Page 45 of One Breath After Another

He didn’t mind doing it, though.

By the time Luca pulled his car into the gas station, Penny had made herself a seat on the bench that faced the pumps. With her hoodie pulled over her head, she sat cross-legged on the seat with an open bag of chips in her lap.

Hey.

She wasn’t in a state. No tears, by the looks of it. From what he could see through the windshield, there were no visible marks on her to say someone was going to have to die. He counted those as all good things.

The rest was yet to be determined.

All it took was one beat of the car’s horn, and Penny pushed away from the bench. She dropped the bag of chips into a garbage bin as she passed it by before coming to the passenger side of his car. Opening the door, she tossed her book bag to the floor of the car and stepped in second, falling into the seat like it was the only thing she was waiting for.

A safe place.

He didn’t take the car out of park or move a muscle to suggest they were going to leave as fast as he arrived. He glanced at her from the side when he asked, “You okay?”

Sky blue stared back at him. Maybe she hadn’t been crying when he arrived, but the bloodshot eyes said she did cry at some point. The twisting tug in his chest hurt at the very idea. Didn’t people realize this girl had been hurt enough?

Why add insult to the injury?

Penny only shrugged under the baggy, zip-up black hoodie. A bit of her braid hung out from the hood, the white strands of hair a bright contrast against the dark fabric. “I am now.”

“But you weren’t.”

“It’s not a big deal.”

He didn’t believe that for a second.

Apparently, neither did Penny.

“Okay, that’s a lie,” she muttered, looking away from his unmoveable stare. “It was a big deal, but I don’t want to let it be. The more people know shit bothers me; the more they’ll use it to do exactly that, too. People can do what they want or say whatever but only I get to decide if it hurts me. You know?”

He did, but ... “Just tell me what happened. If anything, so I can decide whether it’s something we need to handle right now or wait until later.”

Penny rolled her eyes. “That’s so ...”

“Yeah?”

“Responsible.”

Luca barked out a laugh. “Yeah, nobody said this growing up shit was any fun.”

He learned that a long time ago.

She only sighed.

He let her have a moment.

Eventually, Penny turned back to him but then, her eyes were lined with unshed tears. It made her already wide, bright eyes look even bigger. Impossibly so. Like one of those white-skinned China dolls that people kept safe on high shelves away from hands that might play a little too rough. Too many people had done exactly that to this girl, too. Treated her like a doll and then played with her like one as if she wasn’t a real person with a heart and soul of her own.

“A guy—Caleb—said some stuff about my father. And me,” Penny added lower. “About ... things. I don’t want to say what. Doesn’t matter anyway. Kind of obvious.”

“You don’t have to say anything.”

She said enough, frankly.

Teenagers were terrible. Teenage boys were little bastards on their good days. Luca could say that because he had been one of them once. He had never been purposefully awful to other people—or females, for that matter—but that wasn’t always the case. Things happened. It wasn’t an excuse for shitty behavior—he also couldn’t say he was surprised, either.

“I think he only did it to be funny for his friends,” Penny said, wiping away the tears that dared to escape with her next blink. As quick as the wet streak graced her pale skin, it was gone like it hadn’t existed in the first place. “Because ha, ha, it’s so fucking funny to be a sex toy for grown men. Asshole.”