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I groan through a mouthful of rosé. “Please.”
My head hits the sofa cushion with a thump as Kate stands, pausing to yank my shoes off on her way to the kitchen. Shuffling upright, I wriggle out of my coat, replacing it with a fluffy blanket just in time for Kate to return and place a plate piled high with steaming leftover Chinese takeout on my lap. My thanks is muffled by a forkful of mapo tofu, the spicy, salty flavor coaxing another groan out of me. After a solid ten minutes of stuff, chew, swallow, repeat, my hanger recedes enough for me to notice someone missing. “Where’s Mils?”
Kate’s grimaces answer my question before her mouth does. “She has that thing with Dylan.”
Way to ruin my appetite. “The gala?”
Kate nods, and I grunt. I don’t know how I forgot about the fucking gala. Amelia’s been dreading it all week, therefore I’ve been dreading it all week. Or, more accurately, loathing it. I’m not a fan of anything that riddles my best friend with anxiety, even less so when it involves that dickhead.
I know Kate shares the same sentiment; she sure as shit isn’t obsessively checking the time on her phone for the fun of it. “She should be home soon.”
“Alone, hopefully.”
“Amen.”
Not long passes before it’s proven that, for once, something upstairs listened to our prayers. But the relief I feel at the sight of Amelia creeping into our apartment alone, heels in her hand while her small body shivers—I shouldn’t be surprised Dylan didn’t offer up his jacket—dies as quick as it’s born. The moment she fails to acknowledge our joint greeting, shoulders tense and head down with her hair falling like a shield, I know something’s wrong, and a loud sniffle proves me right.
“Mils?” I thwart her attempt to rush past us. “You okay?”
It’s like the two words break her. Shivering morphs into trembling, sniffling into strangled sobs. In a split second, Kate and I are by her side, simultaneously gasping when I brush red curls aside and reveal what our friend tried to hide.
She’s terrifyingly pale, her expression alarmingly blank despite the tears seeping from her eyes, but that’s not what worries me. Not what causes red-hot rage to boil my blood.
No, that would be the blood seeping from the cut on her lip. The matching one on her temple, too, and the nasty looking bruises staining her skin.
“Amelia,” Kate darts, the question I know she’s about to ask needless, “who did this?”
We both know the answer. Without a shadow of a doubt, we know, but we need verbal confirmation. And we get it. One word, one name, one whispered, broken sob that I don’t know what to do with. Or, more accurately, I don’tlegallyknow what to do with.
I know Dylan is an asshole. I know he’s a misogynistic, entitled, handsy creep who doesn’t deserve to exist in the same space as Amelia. But this…
I’m going to kill him.
I am actually going to kill him.
Like she can hear my train of thought, Amelia grips my wrist, hazy, unfocused eyes scaring the shit out of me. “It was an accident,” she whispers quietly, emotionlessly, and I’m not sure who she’s trying to convince.
“No,” it’s hard, so damn hard, to keep my tone gentle and even when I want to fucking scream, “it wasn’t.”
Amelia blinks, so terrifyingly absent and heartbreakingly confused. She flinches when Kate rests a hand on her shoulder, again when she softly says, “Amelia, you need to go to the hospital.”
And, out of everything, the thing that worries me the most?
Amelia doesn’t protest.
She doesn’t fight us as we hurry her to the car, carefully maneuvering her into the backseat. She’s silent the whole drive. She doesn’t acknowledge our arrival at the emergency room, nor the nurse who points us toward the waiting room and leads her away. She disappears without a word, and while Kate settles in an uncomfortable plastic chair, my body refuses to do the same.
Instead, I explode.
All the insults and threats I've been bottling up since the moment she stumbled home come out in one long barrage. Shouting and swearing. Threatening things I really shouldn't be saying in public or in a hospital, things involving very vivid methods of emasculation, ignoring all the alarmed looks I receive because if they knew, they’d agree.
When I burn myself out, I throw myself on the seat beside Kate, crossing my arms to stop my fidgeting hands. “Kate-”
Her hands lands on my knee. “I know.”
“She said it was anaccident.”
“I know.”
