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Grayson
All night, I can’t get that dance out of my head. The way she moved. The pain etched into each of her perfect features. Even just watching her, my heart broke. She took our tragic story and managed to turn it into something beautiful. Turned it into art.
There are a million different reasons why we should or shouldn’t be together, and I can’t seem to make sense of any of them. The only thing I know is that this isn’t something I can figure out on my own. I need to talk to Savannah—lay everything out on the table, and see where we go from there.
It’s half past three when I decide I can’t wait any longer. Grabbing my keys, I get in my car and drive toward her house. The whole way there I can hardly sit still. We haven’t spoken to each other since the night of Jace’s party, when she confessed to being in love with me, and I responded by kicking her out of my house. The look on her face as I screamed at her to leave is still burned into my mind, tormenting me late at night when I can’t sleep.
When I pull up to her place, what can only be described as a ratty, beater car is sitting out front. It’s a slightly familiar one; I’m guessing her dad’s. Every time I’ve come to pick her up, if that car was parked outside, she’d be waiting on the porch by the time I got here. I have yet to come face to face with him again after all this time, but I’m not about to shy away. I need to talk to Savannah.
As I get out of the car and walk toward the door, I hear glass breaking, followed by shouting coming from inside.
“Don’t ever speak to me that way again, do you understand me? You live under my roof! You treat me with respect!” a man yells.
I’m just about to knock when the door swings open and Savannah’s father stumbles out of it. He looks like shit, not half the man I remember him being. His hairline is receding, he’s paunchy, and he smells like he bathed in a bottle of whiskey.
“Fucking ungrateful little bitch,” he mumbles.
As if he didn’t realize I was there at first, his eyes meet mine and widen drastically. The two of us stand there, staring at each other in a silent face-off, until he shakes his head and drunkenly staggers down the steps and to his car. It’s obvious he shouldn’t be driving in his condition, but I have more pressing matters to deal with. I just hope that if he kills himself, he doesn’t take anyone else with him.
The door is left halfway open, and I peek my head in before entering. Savannah is crouched down on the floor, sweeping up what looks like the broken pieces of a beer bottle. Her hair is a mess, as if someone had their hands in it, and her shirt is ripped.
“Sav?”
Her head whips toward me, and that’s when I see it—the fresh gash on her forehead and handprint on her cheek. In a split second, it all becomes crystal clear. All the bruises I noticed over the last few weeks…her comment about dealing with things much scarier than thunderstorms…how nothing I did seemed to have any effect on her.
Her father has been
beating her this whole time.
“What do you want, Grayson?” The cracking in her voice tells me just how defeated she is.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
She laughs dryly as she stands and empties the dustpan into the garbage. “And when did you expect me to do that? When you were looking for anything you could use to ruin my life, or when you were screaming at me to get out of your house?”
I step closer and reach out to touch her, but she dodges it. “I can help you.”
“I don’t need any help.”
My brows furrow. “Savannah, he’s hurting you!”
“And you haven’t?” She snaps. “Don’t try playing the knight in shining armor now! You’ve been no better than he is!”
“Don’t be like that.”
She scoffs. “Be like what? Truthful? Honest? What you did to me hurt so much more than anything my father has ever done.” Turning around, she doesn’t even look at me as she says the next words. “Go. I don’t want you here.”
It’s like someone plunged an icepick straight into my chest. As everything tightens inside me, I feel like I can’t breathe. She’d rather get thrown around than let me help her, and why should she? I’ve done nothing but make things harder for her. School was the one place she could act like everything was okay. Like her life wasn’t a fucking train wreck. It was the only time she felt safe and hopeful, and I took that away from her.
I’ve always been meant to protect her, and instead, I caused her the most pain.
I PULL UP TO the studio, not even bothering to park in a space or turn off my car before I’m storming inside. It only takes a minute to find Brady, standing with the same guy I saw helping him after our little scuffle outside the bar. I grab him by the shoulder and spin him around. His demeanor changes when he sees me.
“What the hell do you want?!”
“Did you know?”
He looks at me as if I’ve gone crazy. “Know what? That you’re a bastard?”
