But I didn't have time to worry about Brandy's breakdown. I needed to save Lily, so I started running toward the house as fast as I could.
CHAPTER 47
Lily
Ten years ago,I had what most people would consider a charmed life. I was genuinely happy, and I had a promising future ahead of me. My family was close, and we loved each other. On Sunday, my dad used to cook pancakes so my mom could work on her garden. Leo and I used to argue over the simplest things, like who got the last piece of bacon. We took monthly trips to the beach, where Leo would swim while I collected shells, and Kyle would drive down to meet us, bringing his terrible homemade sandwiches that we'd eat anyway while watching the sunset.
I had a boyfriend who looked at me like someone who looked at the stars for the first time, parents who still held hands after twenty years of marriage, and a brother who was my best friend and biggest protector. I was planning to study medicine, maybe become a surgeon. I wanted to help people. I had so much love inside me that I shared it everywhere.
It was the kind of life you see in movies, imperfect in small, endearing ways but solid. Safe. The kind of life where your biggest worry is whether you'll get into your first-choice college or if the boy you like will ask youto prom.
I wouldn't have traded that life for anything because everything felt possible, everything felt secure.
Until someone posted a video out of revenge.
The footage contained nothing that should have been shocking in a rational world. Just two teenage boys loving each other deeply. My brother and his best friend were caught in a moment of vulnerability. But Leo wasn't ready for the consequences of being outed. His life became a living hell overnight.
People started making cruel jokes about him. They shamed him for "deceiving" his girlfriend, as if love were something you could control or fake. They whispered behind his back and snickered when he passed. And eventually, when the cruelty of words wasn't enough, some of them started hitting him.
I watched helplessly as my brother's light slowly dimmed. The boy who used to laugh until he couldn't breathe, who would sneak into my room during thunderstorms even as a teenager, who taught me how to throw a perfect spiral and always laugh when I lost at video games, that boy was disappearing a little more each day. Nothing I did could bring back his smile. Nothing I said could ease his pain. I felt powerless in trying to protect the person I loved most.
On the night of Saturday, February 21st, my brother tried to end his life with pills because the weight of the world had become too much to bear. Luckily, I found him in time and helped him expel the medication from his system. Through his tears, he told me he couldn't exist in a world where people as cruel as Oliver Adams were allowed to hurt innocent people.
So I decided to confront Oliver myself.
I wanted to threaten to send him to jail for the video he had spread of my brother, and use his fear to make him disappear from our lives forever.
I waited until Leo fell into an exhausted sleep, then quietly took Dad's car keys and drove to Oliver's house at 10:00 PM.
Oliver had always made me nervous in a bad way. He was constantly making passive-aggressive comments disguised as jokes, always finding excuses to invade my personal space, constantly touching my hair or shoulder without permission in ways that made me feel small.
But I forced myself to be brave because Leo needed someone to fight for him.
When Oliver opened the door, I screamed at his face about everything I thought about him and told him that I was going to report him for the crime he committed and for the bullying.
But he just laughed in my face.
He told me I was nobody, that no one would believe a word I said, and that there was nothing I could do to save my "freak" brother. The cruelty in his voice, the way he dismissed Leo's humanity so easily, made something snap inside me. I lost control and slapped him across the face, telling him I hoped he rotted in hell.
That's when his mask completely fell away.
He grabbed me by the throat, his fingers digging into my windpipe until I couldn't breathe. I tried to fight back, clawing at his hands, but he was stronger than me. He dragged me to Dad's car, threw open the back door, and shoved me inside.
For a moment, I thought it was over. I thought he was just trying to scare me.
But then he climbed in after me, and my nightmare truly began. Oliver raped me that night.
I'd never felt so dirty, so utterly broken, in my entire life. For years afterward, I would wake up screaming from the same nightmare. When stress overwhelms me even now, I sometimes feel like I'm suffocating, just like I was pinned beneath him in that backseat. I can't handle enclosed spaces. I've never been able to have a normal romantic relationship because I can't trust anyone with that kind of vulnerability. I preferbeing alone because I feel safer without anyone around me. I decided not to study medicine because being around a lot of strangers made me nervous.
Oliver didn't just destroy my family. He destroyed me, too.
And no matter how hard I fought, I couldn't stop him from taking everything that mattered.
When he finished, he made the fatal mistake of stepping out onto the street to smoke a cigarette, acting as if he'd just done something as mundane as taking out the trash.
I was still in the backseat, bleeding and shaking, when rage began to burn through the trauma. I climbed into the driver's seat, trembling, and started the engine.
I hit the gas and aimed straight for him.
