Page 72 of Fracture

She gazes at me pensively, her eyes dropping to my neck. She reaches out and traces a finger along one of the snakes etched into my skin, a sad smile tugging at the corners of her lips.

“I like these. I always wanted a tattoo, I just never knew what to get.” She climbs out of my lap and goes to the kitchen counter, pulling open a drawer. She withdraws an orange vial, a pill bottle, and brings it over to me. “I found these. Gloria got careless one afternoon when she went to visit Levi, and they were just perched right there in the kitchen, next to the blender.”

“Zyprexa?” I read the name off the vial with Gloria’s name printed on the label. “What is this?”

“Olanzapine.” Stella’s gaze wanders to the ceiling, then back out the window. “It causes hallucinations. Gloria ground that upin my smoothies, I’m guessing with the assistance of the ever-present Valerie.” She scoffs. “It didn’t have the intended effect, but it fucked me up. Took me years to feel normal again.” She looks down at me, her beautiful face twisted with pain, and suddenly she straddles me, taking my face in her hands. “I did things to hurt myself. I did things so I wouldfeelsomething again. I did dangerous, stupid things. I let men…”

She trails off, and my heart stops for a moment. I grip her thighs, pulling her closer to me.

“If anyone hurt you, I will fucking hunt them down.”

She shakes her head, dropping her gaze. “Don’t say things like that. I let those things happen.”

I grip her chin in my jaw, forcing her eyes back up to mine. “No. You were used, and no one looked after you. That stops now. Me and Levi, we’ll look after you. And anyone who hurt you, their days are numbered.”

“Dylan-”

“Tell me about Stanley Iverson.”

She inhales sharply, and clenches her eyes shut. I hope to god I haven’t lost her again, I hope I haven’t pushed her back into that dark place she just escaped from. But she takes several deep breaths, leaning into me and wrapping her arms around my neck, her fingers tracing gently over the back of my head.

“You remember my sixteenth birthday?” Before I can answer, she laughs softly. “Of course you do. You bought me all the flowers. I remembered, after you told me. I don’t think I ever even thanked you properly, but that was the most beautiful gift anyone ever gave me. So, thank you.”

My nose brushes along her collarbone, her sweet vanilla scent intoxicating. “Any time.”

“My dad let me have red wine that night, which was weird. He said it was family tradition. Wasn’t one I’d ever heard of.” Her fingers continue their slow circles, and she sighs softly. “Ihated how it tasted, but I didn’t want to disappoint him. I didn’t want to be the one to break tradition, and let him down.” She shrugs. “So I drank half of it, and then poured the rest into one of the plants, so he didn’t see. So he’d think I’d drunk all of it. Within a few minutes, the room was spinning. I could barely hear anything, I couldn’t talk properly. My dad, I remember him carrying me out of the room, telling everyone the day had been too much for me.”

“He drugged that wine.” It’s a pointless statement to make. But I’m finally putting it all together, finally asking Stella about everything instead of charging into the night like a raging bull. My anger is so sharp, I can feel its red-hot needles prickling down my spine and at the base of my skull. I close my eyes and remember the look in her father’s eyes the second before I pulled the trigger and blew his brains out all over his leather armchair. The fear and disbelief.

And I hate myself because that death was too good for a fucking animal like him. I should have made him suffer.

“Yes, he did.” Stella starts talking again, and I focus on her voice, on the slow breaths she takes as she tries to remain calm and not get swallowed up by the pain of her memories. “As he carried me out, he told me that tonight was going to be extra special. Everything we’d been doing til now, led to this moment. Because I was a woman now.” Her voice falters into a whisper on the last sentence.

“You don’t need to tell me more.” I try to pull back from her, but her arms lock around me and hold me in place.

“He put me in a car.” Her voice doesn’t rise above that whisper, and I hold on to her, my hands splayed on her back, trying to make her know with every part of me that I’m here,here. “I don’t know how long we drove, but then I was in a room I’d never seen before, some fancy hotel. I remember thinking how soft the sheets were, and then this sort of panic started,because if I could feel the sheets on my back, I wasn’t wearing any clothes.”

She takes two small, shuddering breaths and her fingers cease their gentle circles on my skin. Now she’s just holding on to me. Just anchoring herself. I don’t know if she’s ever told anyone this before. I still don’t know if I’m ready to hear it. But I steel myself for it.

In an eerily hollow voice, Stella goes on. “I knew Stanley Iverson, he was a good friend of my dad’s. I’d seen him before, always in suits and ties. So when he walked in, just in a robe, you know, one of those big fluffy hotel robes, I didn’t recognise him at first. Then he said something about Uncle Stanley looking after me, and I realized who he was. Then he took off his robe, and I wanted to get away, I wanted to crawl off the bed and run out of the room, but I couldn’t move. He… He asked me if it was my first time, and I couldn’t say anything. Then he walked over, and he crawled over me and he smelled so bad, and he was so heavy, this big round gut, pressing me into the bed.”

I’m anchoring myself to Stella now too, the two of us just holding each other as she relives what was one of the worst nights of her life and I fight the rage and sorrow and howling grief that won't stop echoing through my skull.

“He hurt me.” Her voice drops lower again, so it’s barely audible. “It was so… So uncomfortable, it didn’t hurt exactly, but… I felt disgusting. He told me he’d paid my father extra to let him do it without a condom. I was lying there, in pain and terrified that he’d get me pregnant. But then he didn’t finish. He rolled me over and… There was something cold, between my legs, cold and slippery, and then he… It hurt so bad, and I couldn’t even scream.”

When she stops talking, neither of us do anything but hold each other. Stella goes limp and soft in my arms, her armsdropping from around my neck so she can curl herself up into a ball on my lap.

I don’t tell her that Stanley Iverson is as good as dead. I don’t tell her that I’ll put a tracker on his phone after I run her a bath. I don’t tell her that Levi and I will hunt him down while she has dinner with Zee later this week. I don’t tell her that Stanley Iverson will die slowly, and in pain.

I don’t tell her any of that.

I simply hold her as the grief and sorrow wash off her, as her breathing normalizes. When she finally stands and stretches her back, I take her upstairs and run her a bath. She kisses me and thanks me, and lowers herself into the water. I tell her I’ll be right back, and head into my room just as the front door slams shut and Levi comes up the stairs. He follows me into my room and closes the door behind him.

“Gun’s coming.” He says, toeing off his shoes.

“Good.” I pick up my phone and send off a text. “I’ll have the tracker on him by this afternoon.”

“How’s she doing?”

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