upstairs thinking she's broken, and you're down here too scared to face her.
She thinks Evan was right about her.
Evan, who convinced her she was too much, too needy, too broken to love. And I've spent three days proving him right.
