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Asher gave us a funny look and ventured farther into the room. “I’m good to go,” he told Beckett, slipping a matching mask over his head, this one with purple neon Xs on it.
Beckett nodded and moved around me, heading for the door.
“Are you sure you don’t want me and Lily to come to the party with you guys? We can be the designated drivers, or something.” My appeal fell on deaf ears, which I already knew it would. I’d been trying to get Asher to take me and Lily all week.
“No need, Evie. Have a good night,” Asher said and ducked out of the kitchen.
Beckett hung back, staring at me with that unreadable, spooky mask. “Have fun, Cinderella. No ball for you tonight… maybe next time.” He chuckled and headed out.
Asshole.
Beckett
SEVENTEEN YEARS OLD
I poppeda small white pill out of the orange bottle Colette had given me and swallowed it. I needed the synthetic calm that the pills brought. I didn’t like taking things. Sure, smoking pot and drinking was pretty run-of-the-mill for any high school student, but anything more and it would affect my clarity.
That was exactly the reason Colette had started giving them to me. Fucking up a young mind with creeping inappropriateness, designed to instill shame and guilt, had an effect in the end. The sophisticated ways that Colette had trapped me and made me feel powerless and afraid to tell the truth had been masterful. It was only as I got older I started to fight against her mind games. She’d held the threat of breaking my father’s heart over me for a long time, before I’d decided to fight back.
Ever since I had said no to her. In retaliation, she’d paraded me around her friends, usually when they were drunk and handsy.
Sure, some guys might wonder what I was complaining about, getting felt up by cougar housewives with their gym-tight bodies, but I didn’t care what anyone else thought. These women turned my stomach with their fake tanned skin and sharp manicurednails. I hated the smell of their cloying perfumes and their emotionlessness Botoxed faces.
I’d kill them all if I had the chance, but then, I’d lose my reason for living.
On the ice, all of that fell away, and I was free. I crashed and burned through games, smashing and pounding players into the boards, and it only made me better. It was a game designed for my fury at the world, and I wanted to play it forever.
So, I didn’t kill them, even though they were basically begging me to. What a surprise the desperate housewives of Hade Harbor liked to be choked and bruised. I took my violence out on them, and they loved it. It only made my self-loathing deeper. I hurt them, and they begged for more. My moral fabric and understanding of the world were shaped by the corrupt, depraved morals of my stepmother and her coterie of predators. I knew it and had finally gotten my head together enough to make it stop.
Tonight, it ended.
I heard my father’s car pull up, and then the door slam. I was sitting at my open window, letting the cold, wintry air blow across my body. It was numbing, and I liked the feeling. I stood and grabbed the shiny little memory stick that had taken me far too long to think of. When it came to Colette, she was trickier than I’d ever expected, and my adolescent mind hadn’t been able to keep up with her, until now.
I headed downstairs.
Soren had just entered his office. I knocked and went in.
“Beckett, this is a surprise. Don’t you have practice tonight?”
“That’s Wednesdays,” I reminded him. I could hardly expect him to know. He was never home.
My relationship with my father had slowly eroded to that of a colleague or acquaintance in the years since my mother died. He didn’t want to be at Cliff Point or see the boy who reminded him of the woman he’d once loved. I got that. But when he’d withdrawn, he’d left me at the mercy of Colette. The hard truth stirred anger and resentment in my gut. My father had let all of this happen. Now, tonight, I’d give him one chance to fix it before I wrote him off forever.
“I have to show you something.”
He was looking at his phone, distracted. He waved a hand toward me. “Go ahead.”
His laptop was already open, so I plugged in the memory stick and pressed play on the video, then retreated to the other side of the desk. I didn’t want to see. I couldn’t bear it. This was it. My worst, most shameful secret exposed for my father to see. I felt anxious, despite the sedative I’d taken.
Soren glanced at the screen and frowned. He leaned in and watched, his expression turning intent.
“Who is this?” he asked after a moment.
He was probably still at the beginning of the spliced footage, so I took a guess.
“Colette’s friend, Rachel Evanston. This was last year.”
My father was quiet for a long time. I saw the moment then the footage changed to a different perpetrator. He straightened up and slammed the laptop closed.
