Page 109 of Break Your Fall

My body jerks up off the stool, the brush falling from my hand at the thought of one.

Landon.

There’s no other way out besides that one door and if I try to run now, he’ll find me.

The chilling sensation intensifies, warning me that that’s what he wants.

My eyes dart around for a place to hide, and I’m hurrying toward the sink as quietly as I can, squeezing into a bottom cupboard and closing myself in darkness right as their thudding feet turn the corner into the room, my ears trying to pick up their voices through the thundering of my pulse.

“Where’d she go?”

“We don’t need her.”

Max.He was also in the cave that night, and at the skate park. My pulse eases a little at his reasoning to Landon, my insides pleading for him to listen, for all of them to just walk back out and leave me alone.

“They beat the shit out of me because of her.”

“You were hit twice.”

“And pushed and kicked,” Nate defends Landon now and my pulse speeds up again.

Leave, leave, leave.

“Whatever. That wasn’t a beating.”

“Yo, why’d you even come?”

There’s a pause where only my ragged breaths and thumping pulse are the sounds I hear as Max contemplates Landon’s question. A cramp shoots up my legs from my hunched positioning and all the tension in my muscles as Max finally says, “We don’t need Reyna to get our point across. Let’s just get this over with.”

There’s another pause that makes me shift, pulls my body as close to the door as it can get, and shuffling sounds on the other side as I wait for what they’re going to do.

Glass breaks, the sharp ringing jolting me against the back wall. Canvases crash against the floor. Wood snaps and hits the walls.

My hand reflexes to the knob, gripping tight and turning with the thought to save my hard work, my father’s hard work, but I don’t move past that. I can’t move. I can’t leave the cupboard, my body unable to go anywhere. I can only squeeze this knob and let the warm tears fall down my cheeks as I listen to them destroy the whole studio.

33

Damages

Reyna

“Reyna!”

Tommy barrels through the door to the gallery with the same fear and desperation I’d seen on his face and heard in his voice that night I almost drowned. “I’m sorry, I was—”

“It’s okay,” I assure him as he reaches my side, his embrace easing the shaking in my bones.

When he pulls back, his gaze trails over my red, puffy face. “Oh God, I’m so sorry.”

“It’s okay,” I assure him again. “I’m okay.”

“Are you sure? Did they—”

“I’m fine,” I say again, smiling despite myself. He seems to need more comfort than I do. “I hid in a cupboard.”

“I’m surprised you didn’t run out and try to save everything,” Camille says from her spot in front of me, sympathy in her eyes when I meet her stare. Julian stands next to her, with Banks next to him, and Jessa on my other side, all sets of eyes filled with worry.

They came running. Everybody came running for me. But they’ve been going in and out of my focus since they arrived with the police.

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