Page 175 of Top Shelf

At the side of the house, he stops. “Right there.” He pointstoward the spot in the grass directly in front of him. There’s no sign that a body ever lay there. The grass is no longer flattened.

I crouch, trying to picture what it must have looked like when they found me. My body lying there, unconscious.

“You were out cold,” Ronan says, voice distant as though he’s been pulled back to that night.

“It was clear something had happened to you,” Lucian adds. “But it was also clear that you fought back.”

“I did?” I glance up at him. I don’t remember that.

“Oh yeah.” He smirks, pride lining his expression as he stares at the spot in the grass. “Your nails were broken, and I remember seeing bruises on your knuckles like you’d tried to punch your attacker.”

Didn’t Isaac have scratches on him when he came to practice the week after?Silas writes.

Ronan and Lucian need to think for a moment before Lucian’s brows jump. “He did!”

Ronan frowns. “Didn’t he tell everyone his mom’s cat scratched him?”

“That fucking asshole!” Lucian sneers. “Fuck I should have tackled him harder. He deserves to be pissing blood for the next month.”

“I think you did more than enough damage,” I drawl. “To himandto yourself.”

He makes a noise of protest, which he quickly cuts off with one look from me.

Focusing back on the spot where Isaac left me, I run my fingers through the grass. It’s cold…damp.

For a second, nothing happens.

Then—

A fragment of…something…tugs at the back of my mind.

I grasp onto it, wrenching it forward.

Darkness. Fear.

Broken fragments of a scuffle.

“You bitch!” A male voice, hot and angry. “You scratched me!”

I’m shoved so hard that my knees hit the ground with a sickening crack.

My hand jerks away from the grass. Startled, I fall back onto my ass.

“Are you okay?” Lucian quickly reaches for me, pulling me to my feet and tucking me in against his chest.

“Y-yeah. Yes. I’m fine.”

I frown, staring unseeingly at the spot in the grass where the worst experience of my life took place, but all I hear is that voice.

Isaac’svoice.

Perhaps I inserted his voice into that memory because of what happened tonight. What we discovered…

…But I don’t think so.

That felt real.

More real than any other memory from that night.