Page 41

I need water. The need to just do something other than stand here like an idiot is the only thing that keeps me moving, so I grab a glass from the cabinet and fill it, gulping down a whole glass full before the tears start.

What am I doing here?

I’m about to turn twenty years old, and my life still feels like it’s in the hands of someone else. I always thought adulthood would be exciting, but all I feel is lost. I can still hear her voice, the loathing hatred in her tone when she spoke to me. Why am I still living with her? Why did I come back after one semester of art school?

Why do I do this to myself? Why do I let other people hurt me?

A loud sob escapes my lips.

My mother’s hatred for me has only intensified since Dad left, and it only makes me sob harder thinking about how invisible I am to him. She hates me, and he just doesn’t care.

But I stay.

A sudden vision of me in ten years, still living with my mother’s disappointment and begging for my dad’s attention. Maybe I’ll be like Cadence, searching for love between the sheets with the wrong guys.

The stabbing pain in my chest presses down with each gasping inhale. It’s the only thing that drowns out the screaming pain in my face.

“Alexander,” I cry, hoping he can hear me in his room. It’s not even a second later before I hear a door open upstairs. Then, the pounding of feet as he runs down the stairs to find me crying in his kitchen.

Immediately, I sense the panic in his features.

“Oh my god, Sunny.” His voice barely registers as I bawl into my hands.

He sprints toward me, engulfing me in his arms without question. The moment I am safely encased in his arms, I feel lighter. Safer. Free.

Then, I liberate the emotion that has been clogging up my heart for so long. I sob—loud and violently. I don’t care about the humiliation or the vulnerability or scaring him away or turning him off. He only holds me tighter, stroking my back and kissing the top of my head as I shake and tremble in his arms.

“I’ve got you,” he mumbles. “You’re safe. I’m here.”

The more he whispers different iterations of the same thing, the harder I cry. I cry for the little girl who so desperately wished to hear them.

Finally, once I can manage a full inhale, he whispers, “What happened?”

He’s in nothing but his tight boxer shorts, my wet face pressed up against the smooth skin of his chest.

I can’t speak. For some reason, telling him what she did feels like reopening a wound I just stitched up. With care, he wets a washcloth and wipes the tears and a small streak of blood from my face.

Since the tears started, they won’t stop, no matter how much I beg them to.

“What did she do?” he asks, looking into my eyes.

“She was drunk,” I mumble.

“I don’t care. Did she hit you?”

Biting my lip, I nod.

“Jesus.” When he looks toward my house, I see the rage in his eyes. I fear I’ll have to stop him from going over there. But he stays put and pulls me into his chest again.

He holds me, and I try not to let the waterworks start running again and focus instead on the texture of his warm skin against my cheek, the sparse patch of chest hair beneath my fingers, and his hip bones pressed against my stomach. I am swallowed by him. I never want to come up for air.

“She said awful things about you,” I murmur. “She said you only wanted me for one thing. That men like you can’t help themselves.”

He sighs angrily. “Don’t listen to her.”

“I know.”

Carefully, he refills my glass with water and hands it to me with two white pills.