Page 32 of The Accident

“Get dressed,” I say, voice gentle but firm. “We’ve got all day. I want you to go home, shower again, and then come back tonight. Wear something that makes you feel like a whore.”

She nods, still not meeting my eyes.

I lean down and kiss her forehead, just once.

“You’re my dirty little secret now,” I whisper. “And I’m not done with you yet.”

She looks up then, eyes shining, and for a split second, I see the rest of our future: Kayleigh bent over my desk, her knees on my kitchen floor, her body opening for me again and again and again. All the taboo and all the filth, made sacred by the fact that it’s ours alone.

I smile and walk out, leaving her ruined and perfect in the morning light.

The city is still there, forty stories below, but for once, I don’t feel like I’m looking down on anything at all.

12

STELLA ALWAYS HAS THE GOODS

Kayleigh

Ilet myself into the apartment as quietly as possible, but the deadbolt is loose, so it clacks—a sound that echoes down the empty hallway like a starter pistol. I half expect to find a Welcome Home banner, or a mob of cops with handcuffs, or at least a lingering cloud of humiliation to greet me. Instead, there’s only the gentle hum of the AC and the long, rectangular sunbeam that cuts across the living room rug, catching in the threads like it’s got nowhere better to be.

Our apartment used to feel crowded, almost alive with chaos: four girls, three bedrooms, one bathroom, and a rotating cast of boyfriends, family, and weirdos from the college drama program. Now it’s just me and Stella. Mary Kate moved out recently because she’s fallen in love with her stepdad, Kent Robinson; Andie moved out even earlier to be with Stella’s dad, Thomas Moreland, leaving behind only a half-dead succulent and an unpaid cable bill. You can still sense them in the place, though, like echoes that haven’t finished reverberating. There’s a hair tie on the bathroom sink that doesn’t belong to me. There’s a flip-flop in the hallway that’s a size too small. It all feels haunted, but only by the kind of ghosts who might offer to split a pizza if you could see them.

But this is still my home. Sure, I stay with my parents sometimes, but this is where I pay rent. I kick off my shoes, sink my toes into the rug, and immediately collapse onto the couch, not even caring about the coffee stains on the slipcover or the way the cushions flatten under me like I’ve been exiled from gravity. I’m in a loose t-shirt and shorts, hair up in a bun that’s half war zone, half anime sidekick. My muscles ache in the delicious, humiliating way that only happens after someone’s wrung the last ounce of resistance out of you.

That someone was my stepbrother, and I still have the bite mark on my thigh to prove it. OMG, Trevor wasn’t supposed to bite me! He wasn’t supposed to do any of what he did, actually, but my pussy tingles at the mere memory as my thighs squeeze together. OMG, I have to stop thinking like this. Trevor is my stepbrother and totally off limits. I can’t.

At that moment, there’s a clatter from the kitchen and then Stella appears, a giant matcha smoothie in one hand. She’s in an XXL t-shirt and hot pants, legs impossibly long. Her hair is in a loose braid, the color impossibly golden in the sun, and her face is clear of makeup, but her expression is already up to something.

The moment she sees me, her eyes go wide and she sets the smoothie down, hard. “Holy shit, you’re alive!” she shouts, then launches herself over the back of the couch and lands next to me in a move that would dislocate the hips of a lesser mortal. “Girlfriend, tell me everything. Were you just, like, sitting in jail the whole night? Or did you do the smart thing and seduce your way out like a normal person?”

I bury my face in a pillow and groan. “I can’t believe I’m back here. Can we just pretend last night didn’t happen?”

Stella doesn’t even blink. “No. Absolutely not. You have to tell me if they made you change into an orange jumpsuit, and if a new guard came, and if you got any new tattoos, and—” Her eyes narrow. “Oh my god, did you see that bitch Tammy? Did they bring her around, finally? Is her pussy just as haunted as the rumors say?”

She’s so loud and unfiltered that I can’t help but start to laugh, but the sound comes out strangled. “First of all, you know there’s no jumpsuit. Second, it was the same guard and he was a fucking turd. Third, Stella, I am not as cool as you think I am. I didn’t seduce anybody.”

My friend makes a wounded noise. “You’re letting down the team, Kay. I got out in, like, twenty minutes. Morris was ready to unlock the cell before I even finished my dance. But you—” she points a dramatic finger at me, “—you have the raw material. You just have to own it.”

I try to wriggle lower into the couch. “You left me there,” I state. “You ditched me.” I remember Stella blowing me a kiss as she strolled out in her heels, dress clinging to her ass, her own mug shot probably already being used as a thirst trap by the Minneapolis PD.

She waves a hand, dismissing the accusation. “I knew you’d be fine. You’re made of tougher stuff than you look. But you’re out now! So tell me, how did it happen?” She leans in so close I can see the flecks in her irises, her tone suddenly conspiratorial. “Tell me you were creative. Tell me you went full femme fatale.”

I squeeze my eyes shut. “I didn’t. I tried, okay? But Morris wasn’t buying it. He just kind of watched, then told me to stop. I think he thought I was going to have a nervous breakdown.”

Stella makes a sound like a sad trombone. “Sad, girl, sad. You have to make them think that the sun rises and sets with you. But, wait, how did you get out then?”

I shoot her a deadpan.

“The normal way. I stayed overnight, and was bailed out in the morning.”

Stella looks confused.

“By whom?”

This is where it gets tricky, and I fight to speak in a normal tone. “Trevor.”

For a beat, all the air goes out of the room. But Stella’s expression is confused.