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That’s when I notice he brought the journal down here with him. “What’s with that?” I ask, nodding my head to the book.
“I think you should read it. Because I only skimmed about ten pages and I’m ready to kill Damon myself. Did you know this was happening to her?”
My mind blanks out for a second, some long-forgotten memory bubbling up to the surface of being in their house one night. Unexpected and unwanted. A meeting, I think it was. Something went wrong with some other thing and I had to go there in the middle of the night. And I saw her. Just a flash of white running across the expansive back lawn, her nightgown trailing behind her like she was a comet.
She was running away.
I knew back then. I knew what he was doing to her.
“Some of it,” I admit.
AJ takes a bite of his sandwich and glares at me.
“I knew he was an asshole. I knew he passed her around. But it was mostly rumors, AJ.”
Mostly. Except for that night when his personal guards tackled her to the ground and she disappeared from view. Just… screams after that.
I was there long enough that I saw her being led back in after the men were done with her on the lawn. Her hair was a rat’s nest filled with grass clippings and twigs. And she was filthy. Dirt on her nightgown, which was ripped down the middle. Her face, her legs, her arms. All stained with dirt and grass.
“It was mostly rumors,” I say again. Because I felt… shame that night. Watching them rape her, then lead her back inside to her pretty prison. It stayed with me for a long time. And I’ve seen a lot of shit over the past several years. Almost all of it worthy of shame. But none of that other shit ever touched me. Not the way that night did.
Yvette pushes her way through the swinging kitchen door holding a bottle that looks like champagne, but when she sets it down on the large stainless-steel table Aje and I are sitting at, I see that it’s sparkling cider, just like he said.
She’s also got three fluted glasses in her hand, which she sets down next to the bottle. She smiles.
Which is not right. Why the fuck is she smiling?
“We’re celebrating,” she says, reading my mind. She finds a bottle opener, pops the top off the cider, and then pours us each a glass.
This whole time AJ is watching her with a heavy frown on his face. She pushes one glass over to me, one to AJ, and then picks hers up like she’s about to make a toast.
AJ shakes his head. Not gonna do it, that shake says.
“Look.” She sighs. “I’m done here, OK? I’m done. I don’t want to live anymore. This is my choice.”
“You don’t get to quit the game just because you’re losing,” AJ growls.
“Fuck you,” she says. “Just fuck you.” Her voice cracks a little. “You have no idea what this”—she pans her arms wide—“feels like. OK? But I do and I don’t want to feel this way anymore. I lost everything. And when the day comes—God forbid—that you lose as much as I have, well, then you can have an opinion. Then you can judge me and call me a quitter. But until then, you get no say in my decisions. I don’t know you,” she says, her voice taking on a tone of anger. “I have no clue who you are. I know how big your cock is and that’s about it. And to be honest, that’s all I want to know about you.”
AJ shakes his head again. “Won’t work.”
“What won’t work?” she asks.
“You can’t change my mind and your insults are just a provocation. So I’m not gonna react.”
I just watch them. Kinda weirdly… maybe sickly… fascinated.
Because she’s right. We don’t know her. She doesn’t know us.
We’re nothing to each other but three people who got stuck in a blizzard and decided to pass the time by fucking.
But I do have something to say. And against my better judgment, I say it. “So why not just take the pills now?”
“Logan,” AJ cautions me.
I hold up a hand. “No, listen. If you want to die so bad, why didn’t you grab that pill bottle and take those pills? Do it without telling us.”
“Maybe I did.” She smirks.
But AJ pulls the bottle of pills out of his pants pocket and holds them up, smiling.
“Take them back,” I say. “If you want to die so bad.”
AJ says nothing.
Yvette fumes. “Why? So you don’t have to do your job? Maybe I want to make you do your job?”
“Yeah,” I say, ready to push back. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you? Put it all on me. Play the victim. Again,” I add. Just to push her button a little harder.
