Page 51 of Cherry Auction

I can’t be who he’s describing.

Iknowwho I am inside. I might not know my name, but I know right and wrong. Good and bad. He’s lying. I mean, I’m not?—

I’m not a monster.

I’m not soulless.

Fuck the ghost! I don’t know her. She’s not me! I’m not responsible for whatever she did, or what she knew?—

I couldn’t possibly— Even if my father was. Oh god, especially if what he’s saying about my father is true. Oh god, I’m gonna be?—

I turn over and throw up all over the cushy, expensive rug. Once. Twice. Three times. Then I crawl away. I wipe my face on a clean part of the rug.

The rug is soft on my knees but rougher on my face. I rub my face on it again.

I look up at the picture of two people in love. All of their features drop away except their eyes. The scrunch lines around the edges. The shared shine in both pairs. Desperate adoration in his, as if she’s one of the few pure things left in a violent, cruel world. In hers, a shocked sense of joy. Inmine. Like it’s happiness I’ve never felt before.

Everything shimmers.

How could she?

The boy in that picture loved the girl. And she loved him back.

I take one last look at Domhnall, still chugging whisky. The bottle that was three-fourths full when he started is almost empty.

Still on all fours, I scramble down the nearest hallway and into the dark.

TWENTY

DOHMNALL

As the firstrays of dawn shine through the windows, I stumble after her, barely managing to put the whisky bottle back on the cart without dropping it.

“Hey,” I call. “Where do you think you’re going? I’m not done with you yet.”

Immediately I pull my phone out of my pocket, slapping myself for some clarity amid the warmth of the alcohol. Fuck. What am I doing drinking? I know better than to get caught up in such maudlin weaknesses.

I watch the phone for any perimeter alarms. Whenever an outer house door opens or closes, I’m alerted. But to my surprise, none of them trip.

She’s staying inside the house? What the hell’s she playing at now?

My head smacks into one of the poster paper photos I got blown up and hung from the wall last night using invisible twine. Laying my trap.

My little pet has been pretending to be so obedient lately, so suddenly and out of the blue? Rookie move. I tried it with her father week one. Thinking if I just played along things would go easier and I’d figure a way out of each session he managed to corner me in.

Always, he found some way to get me into his office. Every time, I swore I wouldn’t be stupid enough to land myself back there.

But things were always so strapped with me trying to support Moira and me all on our own. With the money I was making with Mr. Harper, things were finally looking up for once in our shithole lives. I was learning things—real skills, programming shit I was never gonna have the money to pay a university degree for.

I was already in too deep by the time he started pulling the pervert shit. I’d gotten Moira and me outta the rat-infested closet we’d had to rent when we first got to Dublin and into a real apartment building. She was settled into her second semester at a private school, fitting in when that’d never happened before.

And then there was Madison.

What the fuck are you supposed to do when yourgirlfriend’s father reaches down, and the accidental touches you’ve been trying to justify as those of an effusive mentor suddenly take that fucked up turn?

I mean, I knew about twisted fucks that liked to diddle little kids.

But I was seventeen. A man, at least to my own mind. Almost grown.

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