Page 61 of Scar Tissue

“I know,” she says. “He’s going to make an example out of me.”

The words hit like a physical blow, so much that I bend over and try to catch my breath from the implication.

“He won’t need to get close. He’ll watch first. He always does. He won’t grab me in an alley; he wouldn’t risk the scene. He’ll talk to me first like nothing’s changed and like he’s still that version of himself. But that’s where we’ll win. ”

Fletcher finally shifts. “Because you know his patterns.”

“Because Iwashis pattern,” she corrects.

I break my silence. “You’re asking us to put you right back in hisline of sight, something he won’t let his guard down on again. He is going to use anything he can now to control you.”

“Yes,” she says simply.

“And you think it won’t be worse than last time?” I press.

Her lips press into a thin line. “It will.”

The honesty of it knocks the air itself out of the room. “Or maybe it won’t. But I know what it looks like now,” she adds. “I know how it feels when it starts working. I know the moment when he thinks he has me again. And that’s when you take him.”

“I don’t like this.” Nathan shakes his head.

“It doesn’t matter if you don’t like it. It’s happening. I can see now everything you have all risked and I know it might not all be for me, but for the first time it feels like I have a family again. I know I’m no longer alone, and while I still have a long way to go, and I know I’m not the most…extroverted person, this is where I want to be. He made me survive him once, I can survive him long enough for you to end it. I’m the one thing he thinks still belongs to him,” she says. “And the one thing he’ll get careless for.”

She leftno room for argument, even though all of us continued to protest her. But that protesting eventually started to turn into a plan, and by midnight we had contacted Dyer to inform him of it. Of course he was adamant about keeping Claire out of the line of fire and just about threatened everything in the book to Fletcher and Nathan, but they stood fast. I could understand where she was coming from. She had lost so much and wasn’t even a quarter of the way through her life. It makes sense that she would want revenge on the one person she felt was responsible for nearly ruining it. After all, both Dylan and I have been placed in the same situation, so I didn’t feel like I had much roomto talk. How could I tell her what to do just because she’s a minor.

Now I stand outside on the back porch, looking up at the clear sky, when I’m interrupted by the door opening behind me. I know it’s Dylan before she reaches me and a part of me dreads the conversation I know she wants to have.

“How do you do it?” I ask, not needing to explain what I mean.

She’s quiet, and I feel a random guilt from knowing this will bring up horrible memories for her after she’s fought so hard. “I didn’t want to for a long time…I thought of all the different ways I would kill myself. Kill Fletcher.”

Her words tug at my heart like a string on a violin as she opens up to me for the first time since she was taken. She had mentioned things here and there but I never bothered to push her, knowing she would tell me in her own time. “Kill Fletcher? But you seemed so…” Solid isn’t the right word, but it’s the only one that comes to mind as I think of how he was there for her every second of every day.

“I know. The war between my mind and heart made everything confusing. There were moments I blamed him, as much as I know it wasn’t his fault. Callum was the one who got me into that mess, but finding out that Fletcher was involved in that kind of work made me feel like he should’ve protected me more. Even though we could have never expected Callum to betray me the way he did. But at the same time, it was his job to figure those things out, he just did too late.” She shrugs. “I guess I just had to decide if I was willing to let them take one more thing from me.”

I nod, contemplating her words; the way they resonate with how I’m feeling now. “Does it ever get better?”

She lets out a breath that sounds like it’s been sitting in her lungs for years. “Better isn’t the word I’d use for it. Different, maybe. Lighter in places. Heavier in others. It stops owning every second of you, though. That’s the part that matters.”

I swallow, my throat tight as I sit with what I experienced for the first time since getting home. “So it doesn’t go away.”

“No.” She shakes her head, but there’s no cruelty in it, just truth. “But it stops feeling like you’re drowning in it all the time. Eventually, it’s more like waves. Some days they knock you on your ass. Some days you just…float.”

Her eyes flick to mine, softer now. Careful.

“And some days,” she adds, “you forget for a few minutes. And then those minutes turn into hours. And then one day you realize you laughed without it hurting.” I look down at my hands, flexing my fingers like I’m trying to remember how they belong to me.

“What did they do to you, Thea?” There it is. The question I’ve known was coming but don’t know how to answer.

“I wish I knew…I think that’s what makes this worse. I remember them beating me and restraining me to the table. I remember the pain from them cutting into my skin until I passed out from the pain. But I woke up with this…soreness between my legs and I have no idea what they did, if they used anything, how many took…turns. And I’m too afraid to get an exam because I’m just as afraid they’ll confirm what I already know, deep down.” My voice is barely there, cracking as emotions flood to the surface. “They took everything.”

Dylan’s jaw tightens. “No. They took a lot. Too much. But not everything.” And I suddenly feel selfish, because what I experienced in one night doesn’t equate to what she went through over the course of a week.

I shake my head but she cuts me off. “I thought I was nothing but what they made me. For a long time, that’s all I could see when I looked in the mirror. But that’s exactly what they want. For you to carry them with you, even after you’re free.”

I let out a hollow laugh. “I don’t feel free.”

“Yeah,” she says. “Me neither. Definitely not at first, and you won’t be for a long time. You don’t have to be okay right now.” She reaches over and grabs my hand. “You don’t even have to believe it gets better. You just have to stay.”