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He shook his head. “I haven’t been with anyone since I’ve been with you. You know that. Don’t listen to lies.”
Then he was on me again, taking the empty glass from my hand. Did I drink it all? I tried to push him away, but my limbs were so weak.
And after that it’s all flashes. Evan’s lips on my body, the soft landing on the bed. His hot breath in my ear, on my throat. The room shimmers and fades.How much did I drink?I remember thinking, suddenly feeling too out of control.
Steph’s voice, angry, strident, reaches me as if from a great distance.Get off her. Leave her alone.
Then Evan and Steph are dancing, wild, twisting, no—fighting. She shrieks, striking at him. He hits her hard across the face, and she falls to the ground, knocking her head with a brutal smack. I try to reach for her, but my body doesn’t move, my limbs filled with sand.
Steph. Her name lingers in my throat.I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it.
Then there’s the glint of a knife in his hand. He lifts his arm and brings it down hard, his face a mask of rage. Once, twice, three times.
I am awake, alive, flying toward them, a final burst of self, of energy, before the drug and the alcohol are a quicksand that I sink in to, pulling me down into suffocating darkness.
You’re hurting her. You’re killing her.
His face. It’s a monster mask, cold and vicious. He is everything my father, Badger, Steph said he was. He lashes out with the knife and I feel it slice my face, the warm gush of blood down my cheek, my neck. A terrible shriek of pain comes from my own mouth.
Where is everyone?
Can’t anyone hear us?
Somewhere I hear the idiotically cheerful strains of “A Holly Jolly Christmas.” And I know I’m going to die. I put my hand to my face and there’s so much blood. Steph is on the ground, skin paper white, eyes staring.
No.
I hear her voice even though she doesn’t speak.Run, Maddie, run.
And then I’m running, stumbling desperately, and he’s behind me roaring. And somehow there’s no one else there. How many hours were we up there? No one to intervene or to hear me screaming. My legs are buckling, and finally he’s on me.
Then, the cold of the river, and the twinkle of stars above, and my blood flowing into the earth. And finally, Badger. His voice calling. His arms lifting me.Steph, I kept saying over and over.Steph. Please help her. But Badger was carrying me away, and the night filled with sirens and lights.
Now Badger and I drive, a million miles, a thousand years from that night and it’s still with us. We have not escaped it. I have not escaped him.
“Was Chet there that night?” I ask now. “I don’t remember seeing him.”
“He was there,” says Badger, his hands tight at ten and two on the wheel. His eyes ahead. The headlights cut through the heavy snow. “He sneaked out of the house. When I realized, that’s why I came.”
“You came for him and not for me.”
“You made it pretty clear that you didn’t want to be with me,” he says tightly. “So, no, I didn’t go to Handy’s place for you.”
“But you never found Chet?”
“No. When I got there it was pure panic. People were fleeing; someone had called the police. You ran from the guest house into the woods, bleeding—people saw that. That’s how I knew to follow the trail. It was chaos.”
My head aches from trying to piece things together that simply aren’t there. I never saw Chet that night; can’t imagine him in that scene. Badger’s little brother. Could he have been tied up with Evan? No. No way. My dad is wrong. This is a mistake.
We drive in silence, the snow like a galaxy in the window, the big pickup rumbling.
“It was me.” His voice is heavy in the dark.
I turn to him. “What are you talking about?” But I already know.
He stares straight ahead, doesn’t answer.
“What was you?” I ask again.
