Page 93 of Yours Truly

Bam. My hand and the butt of the knife come down in the center of the hood, this time sending my knife flying through the air and onto the sidewalk somewhere. There’s a splatter of blood over the hood, near the new dent in the center, and I lift my hand to see it’s drenched, soaked in red.

A wide groove centers my palm, and when I look over at Trace’s car, I see blood splattered everywhere.

“Ivy, sweetie,” my sister’s soothing voice finds me, causing my head to jerk up. She’s standing in her long white sundress on the sidewalk, closing the few feet between us. She wraps her arm around my shoulders, pulling me into her as she tells me that everything is going to be okay.

“I don’t—I don’t want to m-m-mess up your d-dress,” I stammer, and when did I start sobbing? Snot is slick beneath my nose as I bury my face against my sister’s, the quiet plunk, plunk of blood dripping onto the ground a soundtrack to our moment.

“Shh,” she says, smoothing her hand down my hair.

“Whoa,” another voice sounds, but I keep my face pressed into my sister, a heartbeat throbbing in the center of my palm. I don’t remember cutting my hand.

“Okay, get her in my truck,” the first voice says. “The four of us need to get out of here,” he adds.

“I can’t—I can’t walk away from this,” the other voice says.

“Please,” Juniper begs, her soft tone lower and more personal than I’ve ever heard it. “Please,” she tries again, still smoothing her fingers down my hair.

The first voice speaks to the second voice. “We know there aren’t cameras out here, okay? We know this, remember?” he says, pressing the other man. “So help Juniper get her into the truck, and I’ll find the knife.” He drops his voice. “C’mon, Dash, this is what’s right, you know it.”

Dash.

My mind spins.

I pull my face from Juniper’s chest and turn to see Sterling Ford standing behind Trace’s crumpled sports car, taking in the damage from his spot in the street. Dash Foster stands near the hood, eyes wide as he takes in the disfigured, bloody car.

“It’s just a car, it’s not a person,” Sterling says to him, and the two of them share eye contact.

“Your guys,” I whisper to my sister.

“Yes,” she says, her tone still soft and detached from the moment, soothing me. “My guys. And they’re going to help, okay? It’s going to be okay,” she promises, using the word okay at least a hundred times.

A moment later, Juniper is helping me into the back seat of a lifted pickup truck, sliding onto the bench seat with me. Using the bottom of her dress, she wraps up my injured hand, blinking at me in the mercurial moonlight.

“What happened?”

I peer out, and watch Dash and Sterling walking around the car, ducking down to look underneath. Dash even peers inside the car, swiveling his head.

They’re looking for my knife. “It’s on the sidewalk,” I tell Juniper, ignoring her question. “It slid down past the shop on the sidewalk,” I reiterate. She rolls down the truck window, whisper-hissing my secret into the night. The men go for it, and Juniper returns her focus to me.

“What happened, Ivy?”

“There’s a blonde,” I start, and Juni shakes her head.

“There’s always a blonde.”

I sniffle. “He tattooed her a few weeks ago. Maybe a month or more, I can’t remember.”

“Okay,” Juni draws out.

I wave my good hand over the front seat, toward Ink Time. “I saw Trace holding her, kissing her, in the back of the shop. I watched from the sidewalk. I saw their tongues. She put her hands in his hair the way I do.” Tears streak my cheeks as Juniper pulls me toward her body, attempting to absorb my shock and pain.

“That motherfucker,” she retorts as the truck dips, Sterling sliding behind the steering wheel, Dash taking the passenger side.

With black gloves on, he holds up my knife. “We got it.”

Sterling throws the truck in reverse, and the men stay quiet, and so does Juniper, holding tightly to the pressure on my hurt hand. One flash of his lips pressed to hers and blackness envelops me, and I sink into a much-needed adrenaline-crash slumber against my sister, in the arms of someone who actually loves me.

TWENTY-EIGHT

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