Page 211 of Lessons in Cruelty

Melissa keeps brushing her hair out of her face when the wind blows it, then looking up at the sky like it’s got beef with her.

“Wait a sec…” Melissa looks at me with narrowed eyes. “You lied to me, you bitch.”

My heart gives a big thump. “What?”

She points at me, shaking her head. “You lied. You said you had, like, a job or something. You just didn’t wanna work with me.”

“I have a job!” I stop, swallowing. My mouth is really dry. “I had a job.”

“Had?” she says sourly. “Convenient.”

I clap my hands over my face. I’m nowhere near the point where I’m ready to tell anyone what Bastian did.

“I swear it, Melissa. I still had a shift at the diner that afternoon.”

“Thought you worked weekends too. That’s what you said.” Her eyes are slits now.

“I…quit.”

She sniffs, obviously unsatisfied with my answer. “Didn’t take you for a quitter,” she mutters.

I open my mouth to defend myself, then close it again.

I mean, fuck, she’s right.

I’ve spent this whole week hiding out. Considered—more than once—retrieving my car from Bastian’s house and driving off into the sunset…or as far as I could get on the gas left in the tank.

How is that not quitting?

“That’s…the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me,” I tell her.

She shrugs. “I thought you were tough. Guess I was wrong.”

I snort. “You’re not wrong.” Pushing back my shoulders, sticking out my chin, I give her a cool stare down my nose. “I am tough. And you know what else? I’m not a quitter.”

She shrugs again. “Prove it.”

I laugh.

“I mean it, Haven. You can’t let a boy get you down like this.” She holds up a hand to cut me when I try to interrupt. “Please. I know it’s a boy. If not Kai, then someone else.” Melissa stretches out her arms, fingers laced, cracking her knuckles. Then she props her elbow on her knee and turns to look at me. “Move on.”

If only it was that simple.

“It’s not…” But I trail off, because what the hell am I supposed to say?

How can I explain Kai finger-fucked me under a bed and then jizzed in my professor’s car?

That that same professor threatened to make me walk home with his cum leaking out of me if I didn’t strip for him?

That I get wet whenever I think about either of them?

She wouldn’t understand.

Fuck, I don’t even understand.

“If a guy buys you things, that means he wants something, right?” I muse.

Melissa doesn’t hesitate. “Always. No exceptions. Guys are assholes.”