I still feel her.
Like an ache in the back of my teeth. Like a ghost walking her manicured kitchen, locket warm against her throat, listening to my message until her ears ring with it.
“I’m coming back for you,” I’d told her.
That wasn’t a threat.
It was a promise I made years ago, lying on that shitty mattress in my cell, staring at the ceiling, counting the days in cycles of court transcripts and her name scratched into the underside of my bunk.
Scarlett wanted to save me.
She failed.
Now it’s my turn.
I’m going to save her from this pretty little lie she’s living.
Even if I have to burn Noah out of it.
Even if I have to drag her kicking and screaming through every memory she tried to bury.
Even if she hates me for it.
I bend, pick up my phone, and hit play on her voicemail one more time, just to hear it—the line that makes everything else worth it.
I still love you.
I close my eyes.
Let it sink in.
Let it settle.
Let it chain itself around every ugly thing I’ve become.
“Yeah,” I murmur, voice low, sure, already hearing how I’ll make her say it when she’s sober. “You’re going to tell me that again, little sister.” I slip the envelope into my jacket. “And this time,” I add, heading for the door, “you won’t have the excuse of being drunk.”
I don’t leave right away.
My hand is on the doorknob, jacket half-pulled on, envelope pressed flat against my chest like a second heartbeat — and something stops me.
A pull.
A tether.
Her.
I turn my head, and my eyes land on the space above the mattress where the wallpaper’s been ripped away. I did that the first night I got out — tore at it with my bare hands until my fingers bled. Underneath it, in black paint I stole from a construction site, I wrote one word:
SUMMER.
Big.
Ugly.
Obsessive.
Too much.
