“I’m not sure I’ll be ready to go back to how things were in a month, Adam.”
“What about ours?”
When I fell silent, unable to promise that, he frowned, trying to wrap his head around it. “Well, fine. It’s just one birthday. But you guys will get past this before our trip to Vegas, right?”
I sighed, forcing myself to consider that. We’d been talking about taking a trip to Vegas for our twenty-first birthdays, ever since Dad showed the three of us how to play Blackjack. We’d planned it years ago, a celebratory trip we’d take the summer we all turned twenty-one.
That was over two years away.
And I had to move on eventually. Practically living with Finn had helped me do that already, to a degree. It didn’t erase the hurt. It didn’t change the past, but…
I had hope that things would be okay. So, I gave Adam a small but encouraging smile.
“Yeah, I promise I won’t miss that.”
FRESHMAN YEAR OF COLLEGE, MAY 2018, AGE 19
I set my phone on the bedside table, the flashlight illuminating the contents in the drawer. I’d cracked it open, only far enough so that it wouldn’t squeak.
Slipping my fingers into the small gap I’d created, I searched for the items I’d hidden—wallet, keys, the little zippered clutch where I kept my favorite mementos. I gathered them one at a time, and then slowly eased the drawer shut.
I opened the small clutch as quietly as I could, pulling out the item I wanted.
It was silly—risky, even—but I needed it with me.
As I secured the clasp, I flinched at the cold metal against my skin, but my phone light flickered, signaling an incoming text message and distracting me. With any luck, it’d be Adam. I’d called him from the bathroom of the sleazy bar I’d gone to earlier tonight.
“I need you to pick me up tonight. My place. Midnight. Please come alone, and text me when you pull up. I’ll come out.”
Then, I’d hung up and rejoined my new, so-called friends, pretending everything was fine, even as I screamed internally. They’d all known. None of them had said a goddamn thing.
It didn’t matter now.
I refocused on my next step. If I took one at a time, I’d get out before he woke up.
He’d had bourbon tonight, and a jolt awake after a heavy pour of the hard stuff would end the same way it always did.
Until it got worse.
Clutching my keys tightly, I slid the biggest one between my pointer and middle finger. A trick my dad had taught me before I left for college. The key shifted between my sweaty fingers, butI tightened my grip and they stayed silent. I padded softly over the old floorboards, avoiding precarious spots prone to creaking.
I made it to the bedroom door.
In the darkened living room, I slipped on my shoes. With my free hand, I reached behind the couch, grabbing for the backpack I’d stowed there earlier. I came up empty.
“Looking for this?”
At the sound of his voice, I froze, fighting to keep my heart rate and my voice steady. “The remote? I think I dropped it.” I continued to reach as if searching for it. “I thought, maybe it fell behind the couch. Did you find it?”
While I pretended to search, I used my other hand, hidden by my body, to open my phone and click Adam’s name to call him.
“Not the remote.”
I closed my eyes as the phone began to ring, torn between relief and dread.
“But I did find the bag of things you packed.” Finn’s voice splintered through me like cracks on ice, preparing me for a nasty plunge beneath the frozen surface, down to chilling depths I hadn’t seen within him until it was too late.
He spoke with an eerie calm that only heightened the chill racing down my back. “You going somewhere, Addie?”
