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No one responds. Every word I want to say is smothered by his presence.
Mr. Reyes reaches out his hand and smacks it against the side of Knox’s face. Knox bares his teeth but doesn’t make a noise. “Stop with the heavy breathing, son. I can’t listen to it any longer. Plus it’s rude to ignore your guests.”
The hideous feeling of his ominous company eases as he steps out of the room.
Thank fucking God.
“Where have you been, Dee?” Landon asks. When she doesn’t respond he gives me a what the fuck look. And what the fuck is right.
“Dee?” I wave my hand in front of her. She blinks but looks away, ignoring us completely. I turn to the asshole beside her. “Knox, where has she been?”
His features are the same nothing they always have been but the slightest frown tugs at his parted lips. The entirety of his attention is fixated on Dee.
“Knox,” Landon growls in a hushed tone. Quiet but harsh. “What did you do? What the hell did you do, Knox?” Each sentence is a sharp accusing knife meant to cut at our friend.
“What. Did. You. Do?” The collar of the black cotton shirt Knox wears is crumbled into a wad in Landon’s fist.
Dishes knock against each other in the suddenness of his movements. Gravy sloshes out of the porcelain boat and onto the smooth table top.
Every passing second feels like hours, the moment drawn out in a stress filled slow motion. Knox moves even slower. His demeanor shifting only slightly as he takes his attention from Dee and focuses it on Landon.
Something inside Knox looks just as lifeless as Dee. He doesn’t pry away Landon’s hand as I expect. He lets Landon hold his collar, their faces inches apart.
Anger tenses his features. It’s a familiar emotion I can actually stand to see in him for once.
“I failed her. We all failed her.” Knox spits. “My father will pay for every hurt, every affliction he causes her.”
“What did he do?” I find myself reaching back toward her. The girl I tormented. She’s only a shell of herself now.
Dee opens her mouth to speak, her emerald, lost eyes meeting mine. All too quickly she closes her mouth again, looking down at the food.
Knox takes a loud stuttering breath, the action sucking the air from my lungs. I hold it in anticipation.
The brown hair atop his head tosses as he shakes his head quickly back and forth. His father's voice grows louder, his footsteps nearing the dining room.
“What are you going to do to him, Knox? Your father is a fucking psycho.” Deliberately I refuse to raise my voice, fear of the man that raised one of my best friends getting the better of me.
I’m a fucking coward.
And then he’s striding back in, a smile tensing his thin lips. A swish of Mr. Reyes’ jacket as he pushes it behind him, one hand sliding down to his pocket, announces his reappearance.
Russet brown eyes shift into something dark, Knox’s pupils dilating into two narrow beads of black fixated on his father. His next words are so spokenly softly, but they still leave my mouth agape.
“So am I.”
Twenty-Three
Dee
Every passing thought leaves me with this nauseous gnawing feeling. My limbs shiver and shake when I let one of the fleeting ideas in my head stay for too long. I’m swallowing repeatedly. An attempt to keep my throat from feeling dry and to keep the lump that’s settling in my chest from heaving up in some form of projectile vomit.
Just the sound of someone talking to me has become overwhelming, my brain churning out ideas faster than I’m able to grab ahold of one. I know what I need to do, I know how I should be acting but the thought… it starts the terrible consuming feelings all over again.
I’ve waited months for this. Months to see my mother.
I’m stupid. I feel so stupid. Living in this large obnoxious mansion, my mother waiting for her trial in jail, and me unknowing of the levels of crazy my life was about to become. I let myself live in a fairytale, spending the entire summer fantasizing over three boys. Then half the school year I was insulted and beat down by them, and last but not least I spent three days lying in my own piss and vomit until I was too dehydrated to cry about the dark anymore.
Adapt. Survive.
