Count the scars on my knuckle—seven. The files on my dash—four.Focus on what’s real, not what’s lost.
“Do you think she was involved?” I ask, already knowing the answer.
Roman lets out a huff of air. “Have you seen her, Val?”
Of course I’ve seen her. I may have forgotten the first seventeen years of my life, but I’ll never forget the haunted look in her eyes when she saw me tonight.
Or the way my body responded to her.
Like it knew her.
Like it craved her.
“I don’t know what she was like as a child, V, but she’s barely a hundred pounds soaking wet. The injuries you sustained—I doubt they came from her. Even if she had a baseball bat, a golf club—hell, she could’ve had a hatchet—she couldn’t have done the damage you sustained. The force of those blows? Those came from full-grown men. Mom saw at least two of them attacking you.”
My gut twists.
I hate thinking about the recovery from that night. I hate even more that I can’t recall anything about it. Who did that to me, and why?
“Fuck.”
“Everything we know about her matches what’s in your journal, Valen.”
It’s suddenly too fucking hot in this car.
Apparently, once Aunt Vivi had custody of me, she hated sending me to my mom at Roots of Salvation in the summers and school breaks, but it was court-ordered. According to my cousins, something changed that last summer. Before she dropped me off, she gave me a tiny notebook that I kept hidden. I was supposed to use it to record anything and everything Vivi could take to the court to get me out of there.
I was only supposed to be there for a few weeks, a month tops.
At least that’s what Roman’s older brother Grant has told me. I don’t remember any of it, but I’ve memorized every word I wrote in that journal. I was told there were others, but no one knows where they are.
“You called her Honeybee,” Roman reminds me.
Heat blooms in my chest and spreads outward—like a gunshot wound, but this feeling is different. It’s not a painful heat. It’s gentle, almost…soothing.
“I know,” I choke out.
“You don’t use nicknames, Valen. Not anymore. Code names on missions, yes. Not nicknames. Not since your incident.” I can feel him scrutinizing me. “You called the girl in your notebooks Honeybee too. And I…I remember how you used to talk about her. You loved her then, you protected her.”
“I know,” I say again.
“Like it or not, V, I think she’s the key to unlocking all your secrets.”
I look up at her house again. A sliver of light streams out of the upstairs window, showcasing her silhouette that hasn’t moved.
“She doesn’t sleep,” I say.
“Neither do you.”
I can’t tell him what haunts me—the fucked-up pieces that stab at me in the dark. No one should have that shit in their head. Especially when I don’t even know if it’s real. My doctors are convinced I’ve made it all up in my head. They don’t believe they’re memories. But fuck, I think they might be.
“If she’s the key to unlocking my secrets, where’s that going to leave any of us when they all come out?”
“Here,” he says, as though it explains everything. “We’ll be here for you.” He looks up to the window. “And for her, if that’s what you want. Whatever happened that summer, Valen, it’s left scars—deep, ugly, brutal scars—on more people than we can begin to even imagine. The weight of it may sit on your shoulders.” He turns to give me his full attention. “But it’s probably on hers as well.”
“What am I supposed to do now?”
“Now—”
