Page 42 of Did They Break You

My heart races as our eyes meet in the wall of mirrors, and for a second, he pauses.

The attendant turns, her mouth pulling into a dazzling smile at the sight of him, and I want to grind my phone into dust.

My pulse pounds in my ears, and I have to clench my hands into fists to stop them from shaking.

I blink, and I realize that Cortland has handed his ID to the attendant and he’s now striding toward me.

No.

The attendant watches him, still smiling, typing something in her phone as she does, no doubt messaging her friends. Does she know his name? Does she recognize it?

A local news legend, ladies and gentleman, making his way home.

The prodigal son returns.

Maybe she had the luxury of not watching the news. Oftentimes, I got faster updates through there than prosecution.

Maybe she just doesn’t care what he was accused of.

After all,he’s innocent.

I’m holding my breath as he approaches, still looking at him in the mirror. He’s wearing a fitted black T-shirt with a teal West River High wolf on it.Welcome to Pack Territory.It shows off the tanned muscles of his biceps, and he’s in gray jogging pants that show the outline of his…

I taste bile in the back of my throat and I bring my gaze back up, to his eyes.

He’s right behind me.

I can smell him. Cedar and pine.

Dizziness courses through me.

We stare off in the mirror, and I see he’s got a foot over my five three. I come up to his shoulders, and just barely at that.

I can feel his heat at my back as neither of us look away. I won’t make the first move.

“Do you ever want to die?”

He says my name now, in the present, and it sounds cold coming from his mouth.

I swallow the lump in my throat, fist my hands tighter at my sides. “What?” I snarl, feeling helpless again. Like I did that night, when he was cupping my face and his friends were touching me and it was like his gaze tethered me, helped me endure. In the morning, aching and sore and bleeding, I tried to convince myself I had wanted it.

And as I had looked at him, his arm flung out where it had been around my shoulder while he slept, I almost did.

I almost didn’t say a word about it.

But I went to pee.

It burned and I cried, trembling in his bathroom. And I remembered the flash of a phone in my face, and my heart began to race. If Silas saw any images from that night, if he thought I did any of that and let myself be photographed…

I’d wiped the blood away, left the bathroom, put my shoes that had somehow come off in the night back on with trembling fingers. He’d woken up, called out my name as he scrambled from the bed. But I ran. I’d left, my Corolla waiting on the curb where I’d parked it when I had driven over before he took us to the park. Before the party.

He called me all day.

Sent messages.

The day after, it all stopped.

The police had come to him.

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